Possible Allergy?

The other night I woke up around 5am with a really sore stomach. This isn't the first time I've had this happen, though it hasn't happened super often (maybe once every month or two, and it just started happening in the last six months or so). So I'm going to document it here, along with a list of things I remember eating the day before; hopefully I'll be able to figure out what's triggering this (and avoid it in the future)!

So here's everything I can think of that I ate yesterday:

• Morning:
• Smoothie 
• Afternoon:
• Gatorade - regular (the red one)
• Apple Cider from Vanderwees (two glasses)
• Dinner
• Meatball sub from Arnikos
• Wine - Pinot Grigio tetra (three glasses spread over the evening)
• Oat milk
• Caesar salad (croutons from Olive Garden, cheese, Kraft Creamy Caesar dressing)
• 1 deviled egg
• 1 revello
• Evening (around 10:30pm):
• 1 no sugar added candy (watermelon)
• Lays Sour Cream and Cheddar chips
• Gatorade - zero (the purple one, about 1/2 of it)

Some of these things I don't normally eat (like the candy and the revello), so I doubt they are the culprits (unless it's a fluke that they are this time).  Other things I eat just fine most days (like the smoothie and the oat milk). So my biggest suspects at this time are: the wine (though I have had wine at other times and been fine. Maybe it's a question of amount?), the chips (they were late in the day), and the Gatorade Zero (also late in the day. Maybe my stomach doesn't like the purple, or maybe it doesn't like mixing Gatorade Zero with wine?)

Two More Snowshoes!

I've gone snowshoeing every weekend of this month so far, which is great! But I've been having issues with my glucose when I go out to Kamview, which isn't great.

Jan 10th

On January 10th, my partner and I again went to Kamview. I used the same Snowshoe profile I made previously (70% basals), but this time did a 65% bolus with a known amount of carbs at 12:26pm. My glucose was 7.5 mmol/L at that time. We started snowshoeing at 2:59pm (a little later than I would have liked, but I was still doing okay); my glucose was 11.7 mmol/L at that time, and went up to over 12 as we started. My partner wanted to go further than last time, so after the initial 1 km (last time we turned back), we kept going, adding an extra roughly 1.5 km loop, then did the same 1 km return hike; our total was roughly 3.5 km.

Unfortunately at 3:39pm (after hiking somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1.2-1.3 km), we had to break because I was going low. We had to hang out on the path for around 20-30 minutes while I ate and drank some stuff and otherwise waited for my glucose to be high enough to continue on. Thankfully after the break, my glucose held for the rest of our hike. We finished at 5pm, with my glucose at 8.9 mmol/L.

So obviously I'll need to tweak things again before we attempt another hike at Kamview. I'm thinking I might need to try using my regular exercise profile (which is much more aggressive, running basals of 20%) the next time I'm out.

But then something interesting happened this weekend...

Jan 18

Yesterday, my partner, mom, and I went out to a friend's place to snowshoe. We were out for 1 hour, and I decided to use the unchanged Snowshoe pattern I had put together, along with the 65% bolus for a known amount of carbs a few hours before we went out (at 12:56pm). We started snowshoeing at 2:42pm, and finished at 3:43pm. My glucose was a little lower than I would have liked to start out (I believe it stayed under 8 mmol/L for the entire hour), but it held pretty steady. I did make a point of having some Gatorade in the first 20 minutes or so, too, to help keep everything stable. 

I think this worked out for me because our friend's snowshoe trails are super flat. There was only one small, gradual hill, which was nothing at all like the terrain we were hiking at Kamview. So under these circumstances, the 70% basals and 65% bolus (with some Gatorade at the beginning of the hike) worked great. But if the terrain is more varied, I'll need to cut back all of my insulin a lot more than that.

I should also note that I've continued to do all of the boluses manually.

First Weight Update of 2026

I weighed myself for the first time after the holidays today:

weight: 232.4
fat percentage: 53.8
hydration: 31.7
muscle: 22.7
bone: 10.5
cal: 2424

I was really excited to see these numbers for a couple of reasons: that's the highest muscle percentage AND that's the lowest fat percentage I've seen since March. I really hope this isn't a one time fluke, but the start of a trend (especially since I've been more active and stretching a little every day). I'll have to see what next week brings. :)

First Ski of 2026!!!

