Day 22
August 30, 2011
Wt. 254
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 156
Blood Sugar (post exercise)126 30 minute walk
Blood Pressure 152/98 65 bpm
Hanging in there
Last night, before I went to sleep I decided to test my blood sugar before going to bed. It was at 117. I went to sleep wondering what it would be in the morning. My first test was 156.
What? How could that happen. I didn’t eat anything. In fact, I ate early yesterday evening-along about 6 p.m. because I was running out of energy. So how is it I am 49 points higher first thing in the morning?
Two things. First: while I was sleeping my digestive system kept on working. No energy was being used to walk, or lift, or any of the thousand things I might be doing that need energy. Second: when I weighed myself this morning I was down a little over two pounds. The weight loss has been very slow after an initial and very exciting drop that looked like quick progress. I started at about 260 and then seemed to hold at 257 for a really long time. There I was, eating less, avoiding the bad stuff, doing what I was supposed to with a few slips off the righteous path and while blood sugar seemed to be improving, the weight was not coming down. Then I added in the exercise about a week ago. Good drops in the morning levels and good numbers after the morning walk but not much in the way of weight loss. Is there something wrong with the plan? Am I wasting my time? Should I just go back to doing what I was doing and eating all the potato chips and salsa and sodas? Should I go back to the 7-11 diet?
These are the kind of questions that come up when progress seems slow or non existent. We live in a FedEx world. We want our stuff from Amazon tomorrow or sooner. We want our team to score winning touchdowns on the first down and no later than the fourth. We want instant gratification.
Instant gratification.
Isn’t that exactly what caused the problem in the first place? We wanted cake and didn’t want to wait until our birthday party so we popped into 7-11 and got a snack cake, and a soda, but as it seemed wrong to have desert without lunch or dinner we got ourselves a nice Spicy Bite with half a ton of sauerkraut and a quart of mustard-all for less than five dollars-and got just what we wanted when we wanted it and a bit more to boot.
To go back to the football game analogy for a moment. Even the best of teams don’t win every game or score a touchdown every time they get the ball. Sometimes the QB gets nailed and they end up further back than where they started. Sometimes they screw up. Somebody jumps the gun and the ref sends the whole team back five yards or there is a flag for some other infraction and they go back ten yards. But there they are, still on the field and getting ready to try again for that next touchdown. FedEx doesn’t show up to deliver it to them any more than FedEx is going to come and deliver good numbers and lower weight to us. It takes getting back down on the line, focusing on the goal and despite setbacks, frustrations, lack of progress, days when you get so far off course you have to wonder if you are even in the same county any more. What it takes is to keep on keeping on.
Remember, all those men and women with the hard bodies advertising Ab Smashers on TV have been in great shape for most of their lives. They work hard at staying that way and do special diets in the weeks that lead up to a photo shoot so they look fantastic as they demonstrate a product they swear will give you a fantastic body in just seven days of five minute workouts.
The path we are on here is not fast. There are gains and setbacks. Some days it seems nothing is happening and some days it seems like our goal was achieved overnight. Then there are the days when Bob wins-big time. None of that really matters. What matters is staying with it and making progress bit by bit, week by week or month by month. Today is day one of the fourth week I have been doing this. Today is also the first day. It is the first day I will do better than yesterday, the first day I will meet some goal, stick to the plan, make myself a little healthier. It is a new start. If I screwed up yesterday, then today is the day that I have a chance to fix that and get back on track. A screw up is only permanent if I quit and decide that I failed and there is no point in trying to do better today and again tomorrow. A screw up is only permanent if it is viewed as a failure and not as a lesson.
So-that said-Today is going to be a fantastic day. I am going to go do my very best and tomorrow’s morning numbers will be better than today’s numbers.
I wrote this blog yesterday and this morning my blood sugar was at 134. Yesterday was a mixed bag when it came to eating. I ended up having to go to a fast food place for lunch and having a burger. I also walked to and from work-two miles each way. When I got home my blood sugar was 68 and I was feeling it. A bit of honey, a banana and an apple and then dinner bumped it to 156. I should have stopped with just the banana or just the apple but usually when low blood sugar happens all I can think of is getting it up to the point where I feel normal. It just takes a small amount of food to get there but it takes about half an hour to 45 minutes. The tendency is to want to eat until I feel normal.
Today is going to be another fantastic day. I am going to do my very best and tomorrow’s morning numbers will be better than today’s numbers.
More to come,
Jim
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
98 98 98 98
Day 20
August 26, 2011
Wt. 257??
Blood sugar(first thing in the morning) 136
Blood sugar(following 30 minute brisk walk) 98
Blood pressure 138/93 59bpm
98 98 98 98
YeeeeeHaw
98 is the glucose number I had when I got back from my walk. 38 points down from when I woke up and took my first numbers.
What really makes this an outstanding number is that last night I had a calzone at a pizza place. It had a white flour crust, tomato sauce that probably had sugar in it, lots of cheese, anchovies and it was WONDERFUL!!!!!! There was also a little basket of crusty white bread and a tray of olive oil and a glass of unsweetened ice tea.
The night before was dinner out with friends and I decided to make that my free day. I ate a lunch of vegetables with olive oil and cider vinegar and then ate more than I had intended to eat for dinner-the dinner was steak and steamed vegies-not too bad there and I only ate half and took the rest home for lunch the next day. But before dinner there were wonderful appetizers. All high in oil and white flour. I also had a cup of tea with sugar before dinner as I was having a bit of an energy crash that took me right to the edge of the prickles–I hate the prickles.
Yesterday morning I woke up to 152 and then after an hour walk it dropped to 128. All of which is still better than where I started 20 days ago but not close to my target of waking up at 100 or less. Not only did I put a bigger load on my body but all of that food was still in my gut to be processed. That is why I only dropped to 128 after a brisk walk of an hour when the day before I got a 30 point drop after just 30 minutes. Got to remember that whatever goes in has to get processed and there is no getting away from that-ever. That fact is locked in stone.
