Lesson Learned

So last week, I was on vacation from work.  As I already said, I had a fantastic week doing very little except reading.

But over the weekend and over the last few days, I've had a heck of a hard time controlling my glucose.  At first I thought it was because I wasn't eating very well/more than normal (I went to a Christmas party on Saturday night, then went to my parents' place Sunday night for a big Asian food feast).  Then I started blaming my period because it'll be starting soon....but that didn't seem right either because it never gives me this much trouble.  But when Monday rolled around and I had a heck of a time bringing my glucose level down, even with proper carb counting (I made sure of it all day), I knew something else had to be going on. 

It was around that time that I started to suspect my lack of exercise may be the culprit.  On a normal week, I typically walk to work a couple of times, plus I'm on my feet quite a bit while at work (maybe not tons, but a typical work day nabs me somewhere between 1000 to about 3000 steps without walking there and home).  I took a random week from October where I didn't go out of my way to be active (ie I didn't go swimming, didn't have any days with more than 10,000 steps) - I took about 44,000 steps.  Last week I took less than half of that (21,000).  At a glance, last week actually looks like my least active week all year.

I had to run a higher temporary basal yesterday all day, which managed to keep my glucose relatively okay.  I also added more insulin to carbohydrate boluses.  As a precaution, I was only running the temporary boluses for about 8 hours; I kept checking to see how things were going before running another one. 

As of last night though, things thankfully seemed to start going back to normal.  My glucose is back into range, and food isn't making it go unexpectedly and crazily high.  I'll have to make sure that I maintain my activity levels next time I'm on vacation so this doesn't happen again!