Busy/numbers

My experience of the last couple of weeks is that busy + stress challenges even behaviours I thought I'd got fairly in order. Didn't walk every day. Didn't eat every meal. Didn't stay away from past solutions to busy + stress (um, that would be chocolate...). Didn't keep up with the daily diary of food intake and numbers, although I did most of the four tests a day.

Didn't go overboard, but the combination of all meant it was harder to get the right numbers, which is hardly surprising. And diabetes - not just the diagnosis, but the daily chronic nature of it, lends itself to self-flagellation when your numbers are bad. Yes, the diagnosis is associated with poor diet and insufficient exercise, but it also has a genetic component - and you can't do nuffin about that. In daily terms, nobody is going to be perfect all the time - you need to be careful most of the time, and willing to pick yourself up and start again when you do feel like you've fallen off the wagon. The diabetes isn't going to go away - you have to work with it, or else.

On the plus side, most meals were healthy. Having a regular lunch order for a ham or corned beef salad sandwich that's THICK with salad is simple and manageable. If I've been out and about at dinner time, a Subway 6-inch low-fat roll on honey oat bread has carb and protein and salad and fibre, so that's OK. No scorched almonds (a personal failing) were bought this week, so there are none to consume.

What does cheese you off a bit is when you know you've been good, and the numbers are contrary. Healthy dinner, nothing overnight, and the fasting number is still not around 6mmol. Morning number of 7mmol and after exercise, it's gone up rather than down - and this the same exercise that previously put it down.

While it's no excuse to stop exercising or to eat unhealthily, a frustration of diabetes is the contrariness of it - you cannot wholly control it, however hard you try. It's so important to focus on the trends, not the daily quirks.

Things will be calmer for the next couple of weeks, so here are some starting numbers, and it will be interesting to see how they are in a fortnight or three weeks' time.

Weight:
Starting: 115kg (July 2007)
BMI: 41.2 (morbidly obese)

Current: 104kg
BMI: 37.3 (severely obese)

One month ago (3 Sept)
107kg
BMI: 38.4 (severely obese)


BGL:
Ideal range: 4-8mmol

Current:
8.3mmol ( 7 day average)
7.9mmol (14 day average)
7.7mmol (30 day average)

A month ago (3 Sept)
7.7mmol ( 7 day average)
7.6mmol (14 day average)
8.3mmol (30 day average)

Blood pressure: fine.

I'm really looking forward to clocking under 100kg, to see the needle on the scales stop before triple figures. It's a goal to reach (having started at 115kg).