While I was talking to my friend, James, we got on to the subject of getting up several times a night to pee which really messes with your sleep rhythms. I have a take on this that is based on the long fast I did and seems to be born out in my own experience over the last three weeks.
Before the fast I was getting up three or four times a night and one day when I was cleaning the rim of the toilet with a dry paper towel I noticed that the collateral splash was very sticky where it had dried on the rim. One of the old time tests for diabetes was for doctors to taste the urine-a job they probably gave to their apprentices- and if it was sweet then they knew the patient had Sugar Diabetes. Sugar Diabetes was the old name for diabetes before they came up with T1 and T2. I had also read an article about poisons and who the body works very hard to get them out of the system. One of the quickest ways is to piss them out. Another is sweating. Some, like alcohol can be expelled through the breath.
When blood glucose is high the body is doing everything it can to get rid of the excess. It has already stored as much as it can as fat and there is still more. Dump it, dump it, dump it. Over the side, gotta lighten the load. Wake the idiot up and make him/her pee 40 times a night. Well, you get the idea.
Last night I went to sleep at 11–as you may recall from an earlier post, I am trying to get my 8 hours. I did not wake up until 7:40. Not only did I get the eight hours and then some, did not get up once. I have not tried the taste test myself, but the dried collateral splash isn’t sticky any more.
YeeeeeeHaw, indeed.
More to come
Jim
August 26, 2011
Wt. 257??
Blood sugar(first thing in the morning) 136
Blood sugar(following 30 minute brisk walk) 98
Blood pressure 138/93 59bpm
98 98 98 98
YeeeeeHaw
98 is the glucose number I had when I got back from my walk. 38 points down from when I woke up and took my first numbers.
What really makes this an outstanding number is that last night I had a calzone at a pizza place. It had a white flour crust, tomato sauce that probably had sugar in it, lots of cheese, anchovies and it was WONDERFUL!!!!!! There was also a little basket of crusty white bread and a tray of olive oil and a glass of unsweetened ice tea.
The night before was dinner out with friends and I decided to make that my free day. I ate a lunch of vegetables with olive oil and cider vinegar and then ate more than I had intended to eat for dinner-the dinner was steak and steamed vegies-not too bad there and I only ate half and took the rest home for lunch the next day. But before dinner there were wonderful appetizers. All high in oil and white flour. I also had a cup of tea with sugar before dinner as I was having a bit of an energy crash that took me right to the edge of the prickles–I hate the prickles.
Yesterday morning I woke up to 152 and then after an hour walk it dropped to 128. All of which is still better than where I started 20 days ago but not close to my target of waking up at 100 or less. Not only did I put a bigger load on my body but all of that food was still in my gut to be processed. That is why I only dropped to 128 after a brisk walk of an hour when the day before I got a 30 point drop after just 30 minutes. Got to remember that whatever goes in has to get processed and there is no getting away from that-ever. That fact is locked in stone.
While I was talking to my friend, James, we got on to the subject of getting up several times a night to pee which really messes with your sleep rhythms. I have a take on this that is based on the long fast I did and seems to be born out in my own experience over the last three weeks.
Before the fast I was getting up three or four times a night and one day when I was cleaning the rim of the toilet with a dry paper towel I noticed that the collateral splash was very sticky where it had dried on the rim. One of the old time tests for diabetes was for doctors to taste the urine-a job they probably gave to their apprentices- and if it was sweet then they knew the patient had Sugar Diabetes. Sugar Diabetes was the old name for diabetes before they came up with T1 and T2. I had also read an article about poisons and who the body works very hard to get them out of the system. One of the quickest ways is to piss them out. Another is sweating. Some, like alcohol can be expelled through the breath.
When blood glucose is high the body is doing everything it can to get rid of the excess. It has already stored as much as it can as fat and there is still more. Dump it, dump it, dump it. Over the side, gotta lighten the load. Wake the idiot up and make him/her pee 40 times a night. Well, you get the idea.
Last night I went to sleep at 11–as you may recall from an earlier post, I am trying to get my 8 hours. I did not wake up until 7:40. Not only did I get the eight hours and then some, did not get up once. I have not tried the taste test myself, but the dried collateral splash isn’t sticky any more.
YeeeeeeHaw, indeed.
More to come
Jim
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
A Wee Walk Into Healthy Territory
Day 18
August 24, 2011
Wt. 257
Blood sugar(first thing in the morning) 147
Blood sugar(following 30 minute brisk walk) 107
Blood pressure 154/96 66bpm
A Wee Walk Into Healthy Territory
It’s been a few days since my last blog. Just amazing how work can take over your life but I also took a day off from doing numbers and not focusing my attention of our old friends, Bob and T2. Not that I lessened my resolve to make them go away or went back to the evil ways that opened the door to them. They are bad roommates and I never stop wanting them to get the hell out.
This morning I added in a bit of exercise to the program. With just the diet and schedule alone I had dropped the blood sugar to 147. If you recall from the first blog, my morning blood sugar was 285 and the next day it was down to 185. Generally it has come down a little bit every day with just a couple of spikes. Yesterday it was holding at about 163, as it had been for several days and I decided it was time to add in a morning workout to eat up some of that sugar.
I am visiting a friend who also has T2 and tells me he and Bob are real good buddies. We went for a walk this morning. Before we started we agreed that he would walk as far as he was comfortable with and then turn back. As I am more used to walking I continued for another 20 minutes. When I returned I immediately checked my blood sugar and it was down to.......(drum roll please) .....................
..........................................................107!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is inside the range of healthy people who don’t have T2. Think about it-just a half an hour–30 minutes of walking took me down 30 points. Just by making my muscles hungry for the glucose did the trick. How exciting is that?
