So my period is pretty much over and I managed to maintain my weight!
weight: 206.6 lbs
fat percentage: 43.7%
hydration: 38.7%
muscle: 27.7%
bone: 10.7%
cal: 2325
This is super exciting! So hopefully now I can get it to keep moving downwards! And hopefully that fat percentage, too! I was actually happy to note that it is down slightly from last week (not much, but it's still a start). This next week is going to be a bit rough because usually the first week or so after my period has my glucose running lower, so exercise might be a bit tough to do for the next little bit. I did manage to successfully go swimming yesterday for the first time in a few weeks (by which I mean it was the first time I've gone swimming in about two weeks AND it was a successful swim - I ended the afternoon at about 6 mmol/L, which was perfect!)
Today I've got a meeting with my DN and Dietitian. I'm hoping to walk to go and see them, but that's going to depend on my glucose in the next little while!
Thursday, 24 March 2016
Thursday, 17 March 2016
Weight Update March 17 2016
I'm super excited! I lost two pounds since I last weighed myself! (The last time I recorded it on here was February 27th.) What's even more exciting is that this is pre-period (I'm expecting my period to start within the next few days). So go me!!!
weight: 206.8 lbs
fat percentage: 44.2%
hydration: 38.3%
muscle: 27.5%
bone: 10.7%
cal: 2327
That's the lowest I've weighed since I started keeping track of my weight on a (mostly) weekly basis, (that's since October 15th, when I first started using my awesome scale). What's even more exciting is that getting down to this has also brought my BMI down from obese to overweight! (It's now down to 29.7!)
So now that the scale is starting to move in the right direction, hopefully I can keep this up! :D
weight: 206.8 lbs
fat percentage: 44.2%
hydration: 38.3%
muscle: 27.5%
bone: 10.7%
cal: 2327
That's the lowest I've weighed since I started keeping track of my weight on a (mostly) weekly basis, (that's since October 15th, when I first started using my awesome scale). What's even more exciting is that getting down to this has also brought my BMI down from obese to overweight! (It's now down to 29.7!)
So now that the scale is starting to move in the right direction, hopefully I can keep this up! :D
Eating Goal Failing
I'm going to be 100% honest: I'm failing with my eating goal.
Back on New Year's Day, I said that my goal was to eat healthier. To that end, I was planning on eating only green light foods as stated in Rick Gallop's The GI Diet. I have been trying to eat this way as much as possible, but I AM FAILING. First, I had to keep putting off starting to eat 100% green light. Life kept getting in the way. Then when I did start, I also had non-green light foods I needed to get rid of in my house, so I was eating a lot of that stuff off. But then I'm going out with friends here and there (I've been trying to cut down on going out, but I still feel like I'm going out too much), I ended up on a work trip rather unexpectedly, which meant a week of eating out (and eating too much). Or when I'm not going out to a restaurant for dinner, I end up at a family dinner or a friend's place and I'm not eating GI friendly food there. I've been tired lately, which has resulted in me eating more. I've been rather angry and stressed surrounding work (except for that work trip, which was fantastic). Basically I went from a guaranteed part-time position to being casual, and it's rather nerve-wracking when I find myself with no shifts for a given week. And whenever I see something bad for me, even knowing damn well I won't enjoy it I find myself having to eat it. (Although realistically, this is partially a fault of being stressed and tired, which is sapping any will power I may have - but I know full well I have issues with wanting to eat things that I see).
So what's the solution? I think my number one priority is going to be sleep. Being tired is definitely not going to help me eat healthier. I cannot control a lot of the stress going on right now with my work situation, but I can try to not let it bother me as much. In fact, I should use that free time to be a bit more active, especially now that the snow is melting. (Actually, I'm excited for the snow to melt, as that will mean I can start doing the spring yard work, which kept me pretty active last year for a while). As much as Rick Gallop advocated eating healthier as your primary method of losing weight, I think it's going to be more important to me to be more active; building muscles is always a great thing, as they use more fuel anyway, and help you do more awesome things - like swimming or skiing. I don't want to abandon trying to eat green-light, but clearly I'm not going to be able to as much as I originally thought. One particular difficulty has been trying to find green-light starches to add to meals since I have not been cooking the recipes. I found stone-ground bread (which honestly, as much as I like breads, stone-ground is not my favourite), and whole wheat pitas (which are okay, but I'm once again happier with other things like whole wheat naan bread, which I don't think is green-light). So it may be in my best interest to find some healthy yellow light ones anyway and so be it if it takes me longer to lose weight.
I should mention: I am in definite need of losing some weight. Not only is my BMI still too high, but I don't feel great. Who knows, along with feeling better and more powerful for activities, maybe losing some weight will help with sleep, too?
