AM I STARVIN' MARVIN?

I have to think so hard about what i'm going to eat, when and how much! It's crazy, but unless you succumb to the demands of the diabetes monster, you will become even more enslaved by medications.

It is truly amazing how little food the human body needs to survive. Nowadays my thoughts about whatever is on the so-called menu are limited to what can fit in the palm of my hand. Granted, some days the palm can extend all the way to my fingertips especially when something I really really like is on the mastication horizon!

This is the second time I have blog'd about the new companion in my life, diabetes and don't want this to turn into a blog for that. BUT there are some thoughts about this whole journey that I just would like to put out there for whoever may or may not be interested.

Any and I mean any kind of a vegetable seems to agree with the glucose-challenged. As we all should know, vegetables are full of soluble fiber which digests much more slowly. Meats are okay in small amounts, but processed meats such as lunch meat are not good. For some reason the lunch meat type foods really cause the glucometer to skyrocket! Grains are okay in very small amounts and be sure they are of whole wheat variety! Never thought I would like whole wheat pasta either, but it is tasting pretty darn good these days............................

I have also definitely confirmed that exercise of ANY type is good to metabolize. If you are behind a desk all day and have to pretty much be available there, it is so difficult to move too much, so one must improvise. Subtle stretching works sometimes as well as the famous Keigel type exercises, which really are simply flexing your muscles while you sit!

There are also people whose blood sugar is always going too low and it has got to be terrible for those people to deal with that. Low blood sugar can definitely kill you much faster than high blood sugar! For a brief period of time I was over-medicated and experienced several "low" blood sugar events (very scary). So trying to keep the sugar down is probably the lesser of the two evils between low and high (see I know how lucky I really am)!

I can totally understand now how people fail at diabetes and it is a lifetime committment to yourself that, once it is firmly entrenched, will not just GO AWAY. Acceptance is still overwhelming on some days, but not as bad as it was at the outset. I well knew the symptoms of diabetes, but chose to float down the Nile river and just knew that I was not having those symptoms. It has been a long and short two and a half years, but I am so much wiser now. I always thought I took good care of myself but could have been doing better all along.

Thats my story for now and i'm stickin' to it!