Being Diabetic

I wrote this as my status today on Facebook:

I'm beginning to see why one of the keys to consistent blood sugar is to eat every four hours on the dot. If my body goes longer than 6 or so hours without food, my blood sugar starts to go WAY up! For example, this morning - after sleeping for 7 hours and not having any food for at least another 4-5 prior to that, my blood sugar was 177 right after I got out of bed. Once again, I was too nauseous to eat. SO I waited until now - close to an hour later. I decided to test my blood sugar again, and it is 199. I haven't eaten anything! I haven't even had tea or drank anything, so my body is not reacting to food/sugar. Sometimes I think THIS is what the practice of religious fasts are for. For when people like me have so much excess crap in our bodies that we have to deprive our bodies of all food - while keeping hydrated - until our bodies "reset." Then the body can start over slowly by adding food a little at a time. Too bad I don't have THAT MUCH will power, lol! However, I do find it ironic that my biggest blood sugar problem right now is that I apparently don't eat enough, LMAO! No one who has ever looked at me would ever accuse me of not eating enough, but seriously, I eat maybe twice a day and have like one snack... If I'm hungry.

 My recent miscarriage provoked me to have my body checked up on. Get this, while eating a pretty good and nutritious diet of meat, veggies, and the occasional grain or sugar, I FELT great. I was even losing weight for like the first time EVER! However, my blood sugar was out of control, SO out of control I had a gout attack that lasted nearly a month before I finally went it to have it treated. I ALSO miscarried...

Now it's been several months of trying to control my blood sugar, and I have to say this: it frickin' sucks! I do not feel good, I'm gaining weight again, and it doesn't seem to work unless I eat nothing but bacon and lettuce. This indicates to me that I actually need to drastically reduce the amount of meat I eat - which can also turn into sugar in the blood when necessary, and some people have suggested that it does so automatically anytime a person eats more than the amount their body needs at any given time. The excess is automatically converted so that it can be stored as energy. AKA adipose! That would be fat you know. The stuff that makes a body puffy and lumpy, sigh...

 So I have 3 options and a serious choice to make. Do I:

A- revert back to the diet that made me feel good and lose weight that ALSO makes my blood sugar consistently high (around 200 is my guess based off my A1C - which supposedly anything over 140 causes permanent damage to my body, though I'm in mostly perfect health).

B-  Make my diet even stricter than it already is by eating nothing but Cod Liver oil, Coconut oil, RealSalt (which between just those three things alone I will have all of and abundantly more of my daily requirement of nutrition), bacon, gibblets, VEGGIES, and tea with cream. OR:

 C- Do I continue on as I am with a mostly meat and some veggies diet that doesn't seem to be helping?

 The more I have to struggle with this, the more I am reminded of my biggest personality flaw: I hate meaningless repeat work! I hate doing the dishes because as soon as I'm done another sink load of dirty appears. There's no point. It's absolutely meaningless to do them. It's the same with homework. Unless it requires more thought than picking words out of paragraphs from the book, then I refused to do it.

In the case of my diabetes, I am ready to give up and just accept the consequences. If doing all - or at least most - of the right things just doesn't work, than I don't see why I should do it. I would far prefer to eat a healthy diet that is just - sadly - not right for my body than starve myself or eat a diet that is better for my body, but still isn't helping like it should.

 GRANTED (inhales deeply and sighs) I have cheated on it. Back in 2003, when I went on the Atkins diet, I stuck with it as long as I possibly could. I literally ate NO carbs other than the minute amount in cottage cheese and meats. I also managed to get pregnant with Gryffin because my body finally had what it needed, or rather didn't have what it didn't need.

This time around, I am sticking to it about 90%. I will eat an apple approximately twice a week and watch my blood sugar soar from 130 to 200 in about 2 hours and take a massive amount of bacon or about 2 days to come back down to 130. (Again, anything under 140 is liveable.) One day or weekend a month I say eff it and eat all the things I am not supposed to such as pizza and Chinese food (noodles and sugary sauces) and all the chocolate and food I could eat at the Renaissance Festival.

 Oh, heh heh... Then there's the time of the month when I eat organic, soy-free, dark chocolate and not much else...

 I'm struggling! You want to know the WEIRDEST thing? If I post what I eat every night for a week - keeping in mind that if I post that we are eating hoagies for dinner, that really means that everyone else is, and I'm just eating the meat with lettuce and cheese - people see that I really do talk my walk. I really do eat low carb AND organic and healthy as much as possible with NO junk food! I get asked fairly frequently HOW I can possibly do it, lol! How do I stick with such a restricted diet?

I always say that I stick with it because I have to if I want to be healthy. I CANNOT and will not rely on drugs to theoretically fix my body when all I have to do is eat right. In fact, the idea is so ABSURD to me that I laugh! Imagine this:

Scenario A - Sugar or something that turns into sugar enters the body. The body uses what it needs and sends out insulin to store the rest for later. BUT, the body has way more in storage than it will ever use, and refuses to take in any more. SO, doctors prescribe two things to this person to help them. 1- A drug that forces the cells in the body to open up and accept more sugar into storage AND 2- insulin which does the EXACT same thing, but works better than the body's own insulin because the body doesn't have any resistance to it.

Scenario B - Person knows that sugar in any form is bad for them and simply does not eat it. Person therefore doesn't need drugs to "manage" their condition.

I will choose Scenario B every time, but the frustrating thing is that I seem to be having a mixture of the two. I eat right and STILL have high blood sugar, GRR!

I'm ready to just give up. I asked hubby what's the worst that could happen, and he replied. "You could have your feet amputated."

Ugh...

He's right though. Diabetes doesn't usually just lead to death. You get there eventually, but you tend to lose things along the way. Eyes... Feet...

I've seen it up close and personal when my uncle's father (uncle by marriage - so NOT my grandpa) followed ALL the doctor's instructions until he was missing toes, bed-ridden, and then finally died.

Throw in the fact that I've had this damn gout attacking my big toe on and off ever since my miscarriage, and WHAM! I'm scared... I don't want to lose my toes, my feet, OR my eyes!

Sigh! ... so, I guess I give the so restricted it frickin' sucks diet a try...

In the meantime, there's that something in the back of my head that is the undefinable sum of my religious beliefs whispering that there's a lesson to be learned here and I'm missing it. Seriously, if doing all the right things doesn't work, then I have to keep looking until I find what does, right? That's my lesson, right? So WTF is it???

To end this, it is now after 2PM AND officially more than 12 hours since I last ate. I'm going to check my sugar again to see if it has gone higher, or if I have reached the threshold where it will now start to go down.

211... it's still going up, but at least now I'm actually hungry...

I'm off to find something to eat. Have a happy day!