Doctors visit

Had a Dr. appointment today at 9am. He was happy with my progress, I brought in a spreadsheet with a week worth of glucose checks, meal/dietary nutritional information, and he said the numbers looked good. He wants me to move to taking blood sugar only twice a day after I wake up before I eat anything, and then before dinner. So I am starting that today. My morning glucose was 143, which is about what it has been the past 4 days. Will see what it is again before I eat dinner. Waiting to get one final grade from school, I did better in one class than I thought. I am always harder on myself than I should be.

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Sunday

Been sticking with the diet, still nothing to drink but water and no refined sugars. It seems to be going well, but I seriously need some new chicken recipes.

I took my final exam yesterday, so school it over until spring semester starts in January. That is a little stress relief, this semester was not kind to me. I am hoping next semester will be a lot better.

I've learned that I like red bell peppers, just raw with other things. For example, I will cut up a piece of red pepper into small bits and eat it with a hamburger patty instead of ketchup. It's actually really good.

Last glucose reading was 133. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow, and am looking forward to taking him my sheet and showing him what I've eaten and what my glucose scores were.

It just keeps going down down down

I am happy to continue to see a downward trend on my overall blood sugar. My diet seems to be working! I still don't understand the swings (why does it go up at night even when I don't eat sugar, but always goes down at lunch etc.) ,but in general the numbers taken at the same time of day have gone down a every single day. Here they are

Morning: 317, 222, 180, 163, 161,155, 145
After breakfast: 224, 177 (yeah I havent been eating breakfast like I should)
After lunch: 173, 180, 125, 119
After dinner: 155, 187, 188, 176

As you can see, after dinner seems to be the spot that it is not going down at the same rate as others. Last night I ate 0 carbs at dinner, and it still went way up from the lunch reading, so it seems to be something to do with the time of day and not necessarily what I eat. Hopefully I will have a better reading tonight.

I am happy with my fasting/sleeping readings, every single day they have done down. I am also obviously happy with my lunch readings ,as these are the ones that have been the lowest and very close to normal ranges.

I weighed myself this morning, I was 209.2 pounds. The lowest I've been in.....20+ years. I hope to get to 180.

You can see my food journal and info here: Food journal
You can see my livestrong MyPlate info here: Livestrong Diary

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Russ

125!

After a week of diet change, and checking glucose, I finally just had my first "normal" reading. A week ago my blood sugar was 317, today 2 hours after lunch it was 200 points lower. I know I have to keep at it to keep it low, but it was good to finally see it drop down below 150. 


Hopefully it will be even lower after dinner tonight, guess we will see. Oh the excitement that comes from waiting for the glucose meter to tell you your score....

Why?

Why does  my blood sugar go up when I have a meal of broccoli, steamed green beans, and steak? I don't get it and it's frustrating to cut out all good tasting food and have blood sugar still going up for no damn reason!!! I might as well drink a milkshake if eating broccoli is going to make my damn sugar go up.

OK Rant over....but I still don't understand. Guess I'll keep chugging along.

Doctor's visit, declining sugar levels

Monday morning I met with my doctor, and got a glucose meter. I've been checking my blood sugar 2 hours after meals and in the morning after sleep/fasting and it seems to be on a steady decline with my diet. That's a good thing. I'm still not sure why it goes up sometimes and down sometimes but I guess I just need to keep my journal up to date and I will eventually figure out which foods cause that. Last night I met with an old friend I hadn't seen in a few years, we had Indian food and I ordered something with no sauce, and chicken with veggies. It was really good and had no bad things for me (that I know of).

I created a google doc of my food journal, what I've eaten, what my blood sugar is 2 hours after etc. This is the link: Food

Tonight I am going to my son's band concert, and will have to find some food somewhere out of the house to eat for dinner. Hopefully I can find something that fits in the paleo scheme.