But as the Sham Wow guy likes to say-But wait-there’s more.
There is very strong evidence that working out first thing in the morning is more effective at burning fat than a workout later in the day. The reason seems to be related to the fact that the body has limited resources to draw on. There is no food in the stomach or at the upper end of the digestive track and what remains in the gut is somewhat depleted and harder to draw energy from. The body has to first draw off the glucose in the blood for the energy it needs and then go looking for the next available resource. This would be fat in the muscle tissues and in the larder–larder is what I am calling the fat stores around the torso. It seems an appropriate name because in homes that were built in the days before refrigerators became common the larder was a place for food storage. They were adjacent to the kitchen where the food would be needed. I also like the pun. However, our goal is to empty out the larder and keep our bodies just a little hungry so that it continues to make the best possible use of the food we put into it but never has so much extra that it can put the excess into storage and raise our blood sugar levels back to where it will eventually kill us.
Speaking of killing us. Last night I did a short walk-about 10 minutes- and was talking to my friend’s partner. Her husband–I’m calling him, Humpty- died of complications of T2 and her story was the verbal equivalent of a George Romero horror movie. Humpty’s demise visibly began with neuropathy- nerve death caused by damage to the capillaries that feed the nerves. First it was burning pain in the bottoms of his feet. He said it was like walking on hot coals-then it spread to other parts of his body. His vision failed, his organs failed, his legs swelled to twice their original size with skin as tight as a drum. His flesh began to smell as if it was rotting and all the drugs the doctors gave him couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And that was just the PG version side of his dying. By the end she said it was much, much worse.
I don’t think my program would have helped him once the neuropathy set in because by the time T2 has taken such a ferociously powerful hold on the body that the nerves are dying off it is pretty late in the game to start trying to fix things. The foundation is gone, the walls are rotting and have termites, the roof is gone so it is too late for a new coat of paint in the living room. The time to start is well before then. If your doctor has just told you that you have T2 and your blood sugar is a bit high when you went in for your physical-that would be a good time. Back when my first doctor told me I was getting into dangerous territory and my glucose level was 124–that would have been a pots and pans banging great time to start. Then when the second doctor told me I definitely had T2-that would have been a fine time to start making the changes I am now making. But even if you are well beyond where I was a couple of weeks ago when I started this blog-right now is as good a time as you’re ever going to get. Everyday you sit on the wall not doing anything is one day closer to the BIG SPLAT!!! T2 will bring you as a parting gift.
Be sure to get your doctor’s advice and approval but don’t delay. T2 is a tenacious bastard and evicting him is going to take some time, but the longer you sit and think about it-or even worse-sit and don’t think about it- the more likely you are to end up like poor old Humpty and nothing anybody can do will fix it. There you’ll be-a nasty mess all spread out on the sidewalk with good old Bob and T2 standing there looking down at you with big grins on their faces.
You may be wondering why I’ve made Bob and T2 and even the recently added Humpty into the villains of my blog. It has to do with the Mad as Hell theme here. We are responsible for opening the door and inviting them to come live with us, but to be fair to ourselves, we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. Giving them personas makes them real and not medical abstractions. They are identifiable, we can see them, feel them. If we think of them as really bad house guests and not as permanent residents we can do nothing about, then we can make them go away. We might have to bar the door and windows to keep them from ever coming back but as you can see from what I’ve done in just three weeks it is very possible.
More to come
Jim
August 24, 2011
Wt. 257
Blood sugar(first thing in the morning) 147
Blood sugar(following 30 minute brisk walk) 107
Blood pressure 154/96 66bpm
A Wee Walk Into Healthy Territory
It’s been a few days since my last blog. Just amazing how work can take over your life but I also took a day off from doing numbers and not focusing my attention of our old friends, Bob and T2. Not that I lessened my resolve to make them go away or went back to the evil ways that opened the door to them. They are bad roommates and I never stop wanting them to get the hell out.
This morning I added in a bit of exercise to the program. With just the diet and schedule alone I had dropped the blood sugar to 147. If you recall from the first blog, my morning blood sugar was 285 and the next day it was down to 185. Generally it has come down a little bit every day with just a couple of spikes. Yesterday it was holding at about 163, as it had been for several days and I decided it was time to add in a morning workout to eat up some of that sugar.
I am visiting a friend who also has T2 and tells me he and Bob are real good buddies. We went for a walk this morning. Before we started we agreed that he would walk as far as he was comfortable with and then turn back. As I am more used to walking I continued for another 20 minutes. When I returned I immediately checked my blood sugar and it was down to.......(drum roll please) .....................
..........................................................107!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is inside the range of healthy people who don’t have T2. Think about it-just a half an hour–30 minutes of walking took me down 30 points. Just by making my muscles hungry for the glucose did the trick. How exciting is that?
But as the Sham Wow guy likes to say-But wait-there’s more.
There is very strong evidence that working out first thing in the morning is more effective at burning fat than a workout later in the day. The reason seems to be related to the fact that the body has limited resources to draw on. There is no food in the stomach or at the upper end of the digestive track and what remains in the gut is somewhat depleted and harder to draw energy from. The body has to first draw off the glucose in the blood for the energy it needs and then go looking for the next available resource. This would be fat in the muscle tissues and in the larder–larder is what I am calling the fat stores around the torso. It seems an appropriate name because in homes that were built in the days before refrigerators became common the larder was a place for food storage. They were adjacent to the kitchen where the food would be needed. I also like the pun. However, our goal is to empty out the larder and keep our bodies just a little hungry so that it continues to make the best possible use of the food we put into it but never has so much extra that it can put the excess into storage and raise our blood sugar levels back to where it will eventually kill us.
