Slacker... But Not How You Think

I splurged today…. I know, when you think of splurging you are thinking that I dove into something chocolate, or a piece of cake or a donut, or a cookie or fudge or....... the list goes on. Nope, I wish that was what I had done. Instead I bought a Naked Red Machine fruit smoothie. I had no leftovers to bring to work, no fresh veggies that I could just bring with me, all I had was bread and cheese so a toasted cheese sandwich it was. We haven’t been eating the best lately and I really wanted a salad, but couldn’t think of any place to go where I could get a healthy salad. So when I went to Target on my break I got the Naked drink, even though originally I wanted the veggie one I realized that there really isn’t one loaded with veggies and I guess if there was it would be pretty dang nasty.

 When I say it was a splurge that’s because I usually stay away from those sorts of drinks because of all the sugar. This one had 61 grams of carbs! That’s 7.7 units of insulin for me and I had already had 21 carbs with my sandwich. I generally try to stay between 45-50 grams carbs per meal. Even though these drinks may be natural sugars they will still spike me and are a pretty big no no.

 I have been thinking a lot about “good” diabetics and “bad” diabetics lately and about poor control, good control and tight control. I like to think that I’m pretty tight on my control. It doesn’t matter how tight on controlling eating habits,  how great the basal rates are set on a pump, or being sure to bolus 15-20 minutes before eating or how often a person exercises,  it really doesn’t matter what a diabetic or their health team does, diabetes is diabetes and it will do what it wants when it wants. It has a mind of its own. Yes, taking all of these steps and doing all of these things helps, they all drastically help. Yet 2+2 does not always = 4 when it comes to diabetes.  2+2 can = 10, it can = 25, it can = 68 or it can = 250. Math and diabetes, they don’t work well together, but at the same time math is the only solution for the lovely “D”, and I do more math on a daily basis that I ever really care to. I have to do math before I eat, math before working out, math before sleeping sometimes.

 

With all of this, I’m cutting myself some slack, and when I say cutting myself some slack I don’t mean that I’m slacking off on taking care of myself, but I’m allowing myself to splurge a little more on what I eat and I’m trying not to be so hard on myself when I see any ugly number on my meter. I think that having an amazing A1C in July helped with this for sure. If I end up above 200 ok, what do I need to do to get down? If I end up below 80 multiple times in a day, okay, eat fruit snacks and take it easy and don’t work out if it comes to that. Question what the cause and solution is, but if I can't figure where things went wrong, because most of the time it just happens, then I let it go and move on. I know it’s just a faze, then again, maybe not, but I haven’t been beating myself up when I see a number I don’t like. I can’t control this disease any more than I can control the weather.

 

 It makes me think I could see why some people don’t take care of themselves, it’s a whole lot of hard work. If I didn’t have the motivation of having a baby some day, or being married for 70 years, (yes, that’s what Brad tells people, that we will be married for 70 years and I’m going with it!), or the rest of my family then maybe I would be headed down a dark road.  I have to remind myself as I’ve said in other posts that my health isn’t just about me, taking care of myself is about those around me as well, because I am cared about. It’s so easy to give up, so easy to just crumple up on the floor, have a hissy fit pity party and cry, and believe me, I’ve done it plenty. Yet I can’t stay there. I just read a post on Face Book today from Type 1 Diabetes Memes about the perfect diabetic and it doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t, we are human just like everyone else.

 

So if you are reading this, and you have been in a place where you feel you can’t do anything right for your “D” and you think you will never get to the point of actually being proud of yourself and how you take care of yourself. I give you permission to stop. Stop playing the blame game, stop beating yourself up, STOP STOP STOP. Do remind yourself that you are human, DO remind yourself that you are strong, DO remind yourself that you are not alone, DO remind yourself that you can do it, Do check out the You Can Do This Project.

 

On that note, I'm going to go ride my bike and have a banana chocolate smoothie later tonight.