Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
A year and a half ago, I didn’t need a belt to wear these 36 waist pants.
Now they slide off me and I almost need a belt to wear the 32 waist pants I pulled out of retirement.
The comments I’ve been getting from people about how I’ve lost weight and how skinny I look? Pretty cool.
Time for a wardrobe refresh soon.
Things seem to be going pretty well so far. Fasting blood glucose levels are still in the 100-110 mg/dl range with some periods in the 110-120 mg/dl range. There almost seems to be a pattern in my FBG. The graph is kind of begging me to do a Fourier analysis on it.
My bathroom scale tells me I’m down to 168 pounds now, although the scale at the gym says 174. Either way it’s still lower than before. Gym going has been hampered a bit by my work and school workload, but after classes end this week I should be able to get back to a regular gym routine.
Recent visit to the eye doctor showed no problems so far. Eye doctor wants me to get checked annually now instead of every other year.
I decided to purchase a second glucose meter (True Track from Publix) to use as backup, and to let me test my blood glucose response to different foods. The strips are significantly less expensive than the ones for my Aviva so more frequent testing won’t be a huge hit to the wallet.
The stats course I’m taking and some discussions on a diabetes forum I’ve been hanging out in made me want to look at differences and variations in blood glucose readings. I’ve got comparison data for the two meters, which I need to finish looking at. Need to do a literature search to find out how these things work and what kind of published info is available.
At my 4 month follow up appointment today my HbA1C was down to 6.2% from 11.9% at my initial diagnosis.
Fasting blood glucose levels have been staying in the 100-110 range, although I haven’t been very good at sticking to my reduced carb diet lately, so it crept up into the 120s for a couple of weeks.
Back to the gym next week and back to cutting down the carbs. Maybe I’ll be able to get things below 6% and 100 mg/dl for my next doctor’s visit in May.
Recently I’ve been getting a few comments about how it looks like I’ve lost weight. Unexpected, but kind of cool.
In fact, it was a somewhat drastic loss in weight that prompted me to make the doctor appointment that lead to my type 2 diabetes diagnosis. A 20 lb drop in weight to be precise, enough to make you go “whoa, what’s going on”. Losing that much weight, especially when you haven’t been doing anything special to lose it, demands some attention.
I don’t recommend undiagnosed/untreated diabetes as a weight loss program.
Since my diagnosis, the scale says my weight’s been pretty steady at around 175 plus or minus a few pounds. I could probably stand to lose a few more and wouldn’t mind getting back down to around 160 or so.
Getting more active and workouts at the gym have resulted in a redistribution of weight from fat to muscle so although I actually haven’t lost any more weight in the last few months it looks like I have.
Feeling more fit, getting stronger and slowly easing back into running again.
My running routine at the moment consists of laps around the track at the gym at a leisurely 10 minute mile pace. Jog one mile, walk a few laps and then finish off with another mile. Getting to the point where I feel like I can up the pace a little. I’m looking forward to when the weather cools down some so that I can get outside to do some running.
Looking forward to keeping this trend going.
It’s been a couple of months now with blood glucose mostly back to respectable levels. The first month I noticed I was hungry all the time.
Now, a month later, I’m noticing that I’m not as hungry all the time as I used to be and my appetite seems to have gone back to normal. I guess it was just me getting used to the lower blood glucose levels.
Must be a sign that I’m making progress.