Speaking of killing us. Last night I did a short walk-about 10 minutes- and was talking to my friend’s partner. Her husband–I’m calling him, Humpty- died of complications of T2 and her story was the verbal equivalent of a George Romero horror movie. Humpty’s demise visibly began with neuropathy- nerve death caused by damage to the capillaries that feed the nerves. First it was burning pain in the bottoms of his feet. He said it was like walking on hot coals-then it spread to other parts of his body. His vision failed, his organs failed, his legs swelled to twice their original size with skin as tight as a drum. His flesh began to smell as if it was rotting and all the drugs the doctors gave him couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And that was just the PG version side of his dying. By the end she said it was much, much worse.
I don’t think my program would have helped him once the neuropathy set in because by the time T2 has taken such a ferociously powerful hold on the body that the nerves are dying off it is pretty late in the game to start trying to fix things. The foundation is gone, the walls are rotting and have termites, the roof is gone so it is too late for a new coat of paint in the living room. The time to start is well before then. If your doctor has just told you that you have T2 and your blood sugar is a bit high when you went in for your physical-that would be a good time. Back when my first doctor told me I was getting into dangerous territory and my glucose level was 124–that would have been a pots and pans banging great time to start. Then when the second doctor told me I definitely had T2-that would have been a fine time to start making the changes I am now making. But even if you are well beyond where I was a couple of weeks ago when I started this blog-right now is as good a time as you’re ever going to get. Everyday you sit on the wall not doing anything is one day closer to the BIG SPLAT!!! T2 will bring you as a parting gift.
Be sure to get your doctor’s advice and approval but don’t delay. T2 is a tenacious bastard and evicting him is going to take some time, but the longer you sit and think about it-or even worse-sit and don’t think about it- the more likely you are to end up like poor old Humpty and nothing anybody can do will fix it. There you’ll be-a nasty mess all spread out on the sidewalk with good old Bob and T2 standing there looking down at you with big grins on their faces.
You may be wondering why I’ve made Bob and T2 and even the recently added Humpty into the villains of my blog. It has to do with the Mad as Hell theme here. We are responsible for opening the door and inviting them to come live with us, but to be fair to ourselves, we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. Giving them personas makes them real and not medical abstractions. They are identifiable, we can see them, feel them. If we think of them as really bad house guests and not as permanent residents we can do nothing about, then we can make them go away. We might have to bar the door and windows to keep them from ever coming back but as you can see from what I’ve done in just three weeks it is very possible.
More to come
Jim
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Time to become an Elk
Day11
August 16, 2011
Wt. 257.6
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 163
Blood Pressure 142/94 61 bpm.
Elk or Corn-Fed Angus Beef
That’s more like it. Still too high but more in line with the numbers from previous days, but, as I was saying yesterday-it needs to be a lot lower. I would like my first test of the day to be somewhere between 90 and 105. 80 to 90 would be even better, but for now I’m keeping it to the slightly higher target. Your doctor would be thrilled at these numbers after seeing lots of 140 to 300s. He or she might be a little miffed that you did it without drugs because if you don’t need drugs to fix this then the entire paradigm of modern western medicine begins to look like it’s on shaky ground.
What if you didn’t need drugs for depression or high blood pressure, or insomnia or even drugs to mask the side effects of the drugs you took for other things? Oops-I digress, I was going to talk about making our muscles hungry.
The reasoning, besides 90 to 105 being healthy people numbers, is that when you start out low at the beginning of the day it is easier to keep your glucose in check the rest of the day, but because our bodies are no longer working as well we need to help that along a bit.
Surprisingly it doesn’t take much. Half an hour to an hour of brisk walking can do it and the more in shape your body gets the better it works. Odd about that.
Walking works well because it uses the largest muscle groups in the body, gets the heart rate up and gets blood moving all through the system at a good rate. That means the glucose is getting delivered right to those muscles that are needing fuel to keep on trucking and when the body needs energy it goes looking for what is in the blood first. After that it goes looking for fat stores. That’s a good thing because those of us with T2 in residence usually have more than a bit of it hanging around. Some of it is pretty easy to identify when we stand in front of a mirror. We can even grab hold of nice chunks of it but there’s more, and it is pretty well hidden.
Just like the infomercial guy says, "but there’s more." There is also fat deposits within our muscle tissue as well. If you’ve ever eaten an elk steak or venison you know that the meat tastes drier and tougher than a nice corn-fed cow. The reason is both fat and exercise. Before that meat is cooked you can both see and feel the fat content of the muscle tissues. Your friendly neighborhood butcher will hold up a cut of meat and show you the marbling-striations of fat-in the meat. Or he would have before all of our meat came on little plastic trays covered with a window of clear plastic and we never saw the guys who whacked up and wrapped it.
Our bodies are the same. There has to be some fat there because it is the second place the muscles look for energy once they’ve depleted what is in the blood. They can’t use up all of the glucose in the blood or the rest of the body would starve, so it goes looking first to the fat within the muscle tissues and then to that stuff we can grab on to when we’re looking in the mirror with that look of total dismay on our faces.
The wild game had to work for its food and the food was not usually troughs of high energy corn. That elk had to walk up and down hills, swim lakes, run for its life, chase its mate and so on. It got a 24-7 workout every day until someone plugged it and put it on the dinner table. The feedlot cow, on the other hand, stood around all day. Entertainment was corn in the trough in the morning and evening. Not much work other than ambling over to the water and then back over to the corn-sound familiar? The result was meat with a lot more fat content. It is juicy, tender, sweet.
We would be a cannibal’s delight. No stingy dry old explorer for dinner tonight. Nice corn-fed couch potato. Mmm mmm, good eatin’ there. Silliness aside, our goal is to become elk. Use up the muscle fat, get rid of the fat roll and help our bodies do what they were designed to do. Reducing and controlling the quantity and quality of food is part of that. Making our muscles work harder and get hungrier is another part. Doing both will make T2 go find someplace else to live.
Gotta go to work again,
More to come.