So plan of attack for the near future:
Back on New Year's Day, I said that my goal was to eat healthier. To that end, I was planning on eating only green light foods as stated in Rick Gallop's The GI Diet. I have been trying to eat this way as much as possible, but I AM FAILING. First, I had to keep putting off starting to eat 100% green light. Life kept getting in the way. Then when I did start, I also had non-green light foods I needed to get rid of in my house, so I was eating a lot of that stuff off. But then I'm going out with friends here and there (I've been trying to cut down on going out, but I still feel like I'm going out too much), I ended up on a work trip rather unexpectedly, which meant a week of eating out (and eating too much). Or when I'm not going out to a restaurant for dinner, I end up at a family dinner or a friend's place and I'm not eating GI friendly food there. I've been tired lately, which has resulted in me eating more. I've been rather angry and stressed surrounding work (except for that work trip, which was fantastic). Basically I went from a guaranteed part-time position to being casual, and it's rather nerve-wracking when I find myself with no shifts for a given week. And whenever I see something bad for me, even knowing damn well I won't enjoy it I find myself having to eat it. (Although realistically, this is partially a fault of being stressed and tired, which is sapping any will power I may have - but I know full well I have issues with wanting to eat things that I see).
So what's the solution? I think my number one priority is going to be sleep. Being tired is definitely not going to help me eat healthier. I cannot control a lot of the stress going on right now with my work situation, but I can try to not let it bother me as much. In fact, I should use that free time to be a bit more active, especially now that the snow is melting. (Actually, I'm excited for the snow to melt, as that will mean I can start doing the spring yard work, which kept me pretty active last year for a while). As much as Rick Gallop advocated eating healthier as your primary method of losing weight, I think it's going to be more important to me to be more active; building muscles is always a great thing, as they use more fuel anyway, and help you do more awesome things - like swimming or skiing. I don't want to abandon trying to eat green-light, but clearly I'm not going to be able to as much as I originally thought. One particular difficulty has been trying to find green-light starches to add to meals since I have not been cooking the recipes. I found stone-ground bread (which honestly, as much as I like breads, stone-ground is not my favourite), and whole wheat pitas (which are okay, but I'm once again happier with other things like whole wheat naan bread, which I don't think is green-light). So it may be in my best interest to find some healthy yellow light ones anyway and so be it if it takes me longer to lose weight.
I should mention: I am in definite need of losing some weight. Not only is my BMI still too high, but I don't feel great. Who knows, along with feeling better and more powerful for activities, maybe losing some weight will help with sleep, too?
So plan of attack for the near future:
- Sleep!
- More exercise - let's keep shooting for 30 minutes 5 days a week, since that was my initial exercise goal (which I'm not hitting) and that seems to be the standard I continually am coming across in magazines and stuff).
- Eat as healthily as possible but do not beat yourself up for not eating green light. Let's be real here: Easter is coming, and that's going to mean non-green light anyway.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Overnight Basal Test - Mar 15th-16th
Holy crap! I actually made it through the night doing a basal test!
After yesterday's test, I lowered the 10:30pm basal by a tiny bit, which is why I wanted to test again so soon. This time, the test went perfectly. I was nicely in the 4-9 mmol/L range to start. I hadn't done any activity just before starting the test (honestly, I was more worried about not being able to start the test because I had gone low around 8pm while I was watching a movie). I ate a little after 10pm, and my glucose rose nicely by just under 3 mmol/L 2 hours later. Then it went down about 1.5 mmol/L and stayed right around there until almost 10am. Things are actually looking really good now that I changed that 10:30pm basal!
The one problem that I had was that I slept through my 8am alarm. Someone phoned me around 9:50am which ended up waking me up so I tested then. That left a gap of about four hours that I didn't test in. So I'll have to redo the test to make sure that time frame is okay (I'm concerned that it won't be because last time I rose to over 10 mmol/L around 7:30am after correcting. And I know I didn't over-correct at that time). But that's okay because I want to make sure this wasn't some weird fluke anyway. I won't be doing another test for a few weeks now though because my period is due in a few days and I don't want that to skew the test.
After yesterday's test, I lowered the 10:30pm basal by a tiny bit, which is why I wanted to test again so soon. This time, the test went perfectly. I was nicely in the 4-9 mmol/L range to start. I hadn't done any activity just before starting the test (honestly, I was more worried about not being able to start the test because I had gone low around 8pm while I was watching a movie). I ate a little after 10pm, and my glucose rose nicely by just under 3 mmol/L 2 hours later. Then it went down about 1.5 mmol/L and stayed right around there until almost 10am. Things are actually looking really good now that I changed that 10:30pm basal!
The one problem that I had was that I slept through my 8am alarm. Someone phoned me around 9:50am which ended up waking me up so I tested then. That left a gap of about four hours that I didn't test in. So I'll have to redo the test to make sure that time frame is okay (I'm concerned that it won't be because last time I rose to over 10 mmol/L around 7:30am after correcting. And I know I didn't over-correct at that time). But that's okay because I want to make sure this wasn't some weird fluke anyway. I won't be doing another test for a few weeks now though because my period is due in a few days and I don't want that to skew the test.
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Overnight Basal Test - Mar 14th-15th
Right off the bat, I have to say it was fantastic to actually have most of my evening to NOT be devoted to a basal test (and fending off hunger). Rather than trying to do nothing remotely active all night, I did some light yoga, which finished about an hour before I was starting the test. That was awesome because I actually felt good going into the test. Every time I'd do an overnight basal test starting at 5 or 6pm I always felt like crap because you're not supposed to do anything active once the test starts. I know I like to be active in the early evening (that's usually when I do yoga and things like that); now I actually can!
