Sunday 25 November 2012

Changes and Refresh

Someone posted a question on Reddit recently that made me think. It was How do you make yourself care *about* your diabetes, not for it.

There was a few comments that were I like my eyesight/limbs/want to watch children grow up and etc. But when you're living in the here and now, Diabetes complications seem like such a far off thing. I've always "cared" about my Diabetes. I know it's this long term, chronic condition with the likelihood of complications if you have poor control. In all honesty, my way of dealing with it was to just take my insulin every day and test on an ad hoc basis. Over the last 6 months how I care for my diabetes has changed into this scientific guessing game. Carb counting, correction doses, balancing, exercising. It's exhausting. But I keep going. Because I know I can do this. 


This is one of the replies to the question, it really encapsulated how I feel - Not sure if you can read it but I'll put the majority of it here:

It boiled down to not feeling defeated if you screw up during the day. Like, if I checked my bloodsugar only twice throughout the day, I can't think, "Oh crap, I'm taking shitty care of myself so why bother at all?" Instead I try to think of it as a win. "I tested two more times than I did the day before! I'm working on it, so it's ok."
It's always a work in progress, so you have to take the view that anything you do is better than nothing. "My A1C is down .2 points! Great!" or "I tested 4 times today!" I know I should do better, but thinking in this way has made me feel less like I am always circling the drain. Instead, I am slowly clawing my way out of it. I hope that helps.

Sometimes you can't win with diabetes, it throws in curves ball blood sugars and whacky overnight lows. But you just have to keep trying.

I fell off the wagon a tiny bit with recording all my food and exercise (slash actually doing exercise) but tomorrow is a new week! I'm starting small but my goals for this week are:
- Producing 3 diet records for the Dietitian
- Exercising 3 times - I think this will be more of the walk variety but I have access to some lovely gardens so will make sure this includes some uphills! Ultimately I'd like to do some running but just starting small. 
- Some sort of strength/core training exercise twice.

It's all very manageable. Since I've been super busy lately I've had less of a routine, so I'm getting back into it. Changing it and just starting afresh! Writing it down helps keep it present in my mind and makes me actually want to complete some of my goals. 

Until next time!

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