Today I went cross country skiing for the first time this season! It felt really good to get out, plus it was beautiful: there was fresh snow on all the evergreen trees. :)

We were on the trails for 37 minutes, and we think we skied a little over 2 km (somewhere in the 2-2.5 km range). I was glad that was all we did - my heart was pounding and I was having a bit of a hard time getting enough air in my lungs at the very end. It might not have been far, but it was a good distance to ski for the first time. :)

In terms of glucose, I used an old exercise profile I've had on my pump for a year or two. I started backing the basals off around 5pm and intended to eat dinner by 5:30pm, but didn't actually get supper finished until 6pm, which ended up delaying our ski start a bit to give my glucose more time to sort itself out. We were out skiing a little after 8pm, and my glucose was up a little over 16 mmol/L (I can't remember if it was 16.2 at the start or 16.7). When I started checking my glucose (at around 500 m of skiing or one quarter of the total distance), I was already down a full mmol/L and Dexcom was showing a slight down arrow. This was around the time I realized I had forgotten to turn on my pump's exercise mode. 

My glucose continued to drop from there. It was down to around 12 or 13 at the halfway mark (now with two down arrows); I finished the ski at 6.7, still dropping. I had a little regular Gatorade at this time, and my glucose stabilized. Luckily I never went low. But unfortunately I would not have been able to go any farther had I wanted to tonight.

So the next time I go out, I'd like to attempt the same ski, but this time with the exercise mode on to see if that makes a difference. If not I'll fiddle with the numbers I've got in my exercise profile (or build a new one specifically for skiing).

Trying Something New This Year...

Last month I attended a free journaling workshop to help me plan my 2026. During the workshop, the facilitator said that goals are deeply flawed because they are often very easily derailed by life circumstances; when life throws you a curveball, you often end up not meeting your goals. Or your goal is based off of circumstances outside of your control (that's less so the case here, but if you're working on say improving your business by x, you don't necessarily have control over that, even if you work towards it). Instead, the facilitator recommended you work towards changing your identity. Using the same example, if you want to be a successful business person, you do things a successful business person would do. Maybe you focus your reading on business books to learn about good business practices. Maybe you set up a schedule for posting to build brand awareness and stick to it. Maybe you do some of everything. So by the end of the year, even if your business hasn't grown much due to market factors or other things outside of your control, you've built habits towards becoming that successful business person. 

Then a couple of days ago when I was reviewing my 2025, my partner happened to read some of what I was writing (I don't like people looking at my writing as I'm working on it like that, so I wasn't thrilled, lol). He noticed how I had failed almost every goal I had set for myself, and didn't like that because I was putting myself down when I had, in reality, accomplished a lot this year, like building some better morning habits, and stretching more thanks to physio. He told me that he doesn't like goals for that reason, echoing some of what the workshop facilitator had said earlier in December. 

So after thinking about all of this for a bit, I decided not to set any goals for the year. Instead I will work towards becoming a healthier version of myself (I guess that's like the intention I set last year). I'm going to try providing updates through the year of what I've been up to, what's working, and what isn't.

In terms of microresolutions, I've also decided to use them as a tool on an as-needed basis. So if there's something I want to work towards, I'll set a microresolution, but otherwise, I'm not going to set any.

First Snowshoe of 2026!

Today, my partner and I went for our first snowshoe of the season! We went out to Kamview and ended up doing about 2kms (basically the Roadway Ramble there and back by snowshoe) in about 50 minutes (that's a good thing to note: we were able to do roughly a km every 25 minutes). That was more than enough for me for today - my hips were getting sore (that often happens to me yearly as I get used to snowshoeing again), plus I was having glucose issues; it ended up good that we went back to the chalet because I would have gone really low if we had stayed out any longer (plus I was still pretty full and didn't want to eat anything more).

In terms of glucose strategy, I couldn't remember what I tried last year, so I went with 75% basals (I set up a new pump profile for snowshoeing to accommodate this) and tried doing 75% of the bolus with my meal. I looked at the old strategies I had noted for myself here, plus went looking at what Getting Pumped by Michael Riddell recommended, and ended up with that strategy to try. I haven't been super active over the last few months, so I knew that would complicate things for myself, too (your body reacts differently to insulin and exercise depending on how active you are). I ate a meal, swapped to the snowshoe 75% basal profile, and put my pump into exercise mode at 12:25pm, and we started the snowshoe at 2:33pm (approximately 2 hours later). My glucose started out at 13.6 mmol/L, and was already down to 12.6 mmol/L after about 400 m of snowshoeing. After the full 2 km, it was down to 6 mmol/L and dropping. By the time we got our snowshoes off and were into the chalet, it was still dropping (was down to about 5.2 mmol/L). This was the point where I had a bit of pop, plus a hot chocolate (note to self: don't forget to bring a Gatorade!!! That would have been helpful on the trail when my glucose started dropping but I wasn't hungry!!!)