As a side note (and this does not surprise me), I have a major issue with portion distortion with peanut butter. I actually measured a tablespoon for my final meal of the day (I don't have an actual name for it because I've always referred to it as "bedtime snack" just because of when it happens, even though it is technically my third meal). And that tablespoon was easily half of what I would normally scoop. Oops! I'll definitely have to watch my peanut butter intake better in the future!
I started the test off a bit higher than planned. I don't know what exactly happened in the last hour after yoga (which I did not change insulin for by the way), but I ended up a bit over 10. I did change some basals a night or two ago, so I really need to see what's going to happen overnight. My thought for this test is that I can see what the general basal trends are, even if the numbers I get are a little higher than they would be had I started off between 4 and 9.
I wanted to check the insulin to carbohydrate ratio tonight too because this meal has probably never been checked. There should be about a 3.0 mmol/L increase in blood sugar from meal glucose to two hours after. So if the level is a lot higher than that, the insulin to carb ratio isn't high enough; if it's a lot lower, the insulin to carb is too strong and will have to be lowered. It looks like mine will have to be lowered (my glucose was 3.8 mmol/L lower than two hours ago), but I'm going to rerun the basal test before actually doing anything, just because I'm worried the yoga may have had some effect on this, too. At least at that point though, I was high enough to just see what the basals do overnight, hopefully without any lows.
Unfortunately the downward trend continued. I was lower again at 2am. Since I couldn't sleep anyway, I checked again 15 minutes later and it was slightly lower. This drop prompted me to stop the test and eat a little something so that I wouldn't be worried about sleeping.
And now something else is going on, too. I woke up at 7:30 am and decided to do another glucose test for fun to find myself slightly over 10 mmol/L. So it'll be interesting to see what's going on around 5am once I can make it through 3am without going low.
Monday, 14 March 2016
250 Posts!
I just realized that this post is #250 on this blog!!! It's taken me many years to get here (I started the blog in February 2007). I started out really strong with 77 posts that year, but have slowly tapered off (my lowest point was in 2013 where I only posted three times). But in 2015 I managed to start posting with some consistency and that trend has continued into 2016. Hopefully I can keep it up and make it through the next 250 posts in less time!
And more importantly, hopefully this blog will see me through to taking better care of myself so I live a long, healthy, and active life!!! :)
And more importantly, hopefully this blog will see me through to taking better care of myself so I live a long, healthy, and active life!!! :)
Basal Tests, My Way
So for the last few months, I've been trying to do basal tests, keeping in line with my New Year's goal to take better care of my diabetes. I was easily able to do a few tests right when I woke up. But according to my Diabetes Nurse (DN), they want me to start with the overnight basal. And then when I most recently tried to do an overnight test, I did a correction with the meal. I think the correction went wrong, so I wanted to fix that before attempting to do the overnight basal test again. But my DN said a) I was not supposed to do the correction, and b) they recommend not trying to fix the corrections before making sure the basals are okay. I understand the logic, but this is ridiculously frustrating, especially since the overnight basal has always been such a big to-do for me to attempt. I'm supposed to eat a known amount of carbohydrates at dinner (about 40-60 grams), then not eat anything at all until the next morning. Other people deal with this too, and I'm sure it sucks for them. But I was thinking about it yesterday - most of those other people are probably on a regular 9-5 schedule, which I am not. So when they eat dinner and don't eat again until breakfast, in theory they are up for what? 4-7 hours maybe? Whereas when I do this, I'm up for another 7-10 hours on average. Also, I'm skipping my third meal, whereas they are not (they would be missing a bedtime snack). NO WONDER I'M SO RAVENOUS!
I will admit, this whole thought process is not new to me. Years ago I thought of it too, but never really tried to shift anything. But if I'm serious about trying to do these basal tests, I need to shift the overnight one a few hours so it's actually my overnight, rather than like half of my day. So tonight I'm going to attempt an overnight basal test starting at about 10pm instead of 5 or 6pm.
I just spent the last hour working out the logistics of how all these tests should work. Obviously the overnight one was my priority, so that's the one I dealt with first. I think it came out really well (and I even learned how to make irregularly-shaped tables for this document!)
I also updated the blurb the original sheets had so they better reflect some stuff I've been told while doing these tests, like you can't drink tea (which is very sad) and they don't actually want you correcting. I'm not actually going to say anything about this to my DN or dietitian until next week (I have an appointment with them and I'll just bring the sheet in then!)
Wish me luck tonight! :)
I will admit, this whole thought process is not new to me. Years ago I thought of it too, but never really tried to shift anything. But if I'm serious about trying to do these basal tests, I need to shift the overnight one a few hours so it's actually my overnight, rather than like half of my day. So tonight I'm going to attempt an overnight basal test starting at about 10pm instead of 5 or 6pm.
I just spent the last hour working out the logistics of how all these tests should work. Obviously the overnight one was my priority, so that's the one I dealt with first. I think it came out really well (and I even learned how to make irregularly-shaped tables for this document!)
Wish me luck tonight! :)
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