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
No comments:
Post a Comment