Jim
August 16, 2011
Wt. 257.6
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 163
Blood Pressure 142/94 61 bpm.
Elk or Corn-Fed Angus Beef
That’s more like it. Still too high but more in line with the numbers from previous days, but, as I was saying yesterday-it needs to be a lot lower. I would like my first test of the day to be somewhere between 90 and 105. 80 to 90 would be even better, but for now I’m keeping it to the slightly higher target. Your doctor would be thrilled at these numbers after seeing lots of 140 to 300s. He or she might be a little miffed that you did it without drugs because if you don’t need drugs to fix this then the entire paradigm of modern western medicine begins to look like it’s on shaky ground.
What if you didn’t need drugs for depression or high blood pressure, or insomnia or even drugs to mask the side effects of the drugs you took for other things? Oops-I digress, I was going to talk about making our muscles hungry.
The reasoning, besides 90 to 105 being healthy people numbers, is that when you start out low at the beginning of the day it is easier to keep your glucose in check the rest of the day, but because our bodies are no longer working as well we need to help that along a bit.
Surprisingly it doesn’t take much. Half an hour to an hour of brisk walking can do it and the more in shape your body gets the better it works. Odd about that.
Walking works well because it uses the largest muscle groups in the body, gets the heart rate up and gets blood moving all through the system at a good rate. That means the glucose is getting delivered right to those muscles that are needing fuel to keep on trucking and when the body needs energy it goes looking for what is in the blood first. After that it goes looking for fat stores. That’s a good thing because those of us with T2 in residence usually have more than a bit of it hanging around. Some of it is pretty easy to identify when we stand in front of a mirror. We can even grab hold of nice chunks of it but there’s more, and it is pretty well hidden.
Just like the infomercial guy says, "but there’s more." There is also fat deposits within our muscle tissue as well. If you’ve ever eaten an elk steak or venison you know that the meat tastes drier and tougher than a nice corn-fed cow. The reason is both fat and exercise. Before that meat is cooked you can both see and feel the fat content of the muscle tissues. Your friendly neighborhood butcher will hold up a cut of meat and show you the marbling-striations of fat-in the meat. Or he would have before all of our meat came on little plastic trays covered with a window of clear plastic and we never saw the guys who whacked up and wrapped it.
Our bodies are the same. There has to be some fat there because it is the second place the muscles look for energy once they’ve depleted what is in the blood. They can’t use up all of the glucose in the blood or the rest of the body would starve, so it goes looking first to the fat within the muscle tissues and then to that stuff we can grab on to when we’re looking in the mirror with that look of total dismay on our faces.
The wild game had to work for its food and the food was not usually troughs of high energy corn. That elk had to walk up and down hills, swim lakes, run for its life, chase its mate and so on. It got a 24-7 workout every day until someone plugged it and put it on the dinner table. The feedlot cow, on the other hand, stood around all day. Entertainment was corn in the trough in the morning and evening. Not much work other than ambling over to the water and then back over to the corn-sound familiar? The result was meat with a lot more fat content. It is juicy, tender, sweet.
We would be a cannibal’s delight. No stingy dry old explorer for dinner tonight. Nice corn-fed couch potato. Mmm mmm, good eatin’ there. Silliness aside, our goal is to become elk. Use up the muscle fat, get rid of the fat roll and help our bodies do what they were designed to do. Reducing and controlling the quantity and quality of food is part of that. Making our muscles work harder and get hungrier is another part. Doing both will make T2 go find someplace else to live.
Gotta go to work again,
More to come.
Jim
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
What is Going On with these numbers?
Day10
August 16, 2011
Wt. 256.6
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 186
Blood Pressure 142/94 66 bpm.
What is Going On with these numbers?
Hmmm. Now I’m really wondering what is going on. Last night’s dinner was a bowl of pinto beans mixed with olive oil, vinegar, cayenne pepper, crushed chili and some mayo. All in all less than 500 calories and well within the fist sized portion. I went to bed at 10:30 and slept until 7:10 so I got my 8 and a half hours of sleep. So why is my blood sugar up two days in a row? It is possible that I have started burning fat stores as I did on that fast I told you about?
Ah, well. What has been built in 15 years is not undone in a week. Stick with it and see what tomorrow’s numbers look like.
This is sort of what my day will look like-Off to work in a little while, I have 2 insulated glass panels to build, a gate to rebuild. Some artwork to work on and some finish carpentry work to do on my house.
Right now I’m having my morning coffee-no sugar but some half and half, Lunch will be at noon or 2, depending on when I get home. Lunch will be steamed vegies and rice. Carrots, cabbage, parsnips, celery, onion, potato. Sometimes I add fish to the mix but for the next few days it will mostly be vegetables to give the meat I’ve been eating over the last several days a chance to clear the system. Not sure what dinner will look like yet. Somewhere in there will be an apple or two. As a snack I prefer apples to oranges. They seem to be slower to digest and hit the system than oranges. Bananas are great but best mixed with stuff that is a bit slower to digest. I find they can spike me almost as fast as oranges.
Considering the up turn in my glucose numbers I am considering adding in the exercise component of my program a little sooner. I had been planning on waiting until the beginning of the third week to add it in to give a better picture of the effects of diet alone. I’ve understoof for a while that while diet is hugely important and there are some foods to avoid as if they were the black death itself, it can’t be the only thing we do to chase this thing out of our bodies. Before we began developing type II----a little side note here-I am getting really tired of typing "type II" not so much because of the six key strokes but because it just doesn’t say what I want it to. It has a distant and clinical feel to it. It doesn’t feel like the thing that it is, the thing I want to get out of my body forever. From now on type II is going to be T2. If you’ve ever seen the second Terminator movie you’ll understand. That endlessly transforming liquid metal man was a monster that was really hard to get rid of.
