Monday 26 October 2015

Poorly Start

Soooo, I've not had the best of starts to my 'new life' with a healthy body and totally super ripped, slash an averagely slim body. At the start of the week I came down with a fairly bad stomach thingy. As someone who's enthusiastic about pretty much all food and looks forward to every meal, even plain boring porridge in the mornings, I could tell something was up. I could tell, not only because I was profusely vomiting and diarrhearing all over the place but mainly because of the loss of my appetite. Like I say, I could be projectile vomiting constantly but as long as I'm still wanting to eat, I'd probably feel content projecting chicken or pizza across the room.

Me pondering life and why I'm sick

I must say that rather than vomiting and poor bowel movements being the current bane of my life, the lack of appetite is a hundred times worse. I miss wanting to eat, and I miss savouring everything from fruit to flapjacks and biscuits to broccoli. Buut, if loss of appetite is my illness then my moms cooking though is the cure, for sure. The smell and taste of my mothers amazing, admittedly fat filled, food has lit up the darkest regions of my stomach once again. Although I'm not fully fit (lets face it, that'll take a while :P), I'm hungry again, so I really don't care about much else.

On top of all the repetitive stuff diabetic people have to do everyday such as blood sugar testing, watching food consumption and insulin/medication administering, we have a different set of rules when we're sick. It's conveniently called, to many, sick day rules. The main rules include, testing more regularly and to keep taking your insulin. For many, insulin doses should generally increase by 1.5 times. The increase in insulin dose is to keep up with the release of sugar from tissues during illness which many would assume is utilised to fight the illness off.  However this poses risks and it can be easy to get wrong, either too much and having hypoglycaemias or more commonly not having enough and having hyperglycaemias.

During the week my illness didn't seem to waiver and so I trudged along to the doctors office. The rather annoying doctor, annoying because it seemed to me that she was googling my symptoms, didn't seem to care about my illness directly. After brushing past what must have seemed to my doctor as pathetic symptoms, she began grilling me about my sick day rules -
Doctor: Do you know your sick day rules?
Me: ah yeah sure.
Doctor: Really? So what should you do?
Me: Well I take 1.5 times normal insulin.
Doctor: Go on.
Me:Drink plenty of fluids.
Doctor: Yes and?
Me: Check blood sugars regularly.
Doctor: Ok that's fine.

Pheww... After sighing in relief from both of us that I knew my rules after 8 years of diabetes, she continued to worry about my blood sugars. In fact there is so much worry about sick days with diabetes that the doctor ordered in a nurse to take my blood sugar readings. Even though we had established I knew the flippin rules she obviously didn't believe me. After the nurse scurried in after mere seconds of an instant message and took my blood sugar readings, the doctor was confident with my ability to maintain my sugar levels. I was immensely glad because the amount of fuss gathered from ketone readings or abnormally high blood sugar levels would seriously frustrate and annoy me. However I'm pretty sympathetic and understanding about their point of view, particularly since the presence of ketones and high sugars might have ended with me in the hospital. With me being closely monitored and taking another relative serious toll on the national health service (I should mention that I have been admitted to hospital on occasion with ketoacidosis).

Basically I'm sick so I haven't been eating super healthy, just eating anything that'll stay down and my blood sugars haven't been great because of the illness. To summarise its a pretty 'poorly start' to my healthy life. Poorly life.... Right??

Annnnywayy
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Saturday 17 October 2015

Mr Potato Body

Initially, during the first few months of my degree I stuck to a diet and workout plan religiously. During the research phase of my studies the structure and routine fell apart as I committed myself more to my work. But it's important to workout some sort of balance to at least get on the right road to becoming fit, and therefore improving my health and more significantly my diabetes control. Yeah I've had a setback but its important to keep trying.

Soooo, I'm writing this post to myself, but on the internet, in the hope that it will spur and will me on to get fit and lose some blubber. I'm hoping in years to come I'll be grilling lean chicken on my chiseled abs (because they're so hot) - obtaining those perfect grill marks (all be it, slightly wider than normal), whilst warming some delicious seasoned sweet potatoes between my cheeks, butt cheeks that is (again, because of the scorching personified temperature of my now sculpted gluteus). I'm not quite sure where I was going with that, but what I'm trying to say is I hope I'm reasonably fit (or at least fit enough to heat food to a moderate temperature using my muscular physique).

I hope I'm lifting large boulders for the hell of it, instead of staring at myself in a mirror crying into a tub of phish food (ben and Jerry's hells yahh) whilst asking myself how I got so unfit and lazy. Asking myself why I'm eating ice cream with a ladle: its because you're lazy yo! There were no washed up spoons and the ladle accommodates your large inhumane thirst for, fish shaped chocolate peppered, ice cream.

At this moment in time, nothing fits as it did. My boobs are saggy already, when I was hoping they would stay perky for at least a couple of years. My clothes are obtaining holes and the number of notches on my belt are decreasing, fast! 

My trousers are splitting, rather embarrassingly, either from the amount of friction my thighs are now generating while walking, or simply the increased circumference of my legs. T-shirts are revealing the unflattering folds and tyres of my belly. So I basically don't look too great in my opinion. I'm not really looking for a super physique right now, or even in the far future, but rather one that I can respect and be relatively happy with. Not to say that I shouldn't be right now, but we all have personal goals. I just aim in the next year to be relatively slim-ish. As you can tell my goal is distinctively strict and extremely specific. However there are already sooooo many obstacles. The primary being food. I bloody love bread...... ah bread, you carb filled savoury delight. How I can reminisce about stuffing my face with you before a meal at a restaurant and therefore be too full to eat much else. But then not caring at all because the warming avalanche through my gums satisfied me so. I also love pretty much all other food which is a problem.


Diabetes and Lifestyle

Weight loss has been shown to increase the control of blood glucose levels in those people with diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is linked to poor diet such as high sugar and high fat diets, and is more common in those who are overweight and obese. On a side note, low fat and low sugar diets are thought to improve blood glucose levels as well as aiding weight loss. Many health services recommend weight loss through diet change and an increase in exercise. That's easy right? Well it would be if fat and sugar weren't the best freaking things to eat in the entire world! Oh excuse me would you like a low fat, low carb meal? No, I really wouldn't, leave me now. Its pretty obvious now that nice tasting food is often bad, so maybe a helpful lesson is: if you like it don't eat it; or if you hate it, eat as much as you can. Some healthcare services such as the National Health Service state that healthy eating and positive lifestyle changes such as exercising may allow control of blood glucose levels without the need for additional treatment. All that was probably old news to most people but whatevs. My hope is that I'll be able to increase my blood glucose control without pumping more insulin into my body as I fear that I'll get lumps (Lipohypertrophy or insulin hypotrophy) and things. However I'm more psyched about the prospect of being relatively trim whilst eating all the lovely fat and sugar filled foods I can (countered by exercise). Unlikely I know.

But anyway, watch out George Foreman and other economic versions of the healthy grill, my abs are attempting to compete, slightly later than anyone should care (in 2025).

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