A christmas party

Tonight I went to a Christmas party, with an open bar and a buffet. I didn't drink anything but water, and I only ate things from the veggie trays and the turkey meat table. I also had some salad. It was hard at the end of the night not to sample the dessert trays, and drink hot cocoa, but I did it.

I also had a call from my doctor today to tell me that my a1c score was 13, which is absolutely horrible and life threatening. Basically my glucose has averaged around 350 for the past 120 days. I should be dead by now. But thankfully I'm not, so hopefully this diet change will help things. I have an appointment first thing Monday morning to talk to him about medication and other things to get my blood sugar down.

Tomorrow I plan to make spaghetti sauce and beef stock all day, in preparation for having some easy to make meals for the next few weeks.

Doctors visit

Today I went to the doctor and had my blood drawn for testing. My glucose reading at the doc was 222, down from 317 on Wednesday when this all began. I'm not sure if its because for the past 2 days I gave up all carbs, sugars etc. or if it is just a random thing, but it felt good to be 100 points lower. Now I just have to wait to see what my a1c score is and go from there.

I stuck with the Paleo diet today, I had to fast until after the Dr. appointment so I had scrambled eggs after for brunch. I then went shopping for meat and vegetables at some markets I found that were actually walking distance to my apartment. I had an orange for a snack in the afternoon and then I had a 93% lean hamburger patty for dinner with a salad (cucumbers, red leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce, cauliflower, and carrots). I researched salad dressings last night for about 2 hours trying to find one that was completely gluten free while still tasting good. I think I might have to eventually just make my own. I also cut up a fresh pineapple and had a few pieces of it for an after dinner snack. I put the rest in the fridge for tomorrow.

I'm not sure how the fruit portion of the paleo will or won't affect my diabetes, I will know more I guess when I get my glucose meter to check each day.

I have a Christmas party to go to tomorrow where there will be free booze and bad food. I won't let it get to me, I'm not going to eat crappy food and drink beer to get thrown off.

Day 2

Last night as I arrived home I looked through my cupboards and cabinets and realized just how much bad food I had accumulated. The shock hit me again, and I felt helpless and unsure of how I could tackle this issue looking at the cans of corn and the boxes of pasta. But, I made sure that I ate a good Paleo meal of chicken tenderloins and green beans (yes I know green beans are technically not allowed in the strict Paleo diet, but I am going to use a modified version because I really need to be able to eat green beans and some other types of peas as part of my diet).

I slept a long time, and woke up refreshed. I am now trying to plan what to do for lunch, but do not have a lot of meat in the house. I may just make more chicken. I need to sit down and plan out meals, and also go shopping for the next week or two. I hope to do that tomorrow.

Adding to all this stress, next week is finals week at school. If I can make it through finals week without stress eating, I am pretty sure I can make it through anything.

It begins.

Today I had a wellness screening at work, and it was horrendous. I knew based on some things that have been happening with my body that my glucose was going to be high, but I had no idea just how high. After fasting for 12 hours, I had my various wellness tests, and when it was my time to talk to the person about my results, I had to go into the "your shit is so bad we have to take you into a separate room" room. They made me sign a form acknowledging that they had told me my body was severely messed up. Then they told me that my glucose level was 317. I was shocked. 6 months ago in a similar screening it was 104.

Not only is my glucose level dangerously high, my triglycerides are as well. And although I have good genetics and my overall cholesterol is low, my TC/HDL ratio is more than twice the recommended value, and my HDL is half the recommended value.

I am 6'0 tall and 210 pounds. I don't feel "fat", but as of today, I have a Body Fat percentage of 31.9% and a BMI of 29.8. And my blood has more sugar in it than a gallon of my granny's Mississippi sweet tea. I need to make a change to my diet, and I need to do it now.

So as I start this blog to chart my progress, I am going to attempt to give up processed foods, dairy, and grain cold turkey. I am going to start with tonight's dinner, and eat only meat, vegetables and fruit. I am giving up my sweet tea and coke, and drinking water. It all starts tonight, 12/7/2011.