Que
Sera Sera, Whatever Will Be, Will Be, Not Necessarily
A
year ago this month I wrote a post on dieting and proclaimed I would
not write again till I hit two hundred fifty pounds or one year,
whichever came first. Well I haven’t hit two hundred and fifty
pounds, but I have learned a lot and I am no longer on insulin.
I
had a recent experience concerning diabetes that may or may not save
someone’s life.
My
family insurance company sent me a notice that they were no longer
going to cover my Freestyle brand of blood testing device. They gave
me till 1 April to convert. Well I went to my diabetes doctor’s
office and informed them of the problem. She said no problem, we have
one of their recommended brands and we will give it to you. Well she
showed me how it worked and it tested at one hundred thirty seven. I
told her that seemed awful high. I had my meter with me so I tested
on it and my score was one hundred and seven. That is thirty points
difference. That is a difference of twenty-two percent. Her tester
would put me back on insulin. It took me three years to get off of
insulin and I am not eager to get back on it.
I
told her my goal was to get to a steady blood sugar of eighty which
is in the normal range which is seventy to eighty-five, which is some
top secret information that it took me the whole three years to find
out. Based on the score on her meter, if I got down to eighty, it
would be sixty on my meter, which could mean being comatose. I told
her I would do some research and figure out the solution on my own.
The
first thing I learned was that my blood meter test strips cost $1.76
each, the one they wanted me to use was only $1.37 per strip. It was
all about dollars and cents and my health was secondary.
I
decided to fund my own little home study to see what is available. At
present I am testing on six different meters twice a day and found
there is a lot of difference not only in the prices, but also in the
test results. The Walmart ReliOn Prime Meter cost only $9.00 and the
test strips are just .36 cents each. The results with it are pretty
close to the Freestyle brand I presentlyuse.
My
goal is to do a thirty day test and see how consistent the results
are. I have already found that when I am fasting there is usually
only a ten point spread between the highest and the lowest. However,
when I have eaten and take a test two hours after eating there can be
as much as a sixty point spread between the highest and lowest.
If
you are diabetic and want to beat it testing is the key. I recently
read a book called Blood Sugar 101, by Jenny Ruhl and available from
Amazon for about $16. She recommends that to eat effectively and
avoid the big point swings that some foods can cause, it is essential
to test before eating and two hours after eating. My goal is to stay
at less than one hundred points. After two hours your blood sugar
should not be above one hundred forty. My personal goal is not go
above one hundred twenty points. Happily Chimichangas and most
burritos with shredded beef and beans pass that test. Who says you
can’t eat out. Personally if my score is above one hundred, I fast
till it is below one hundred, I do a lot of short fasting. I have
found by doing this I can break thru the wall that was keeping me
from losing weight. I usually test at 11AM and 5PM. If my score is
over a one hundred, I do not eat till 5PM. If it is still over one
hundred I fast till the next morning. My longest fast was by accident
and lasted 96 hours. It was part of how I learned to win the diabetes
battle and to kick down the wall that kept me from losing weight. One
of the keys to this is absolutely no snacks and yes no food between
5PM and 11AM. It is just something you can learn to do if you really
want to lose the weight.
So
how does one accidentally go on a 96 hour fast? Over Labor Day
weekend I had planned a five day road trip. One of my goals was to
bomb my house for bugs before I left and I did manage to do it.
However I kind of screwed up. I got to the end of the drive and I
realized I had not packed my meds or testing equipment. Being an
Agent Orange recipient, having OCPD, as well as having only 30 to 40
percent lung capacity from a history of smoking and several bouts with pnuemonia, I could not go back in the house fo at least eight hours.
So I decided to do the trip without meds or testing supplies. I was
already fasting and just decided to continue it till I got back. I
wasn’t to worried about it. My longest fast was back in the early
eighties when I was going thru a vegetarian health nut phase of life.
I went ten days and broke it out of boredom, not hunger. I was just
out of the Army and only about 175 pounds back then. Getting back to
that weight has sort of become my bucket list goal in life. At two
pounds per month it will only take about eight years, so I may be on
a diet till I die. Having been dead twice already I can live with
that. LOL
When
I got back my blood sugar was in the eighties and stayed below one
hundred for over a week. Plus I had lost fourteen pounds, of which I
gained most back as soon as I started eating. It was just after I
got back I read the Blood Sugar 101 book. Then I knew how to get off
of insulin and stay off. My doctor had told me before my trip if I
lost another twenty pounds she would probably take me off of insulin.
I have not taken it since I came back from my trip, but I know just
enough now to be dangerous.
My
goal in writing this is to share that it is possible to beat diabetes
and to lose weight. I decided to just eat and enjoy life over
Thanksgiving and the holidays and put on twenty pounds, but my New
Years resolution to was to become serious about reaching my goal of
two hundred and forty pounds, but even if I reach it I will continue
to lose hopefully as long as I live. I certainly feel a lot better
and a lot more able to get around than I used to be.
I
do think I paid a price for my attempt at doing Keto, I may have lost
a few pounds doing it, but my cholesterol went from 88 to 128. I had
fought that battle before and beat it. The secret is cut out the fat
and drink 8 ounces of red wine each day. Worked for me in the past
and figure it will if I continue to do it. The one part of Keto I
have kept is not eating carbs, carbs are what pack it on, that being
said, there are good carbs also.
Another
thing I discovered is steamed foods. I bought a little steamer pot
and love it. I cut up cabbage, onions, carrots, celery, asparagus,
cucumber, zucchini and steam it for about forty minutes. Then I take
a chicken breast, polish sausage, or steak and fry it in a skillet
with onions and mushrooms in bacon grease and add some bottled gravy
sauce and it is awesome and virtually no calories. I use butter,
lard, or olive oil for cooking, I don’t use any vegetable oils. My
favorite spices are paprika, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, lemon
pepper, garlic pepper, season all seasoning salt, and parsley. Spices
are the key to making it all enjoyable.
One
more key to learning to lose weight is to start using what is called
the
glycemic index,
https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/nutrition/glycemic-index-chart/
to help in losing weight. Eating foods which are less than 50 on the
glycemic index will really help take off the pounds. Foods like
cabbage, onions, beans, celery, lettuce and several others contain
virtually no calories and they actually take more calories to digest
than they put into your system. That means you can lose weight and
still stuff yourself. Yep it can actually be done.
Writing
can be a frustrating enterprise especially when doing it on a new
computer that you have never used. One wrong key and two hours of
trying to put together a story in an interesting way and poof, it is
gone, and will never come back. At seventy three my recall button is
definitely not a Total Recall button, and being computer illiterate
does not help the matter any. I know most of this trivia does not matter
to most readers, but it helps me to be able to vent. In the words of
Earnest Hemingway, “Writing is simple, you just sit down at a
typewriter and bleed” and when you craft something nice and lose it
all it is almost terminal.
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