Alright, I knew this was a possibility, a whole series of doctors has warned me about it, but now it’s suddenly real. I am officially diabetic.
I had a checkup recently, and as part of that, blood work. The good news: my thyroid is fine, so are my kidneys. My liver is … okay. The doc never even mentioned my prostate, and I was concerned about that. The bad news: my A1C level was 7.2 – I’m no longer pre-diabetic, I have Type 2 diabetes. My poor pancreas is tired and overworked. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – not only are my dietary habits awful, and I’ve been carrying around 60 excess pounds for years – but I had pancreatitis 3 times during 2008. I’m kinda surprised it took this long, to be honest. However, the doc was very upbeat. She thinks we can reverse this.
Her advice was very specific, “From now on, you need to see all sugar as poison. Anything with an ‘ose’ suffix, you should avoid.” So, sucrose, fructose, lactose, maltose – just to list the obvious ones. No more donuts, no more fruit juice, very little milk, no beer. Y’know what? Okay. I’m good with it. Fats, proteins, vegetables, fiber – all good. I can do that. She wants to check my A1C level in another three months. If I can get it below 6.4 (pre-diabetic), we can work to get it even lower. Sounds good – let’s do this.
So, I’ve been reducing my carbs as much as I can manage right now, and it has been having an effect – I’m having the ‘keto flu’! Yippee! (Ick) I remember doing the Atkins diet almost twenty years ago. I lost quite a bit of weight in a few weeks’ time. 15 pounds, as I recall. Of course, I gained it all back, with interest, when I went off the diet – but that’s been the story of my life. However, I don’t remember the keto flu – being tired, listless, cranky and weak for several days. Maybe it’s just too long ago, and maybe I’ve had too many other cranky days that had nothing to do with diet – I just don’t know. In any event, I’ll be happy when this stage is over. But the diet will never be over – because this is not a diet anymore.
The possibility of permanent weight loss is a nice plus, but entirely secondary. This is a fight for my life. This is a fight for time – time to do my art, write my books, love my wife and family. Even more than going to the gym, this is a necessary change, a permanent habit, a low-level pain I must endure in order to avoid a far worse one. I must embrace the pain. Dammit. My own blog comes back to haunt me.
I don’t yet feel the frantic urge to stuff my face with candy or down an entire box of donuts – but I have a sneaking feeling that it’s coming. It would help if I knew exactly how long I have to ride this out until the new eating habits become second nature. It’s the not knowing that’s going to cause the most anxiety and anger. But I can’t just stop and go back to the old ways, as much as I might want to. I’ve seen what happens to people who just say, ‘screw it’ and eat all the crap they crave. The obesity, the health issues, COPD, the constant blood sugar monitoring – not to speak of amputations, insulin and various ugly blood diseases. No, thank you. I’m not going out that way. I’m not going to shorten my life because I just have to keep eating pizza or drinking beer.
Interestingly, there are foods and drinks on the ‘okay’ list that I didn’t exactly expect. Milk is marginal, but half and half is perfectly fine. Beer is not allowed, but scotch and other whiskeys are. Bananas are out, as is any fruit juice – but most apples and oranges are okay. Keto diets, and the very similar diabetic diets, recommend that you replace carbohydrates with fat. The reason for that is that once your body goes into ketosis, you actually run primarily on fat, rather than on glucose and glycogen. This gives your pancreas a break, allowing things to normalize. And because you’re running primarily on fat, weight loss is inevitable.
Well, alright – despite my best efforts (or lack thereof), one of the scenarios I tried to avoid is now part of my life. No use crying about it. However, I find it strange that the very thing I tried to avoid is now going to force me to do what I knew I needed to do all along and could never seem to manage – diet. Or more precisely, change my dietary habits. I was already cutting back on my total intake, but now the composition has changed dramatically. Because I can’t avoid it, this new way of eating will become my primary way, my new habit. I am already getting back to the gym and back into my workout, though the keto flu has slowed me down a bit. So, in essence, this has just become a new wrinkle in the way I do things, a much-needed change of direction. I suppose I should even be grateful, in a way. I don’t feel sick, most of my internal processes have not been affected, and the prospect of weight loss is real.
This is just another example of how a bad or unexpected and unwelcome twist in my life’s narrative can work in my favor. Weird, huh? I’ve seen a few of these. You’d think I might have learned by now.
Be well.
bcd