OK-name change out of the way. Type II is now T2-on to what I started out to say. Since our bodies don’t handle our blood sugar as well as bodies of those who don’t have T2 we have to help them along a bit by making our muscles hungry by using them. It also helps with the weight loss as well.
More on this subject tomorrow as I need to go make like a working person for a while. Tomorrow we start tweaking this to get those morning numbers going in the right direction again.
More to come,
Jim
August 16, 2011
Wt. 256.6
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 186
Blood Pressure 142/94 66 bpm.
What is Going On with these numbers?
Hmmm. Now I’m really wondering what is going on. Last night’s dinner was a bowl of pinto beans mixed with olive oil, vinegar, cayenne pepper, crushed chili and some mayo. All in all less than 500 calories and well within the fist sized portion. I went to bed at 10:30 and slept until 7:10 so I got my 8 and a half hours of sleep. So why is my blood sugar up two days in a row? It is possible that I have started burning fat stores as I did on that fast I told you about?
Ah, well. What has been built in 15 years is not undone in a week. Stick with it and see what tomorrow’s numbers look like.
This is sort of what my day will look like-Off to work in a little while, I have 2 insulated glass panels to build, a gate to rebuild. Some artwork to work on and some finish carpentry work to do on my house.
Right now I’m having my morning coffee-no sugar but some half and half, Lunch will be at noon or 2, depending on when I get home. Lunch will be steamed vegies and rice. Carrots, cabbage, parsnips, celery, onion, potato. Sometimes I add fish to the mix but for the next few days it will mostly be vegetables to give the meat I’ve been eating over the last several days a chance to clear the system. Not sure what dinner will look like yet. Somewhere in there will be an apple or two. As a snack I prefer apples to oranges. They seem to be slower to digest and hit the system than oranges. Bananas are great but best mixed with stuff that is a bit slower to digest. I find they can spike me almost as fast as oranges.
Considering the up turn in my glucose numbers I am considering adding in the exercise component of my program a little sooner. I had been planning on waiting until the beginning of the third week to add it in to give a better picture of the effects of diet alone. I’ve understoof for a while that while diet is hugely important and there are some foods to avoid as if they were the black death itself, it can’t be the only thing we do to chase this thing out of our bodies. Before we began developing type II----a little side note here-I am getting really tired of typing "type II" not so much because of the six key strokes but because it just doesn’t say what I want it to. It has a distant and clinical feel to it. It doesn’t feel like the thing that it is, the thing I want to get out of my body forever. From now on type II is going to be T2. If you’ve ever seen the second Terminator movie you’ll understand. That endlessly transforming liquid metal man was a monster that was really hard to get rid of.
OK-name change out of the way. Type II is now T2-on to what I started out to say. Since our bodies don’t handle our blood sugar as well as bodies of those who don’t have T2 we have to help them along a bit by making our muscles hungry by using them. It also helps with the weight loss as well.
More on this subject tomorrow as I need to go make like a working person for a while. Tomorrow we start tweaking this to get those morning numbers going in the right direction again.
More to come,
Jim
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Day 9: Come On, Get Some Sleep
Day 9
August 16, 2011
Wt. 259
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 174
Blood Pressure 138/93 59 bpm.
Come on, get some sleep
See what a little public crowing about success will get you. This morning’s glucose level was up to 174. I think that this up turn has two sources. I was working on stuff last night and stayed up until about 3:30 and along about 2 a.m. I had an apple.
There has been a lot written about sleep patterns and type II diabetes. Some studies suggest that the less sleep the body gets the more likely it is to develop type II and once type II has taken hold lack of sleep can have an even greater impact on morning glucose levels.
A University of Chicago study looked at the sleep patterns of 160 men with type II and found that on average less than a quarter of the men in the study slept for at least seven hours a night and only six percent got an average of eight hours sleep. The researchers found that as the number of hours of sleep decreased the men’s hemoglobin A1C levels tended to increase.
Those hated test strips I mentioned in my first blog are just snapshots in time. They give you an idea of where you are at any given point in the day when you do the test. I’ve found there is a bit of lag time, maybe 20 to 30 minutes between what the strip shows and where you are. The A1C test, however, provides more of a cumulative picture of how your are doing.
An October 9, 2005 Washington Post article on the effects of sleep depravation reported on several studies that indicated that the lack of sleep activates a number of stress hormones. Studies conducted by the University of Washington, Columbia University, the University of California at San Diego and the University of British Columbia all indicated the damage lack of sleep could do to the human body.
The various studies showed that human evolution has adapted us to sleeping for seven to eight hours at night and that missing sleep seems to activate a number of stress hormones that affect appetite suppression and increases the level of glucose in the blood.
The researchers speculated that for humans the only reason to be awake is hunger and danger but that modern society has provided us with all sorts diversions that keep us up into the small hours and then demands we rise and shine and go to work. Millions of years of evolution have not adapted us for a change that has only been a part of our lives for the last hundred years or so, and the body reacts as if there is some danger near by and makes sure it is ready to fight or run like hell.
A sleepless night or two once in a while is probably not a bad thing, or at least no worse than having a bowl of ice cream once in a while. But done on a daily-or nightly basis- it can be disastrous.
The studies show that people with the least number of hours of sleep are the most likely to develop one or more of the killer diseases, cancer, heart disease, type II diabetes "There's absolutely no reason it should be limited to breast cancer, and it wouldn't necessarily be restricted to people who work night shifts. People with disrupted sleep or people who are up late at night or get up frequently in the night could potentially have the same sort of effect," said Scott Davis of the University of Washington who reported on the results of a study on sleep deprivation and cancer risk.
A while back there was a study that said it was best if people slept in dark rooms. No lights of any kind. That means turning off the LED on the clock radio, the little blips of light on the TV and stereo, the monitor lights on computer screens and so on. I don’t know about that, but I suspect that late night on the computer or watching TV into the wee hours could qualify as a bad thing.
