Turning It Around Fairly Quickly

Diabetes management isn’t a race or a one-shot deal. It’s an ongoing dance. For real. It’s not all-or-nothing. I truly benefit from grace and patience with myself. I am fully on my side! I want to feel good and control my blood sugar … and I want to have fun and pleasure with food too. I need to be able to eat “normally” at times – and I suppose I’m fortunate that I am able to do that on occasion without too many repercussions. It’s what I usually do that matters. And the dance goes on ….

A Day In The Life of My Dance With Diabetes

Just FYI: I’m leading this dance now. That’s what happens when I stay on track (which is not always, but I’m working on it!). I thought I’d share what a typical day looks like for me in terms of food and activity.

Getting and Staying On Track with Diabetes Management

I’d just been keeping track of everything in regular spiral notebooks, but I decided to make myself a diabetes management journal that would make it easier and more organized for me. They have easy to fill in charts and some encouragement along the way. They will last for six months if you do them daily, which I absolutely will! I like to think I can just manage it in my head, but that truly doesn’t work for me. I’d rather make the little extra effort to keep on keeping track rather than to go through this again. It’s so much easier to stay healthy than to have to try to fight to get back my health and energy!

This May Be Helpful To Know

Am I ever glad I kept a journal (pictured above) the first time I went down this path! I recorded everything: my morning sugar reading, my readings after various meals, everything I ate, supplements I took, my amount of exercise, many comments along the way of how I was feeling, both physically and emotionally. Perhaps the most helpful thing for me to be able to review this morning is the string of profanities laced throughout my notebook. See, even when I was staying on point, the journey wasn’t always smooth sailing. My sugar regularly spiked a little (sometimes a lot!) for no discernible reason. But I stayed the course … and over time, it kept trending in the right direction until it stayed in the good range almost all of the time. Until recently, when I had veered off course over many months during the pandemic.

Healing Is Not Linear – Don’t Give Up!

One problem in a society used to instant results and instant gratification is that we expect everything to happen right away. Healing almost never happens in that fashion – and the other truth is that it doesn’t always go in a linear fashion either. Our bodies and minds are complex – and especially when dealing with a chronic condition like diabetes, we need to have a great deal of patience and compassion with ourselves and our bodies. This isn’t easy – mentally, emotionally, or physically. I’m going to be addressing the issues that are coming up for me as I go along. Perhaps you’ll be able to relate. Some days are better than others. We do what we can to keep on keeping on.