Here's The Thing...

Here's the thing...

I am a liar.

I have written here about accepting who I am: my age (45 now), diabetes (since I was 11), celiac disease (3 1/2 years ago), Asperger's (my oldest), ADHD (3 of 4 children with a clinical diagnosis) and it's all crap.

At heart, I am neurotic and despondent when it comes to my weight and it affects nearly every single thing I do.  I have two daughters who I try to teach to be strong and confident, and somewhere along the line, at least one of them has processed the information and has the kind of self-confidence and body image I wish I had. She believes she is beautiful inside and out (she is, but the fact that she claims that information as her own astounds me) and that anyone who doesn't think so is clearly not worth her time. (And she's only 11!)

I have spent decades trying to develop that kind of self-love and I am so far from it, I don't know if it is something I will ever achieve.

Why is all this coming out now?

Because I am a Type 1 diabetic.

A diabetic who has spent years sort of hovering along the lines of being in control of her blood sugar, but never really trying all that hard to control things (except when I was pregnant).  Recently I read a book called, "Breakthrough - Banting, Best and the Race to Save Millions of Diabetics"...a book that has had a profound effect on how I view my life.

I've always known that I was pretty lucky to have been diagnosed when I was (1979), because like I said, I was 11 when I was told that life as I knew it was over forever.  I knew that if I had developed diabetes  60 years earlier, I would have been dead fairly quickly.  I've also always known that I'm pretty lucky to have had diabetes for so long without any major complications...oh sure, there was that period of time in the early 1990's, when I needed to have laser surgery to correct the leaking blood vessels in my eyes, and I had to start taking ACE inhibitors (don't ask me what it stands for, it's some medical acronym for some stupidly long name) to help protect my kidneys (but I stopped taking those when my husband and I decided to have children-that was in the spring of 1999-and I haven't taken them since)...but other than those interludes, I've been pretty blessed when it comes to diabetes.

And for the most part, I've never seen it as a curse...it's been a blessing...it's taught me to stop and take the time to actually be present in my life...to stop and (actually) smell the roses...I've been stopped dead in my tracks to stare breathlessly at a sunset, I've been overcome with emotion watching children (not even my own!) playing a game of tag and I've lost count of the number of times I have said "thank you" to God for all He has given me.

And then I read that damned book.  And it made me want to try a wee bit harder to control my blood sugars so I could do my best to be around long after my grandchildren are (will be, at some point in the not-so-distant-future) born...

And you know what I found out?  That the tighter your blood sugar control, the more f'ing weight you gain.  I've put on five (!) pounds in the last week and a half!

I thought, maybe it's just me...obviously, I am eating way more than I should be, or I'm not exercising enough...and then I realized...wait a second, I've been keeping track on that app, I can go and see what I've been doing!  And so I did...and I found out that nope, not eating more than usual, not exercising any less...the only difference is that I'm working my ass off, trying to control my blood sugar, which means I end up taking more insulin than I used to and suddenly I'm having to wear f'ing sweatpants all the time because my jeans are so uncomfortable!

So my choice is keep my blood sugar higher than it's supposed to be and fit into my clothes, or keep my blood sugar where it's supposed to be and get fatter and fatter...some choice.

This morning I went online...you know you all do it...google whatever issue it is you have and try to find out if you're normal...and yes, yes, I know...the interwebs are not exactly known for always having the best information out there...far too many of us self-diagnose whatever illness du jour is floating around in cyberspace and suddenly, our doctors are trying to talk us down off the ledge we've climbed out on to and let us know that, in fact, we are not dying from some weird skin condition that no one in North America has ever heard of...

But I digress...I went on, to try to find out if anyone else has had this problem of the sugars and the weight gain.  And lo and behold, I found lots of people just like me.  Only problem is, none of them seemed to have any kind of solution.  Lots of bitching and whining (oh how I could relate!), but no concrete answers to the problem.

So I'm still stuck.  Still trying to figure out what the hell I do to get myself into shape without compromising my blood sugar...still trying to figure out if I should just give up...and if I do, which one should it be?

And why the hell do I have to make that choice anyway?

Le sigh...