So as much as I hate to do it, I’m going to add yet another rule and put it into effect tonight.
Rule 12. Go to bed early. Don’t squander sleep time on watching old movies or bopping around the internet. Make sure the room is dark-no artificial lights.
The upside of this rule is that if I am asleep, I am not likely to eat an apple at 2 a.m..
Looking forward to nice low numbers tomorrow morning. G’night all.
More to come.
Jim
August 16, 2011
Wt. 259
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 174
Blood Pressure 138/93 59 bpm.
Come on, get some sleep
See what a little public crowing about success will get you. This morning’s glucose level was up to 174. I think that this up turn has two sources. I was working on stuff last night and stayed up until about 3:30 and along about 2 a.m. I had an apple.
There has been a lot written about sleep patterns and type II diabetes. Some studies suggest that the less sleep the body gets the more likely it is to develop type II and once type II has taken hold lack of sleep can have an even greater impact on morning glucose levels.
A University of Chicago study looked at the sleep patterns of 160 men with type II and found that on average less than a quarter of the men in the study slept for at least seven hours a night and only six percent got an average of eight hours sleep. The researchers found that as the number of hours of sleep decreased the men’s hemoglobin A1C levels tended to increase.
Those hated test strips I mentioned in my first blog are just snapshots in time. They give you an idea of where you are at any given point in the day when you do the test. I’ve found there is a bit of lag time, maybe 20 to 30 minutes between what the strip shows and where you are. The A1C test, however, provides more of a cumulative picture of how your are doing.
An October 9, 2005 Washington Post article on the effects of sleep depravation reported on several studies that indicated that the lack of sleep activates a number of stress hormones. Studies conducted by the University of Washington, Columbia University, the University of California at San Diego and the University of British Columbia all indicated the damage lack of sleep could do to the human body.
The various studies showed that human evolution has adapted us to sleeping for seven to eight hours at night and that missing sleep seems to activate a number of stress hormones that affect appetite suppression and increases the level of glucose in the blood.
The researchers speculated that for humans the only reason to be awake is hunger and danger but that modern society has provided us with all sorts diversions that keep us up into the small hours and then demands we rise and shine and go to work. Millions of years of evolution have not adapted us for a change that has only been a part of our lives for the last hundred years or so, and the body reacts as if there is some danger near by and makes sure it is ready to fight or run like hell.
A sleepless night or two once in a while is probably not a bad thing, or at least no worse than having a bowl of ice cream once in a while. But done on a daily-or nightly basis- it can be disastrous.
The studies show that people with the least number of hours of sleep are the most likely to develop one or more of the killer diseases, cancer, heart disease, type II diabetes "There's absolutely no reason it should be limited to breast cancer, and it wouldn't necessarily be restricted to people who work night shifts. People with disrupted sleep or people who are up late at night or get up frequently in the night could potentially have the same sort of effect," said Scott Davis of the University of Washington who reported on the results of a study on sleep deprivation and cancer risk.
A while back there was a study that said it was best if people slept in dark rooms. No lights of any kind. That means turning off the LED on the clock radio, the little blips of light on the TV and stereo, the monitor lights on computer screens and so on. I don’t know about that, but I suspect that late night on the computer or watching TV into the wee hours could qualify as a bad thing.
So as much as I hate to do it, I’m going to add yet another rule and put it into effect tonight.
Rule 12. Go to bed early. Don’t squander sleep time on watching old movies or bopping around the internet. Make sure the room is dark-no artificial lights.
The upside of this rule is that if I am asleep, I am not likely to eat an apple at 2 a.m..
Looking forward to nice low numbers tomorrow morning. G’night all.
More to come.
Jim
Monday, August 15, 2011
Blood pressure down by 9% / 13%, blood glucose down 17 % after just 7 days.
Day 8
August 15, 2011
Wt. 258.8
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 157
Blood Pressure 144/95 67 bpm.
Blood pressure down by 9%/13%, blood glucose down 17 % after just 7 days.
It sure looks like it is working. I was expecting my blood sugar to be higher than 157 this morning because yesterday was an odd day for eating and my first meal didn’t happen until about 4 p.m. an then along about 11 p.m. I had cantaloupe and an apple and about a cup of cold chicken and a cup of pinto beans. I would have expected my blood sugar to be up from the sugars in the fruit but instead it is only three points up from yesterday morning.
The other very good number is the blood pressure. Well, in its self 144/95 is not a great number it places me in the mild hypertension range. However, on day one, just 8 days ago, my blood pressure was 158/102 which is in the moderate hypertension range.
I am now beginning week 2 of my Mad as hell: getting rid of diabetes without drugs program and the results are beginning to show real progress. There are no drugs involved. After the first couple of days when I had several of bad headaches I have not taken any aspirin or pain medications. The only other drugs going into my system is my daily coffee and the Vardenfil (Levitra) I took yesterday.
One of the rules, number 8: Don’t become a fanatic, give yourself permission to slide a bit. Pick a day that you can have a treat and break all of the rules a little bit. At first that day can be once a week. After you are in control and Bob is history then stretch it out to once a month. It is important not to go overboard. You can have that ham sandwich and the slice of chocolate cake, but not the rest of the ham and the rest of the cake. Whatever you put in your body has to be processed and the system just doesn’t work as well as it used to.
For me that day was Saturday. I met a friend for coffee and had two large cups of coffee with raw sugar and a pastry. A little later in the day I had a couple more pastries. I can tell you that they were fantastic. I enjoyed ever single bite and crumb of them. The coffee with sugar tasted equally great. Those treats tasted especially good because they were just that-they were treats.