We're going to try going out again next weekend, attempting the same route. So based off what was happening, I'm thinking I need to do a smaller carb bolus with my meal two hours before exercise. The way everything dropped so quickly, and the fact that this was still within the roughly 4 hour window where a bolus is active (actually at the peak of where a bolus is active), I think that was the problem; I'm going to try a 65% bolus next time. I'm going to leave the basal pattern I set up for now - I think those would have come into play more if we had been out longer.

I also want to note that I couldn't come up with a good way to reduce the carb ratio in my new Snowshoe profile, so I did the reduction manually (I basically was doing all this right before eating at 12:25pm). If I can figure out a good way to reduce them in the profile I will (and I'll make a note of how I did it here on this blog). If not, I'll continue doing it manually (basically letting the pump make the calculations, but multiplying the recommended bolus by, in this case, 0.75 and putting that number in instead).

Last weight update for 2025!

 Here is my weight update from Dec 18, the last update for 2025:

weight: 232.4
fat percentage: 55.2
hydration: 30.8
muscle: 22.0
bone: 10.5
cal: 2424

I haven't been weighing myself through the holidays; I'll probably wait until the end of January to start weighing myself again so I have some time to get myself a litlle back on track after the holidays.

2025 Year in Review

 Happy New Year! Like normal, I wanted to take a look back at the goals I set for 2025, to see what worked and what didn't. Like 2024, I tried some different goal-setting methods:

• I started the year with some monthly goals:
• January I set two goals: I wanted to do Yoga twice a week (which I wasn't able to keep up), and I wanted to make plans for the times I am prone to falling off-track with my goals. This last one was a success, but I never actually used those plans after making them. :/
• In March, I set two goals: recover from illness (I assume I recovered? I don't think I ever really updated that goal), and I wanted to resume Karin Dmitrova's Beyond Flexibility program 3x a week, which was a failure because I kept injuring myself. :(
• In April, I set two more goals: I again tried to do Beyond Flexibility 3x a week, and I wanted to "focus on fibre." These were both failures.
• Then in May, I wanted to continue stretching my calf muscles, and commit to measuring my portions for better carb counting. At the time the first was a failure, but I was later able to get myself into the habit of stretching (I'm getting a little ahead of myself with that though).
• I also tried setting an intention for the year, "I want to be the healthiest version of myself that I can be." When I set that intention, I admitted that it didn't 100% make sense to me. I've used one of Intelligent Change's journals for the last few months, and they want you to set an intention every week, which I generally don't because I still don't really get it. 
• In June, I discovered the idea of microresolutions. I started setting two of those every few months to varying degrees of success:
• June and July: 
• Stretch my calf muscles daily right after I brush my teeth - this has been my most successful microresolution to date. I tied stretching with an existing habit, and have continued to stretch my calves almost daily. The only exception to that rule has been once I started physio stretching, so sometimes I don't re-stretch my calves because I've just stretched them. But sometimes I do stretch them anyway to keep up the habit. :)
• I will get out of bed immediately with my main alarm - this one never really worked out for me.
• August and September - these ones had trouble from the start because August was a really busy month with attending a wedding, visiting with out of town family, then going on a road trip of our own.
• I tried the getting out of bed immediately with my main alarm again, but ultimately ended up discontinuing this one.
• I tried to do some breathing after my work day, but I never successfully tied it to a habit.
•  October:
• I will put my food down between bites at dinner to savour what I'm eating - this one never became a successful habit, but I have slowed down my eating a bit. I could probably get there with more work.
• I will stop looking at screens at least one hour before bed - I was pretty successful with this one for awhile, but because my phone is my alarm clock in the morning, my phone is next to me, so sometimes I end up on my phone later than planned. I also find if my partner and I are playing video games late, I don't end up with an hour without screens.
• Then in December, I needed to pause the microresolutions because I had two much going on. 

Besides all of the goals I attempted this year, I had a lot of success using the Finch app. I now have a good morning routine that involves wall pushups, shoulder rolls, and taking some deep breaths. It's a really nice way to start my morning. 

I've also been using the Intelligent Change Five Minute Journal: Fit Edition every day for a few months. While there are aspects I don't really like about it, it has gotten me to think a little more about the little victories I have during a day, which is a good thing. 

Finally, I've been stretching a lot more in the last few months thanks to physio. My calf muscles are finally actually hurting less (I'm sad to report that the stretches my chiropractor recommended, even though I was doing them daily for around 8 months, weren't really helping - they would help a bit, but never really got rid of the pain completely). 

So while I didn't succeed with a lot of the goals I set for myself this year, I'm very happy with the success I had elsewhere. :)