Biking During Highschool: Why it was Easier to Exercise Then

As I promised, I am going to give my best explanation for why I was able to bike when I was in high school but have had lots of trouble in more recent years.

I mentioned part of the reason before, but I will repeat it here again:

My brother also thinks that as I build up my endurance, my body should adapt and my glucose might not drop as drastically as it has.

I should probably mention that my brother is a pharmacist who has studied diabetes and so he knows what he is talking about.  And at least for me, his advice rings true.  When I was in high school I was on the bike team and was in general much more active than I was during university.  When university happened, I always felt too busy to be working out.  This was especially true during my final years as a MA student.  So it is quite probable that as my fitness level has plummented, my body's ability to exercise without going low has similarly plummented.

But there's another piece to this puzzle that my brother's advice does not account for: puberty.  Puberty is a time when glucose levels tend to be hard to control thanks to all of the crazy hormones that are adjusting during that time.  I know, looking back, that my hemoglobin A1C's were much higher than they are now.  So it's also possible that during puberty, I was running higher in general, so it was a little easier to exercise.  Once puberty stopped, the strategies that worked back then stopped working as well.  I've had to find new strategies that work for me.  It's taken some time, but it's starting to look like I may be on my way to regaining my fitness level.