Back in the days before electricity, ice cream was made by hand cranking an ice cream churn. Ice was stored in ice houses and delivered. To make ice cream in the summer involved a huge amount of work. The block of ice had to be broken into chips, you put it in a churn and added salt to make it colder. Then all of the ingredients went into the container with the paddle churn and then the lid went on and everybody got a turn cranking until you had ice cream. Unless you were rich or really lucky, ice cream was a once in a while thing. A couple times during the summer-maybe. Can you imagine how good it tasted after all of that work on a hot day? It was a real TREAT. When I was a kid my Dad would make his special fudge candy. He started making it during the Great Depression and it represented having a little extra money for something special. Sugar, cocoa, vanilla, milk, nuts. Back then it might have all cost about a dollar but when you earned 12 dollars a week and had a family to feed you just didn’t squander a dollar on a plate of candy. When I was a little kid, money was still tight. We had moved to Taos, Dad was an artist, and our first couple of winters we lived on the credit a local grocery store owner, Eloy Gurule extended to us. When Dad sold a picture and had a little extra money he would make a plate of fudge and let me help. Really special times and the taste of that candy is still with me–so are some of the bad lessons about food and feeling good, but that is another blog.
The point is that we have come a very long way from treats being special and far between. We now live a life of candy. It is everywhere, even where we would least expect it and our health is suffering for it. But when you remove the treat from the every day and make it something that happens once in a while then two huge things happen. One; the treat tastes like a gift of the gods and two; our bodies can handle the insult and adapt. When it gets hammered day in and day out with an overload of sweet, energy dense goodies it breaks. The proof of that is in expanding waistlines, diabetes, heart disease, and probably a dozen other illnesses we now have as a common fact of our lives.
How am I going to celebrate my new good numbers? I’m going to go finish my cup of coffee-without sugar-have a fist sized lunch of chili and beans and go do some work. Next Saturday when I wake up, I will think of the food I most want-possibly pizza and I will go fine some restaurant that will serve it by the slice and have one or two. No more. I can hardly wait. It will be a fantastic treat and a reward for even better numbers.
More to come,
Jim
August 15, 2011
Wt. 258.8
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 157
Blood Pressure 144/95 67 bpm.
Blood pressure down by 9%/13%, blood glucose down 17 % after just 7 days.
It sure looks like it is working. I was expecting my blood sugar to be higher than 157 this morning because yesterday was an odd day for eating and my first meal didn’t happen until about 4 p.m. an then along about 11 p.m. I had cantaloupe and an apple and about a cup of cold chicken and a cup of pinto beans. I would have expected my blood sugar to be up from the sugars in the fruit but instead it is only three points up from yesterday morning.
The other very good number is the blood pressure. Well, in its self 144/95 is not a great number it places me in the mild hypertension range. However, on day one, just 8 days ago, my blood pressure was 158/102 which is in the moderate hypertension range.
I am now beginning week 2 of my Mad as hell: getting rid of diabetes without drugs program and the results are beginning to show real progress. There are no drugs involved. After the first couple of days when I had several of bad headaches I have not taken any aspirin or pain medications. The only other drugs going into my system is my daily coffee and the Vardenfil (Levitra) I took yesterday.
One of the rules, number 8: Don’t become a fanatic, give yourself permission to slide a bit. Pick a day that you can have a treat and break all of the rules a little bit. At first that day can be once a week. After you are in control and Bob is history then stretch it out to once a month. It is important not to go overboard. You can have that ham sandwich and the slice of chocolate cake, but not the rest of the ham and the rest of the cake. Whatever you put in your body has to be processed and the system just doesn’t work as well as it used to.
For me that day was Saturday. I met a friend for coffee and had two large cups of coffee with raw sugar and a pastry. A little later in the day I had a couple more pastries. I can tell you that they were fantastic. I enjoyed ever single bite and crumb of them. The coffee with sugar tasted equally great. Those treats tasted especially good because they were just that-they were treats.
Back in the days before electricity, ice cream was made by hand cranking an ice cream churn. Ice was stored in ice houses and delivered. To make ice cream in the summer involved a huge amount of work. The block of ice had to be broken into chips, you put it in a churn and added salt to make it colder. Then all of the ingredients went into the container with the paddle churn and then the lid went on and everybody got a turn cranking until you had ice cream. Unless you were rich or really lucky, ice cream was a once in a while thing. A couple times during the summer-maybe. Can you imagine how good it tasted after all of that work on a hot day? It was a real TREAT. When I was a kid my Dad would make his special fudge candy. He started making it during the Great Depression and it represented having a little extra money for something special. Sugar, cocoa, vanilla, milk, nuts. Back then it might have all cost about a dollar but when you earned 12 dollars a week and had a family to feed you just didn’t squander a dollar on a plate of candy. When I was a little kid, money was still tight. We had moved to Taos, Dad was an artist, and our first couple of winters we lived on the credit a local grocery store owner, Eloy Gurule extended to us. When Dad sold a picture and had a little extra money he would make a plate of fudge and let me help. Really special times and the taste of that candy is still with me–so are some of the bad lessons about food and feeling good, but that is another blog.
The point is that we have come a very long way from treats being special and far between. We now live a life of candy. It is everywhere, even where we would least expect it and our health is suffering for it. But when you remove the treat from the every day and make it something that happens once in a while then two huge things happen. One; the treat tastes like a gift of the gods and two; our bodies can handle the insult and adapt. When it gets hammered day in and day out with an overload of sweet, energy dense goodies it breaks. The proof of that is in expanding waistlines, diabetes, heart disease, and probably a dozen other illnesses we now have as a common fact of our lives.
How am I going to celebrate my new good numbers? I’m going to go finish my cup of coffee-without sugar-have a fist sized lunch of chili and beans and go do some work. Next Saturday when I wake up, I will think of the food I most want-possibly pizza and I will go fine some restaurant that will serve it by the slice and have one or two. No more. I can hardly wait. It will be a fantastic treat and a reward for even better numbers.
More to come,
Jim
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