Bubbles McBubble's Journal, 15 March 2023

Sorry to hear about your diet discussion with your coworker; I’m sure she meant well. It is hard for people who don’t have diabetes to understand how the carbs affect blood sugar levels and what you’re doing for weight loss. I have seen dieters on FS lose enough weight to ditch the meds and get to enjoy fresh fruits, so I’m rooting for you to get that apple this year! 

Bloody Kiwis!🤪 

Thanks guys. Yes. That's what I explained to her. If my insulin resistance is reduced there will be bananas in my future. But for now, I have to eat like primaeval springtime: no ripe fruit. No sugars. As to her then turning her attention to telling me to exercise, unfortunately I can monitor my sugars, and exercise creates a downtick, then an uptick, and then back to flatline. The best way to reduce blood sugars is slowly, responsibly, avoiding carbohydrates over a long period of time. It's not my job to teach her, and it's not her job, in a welcome morning tea, to bully me and moralise at me to exercise. outrageous conduct. Unacceptable. She knew she was attempting to dominate me. And I knew it too. This was that woman's first day of work. She's young, she's from overseas, she's in her 20s and trying to show she is efficient and intelligent. She has a LOT to learn... I am far too long in the tooth to put up with that rot.  

PS it's 2:12pm Thursday here, I started on Monday and my sugars are now coming in at 5.9 nz. That's somewhere around 5.5 US. :D  

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 When is your next A1C reading (or the NZ equivalent glucose test)? I sooooo hope you can pull that reading down to a consistent <5.4 mmol/L by summer -- that's berry and cherry season😋. Rooting for you, Bubbles! 

Aww thanks @justBananas. I'm in new zealand, we're coming into winter. So yes, I am hoping I can get it below 5.4mmol/l by next summer. :D I keep falling off the wagon, but I am going to lose toes. I keep getting big frights. And a friend at work gave me a book which has inspired me. I've bought some fake crackers. so rejecting my previous 'oh don't eat fake carbs, just go for the groups youre allowed' - eating my words. I was wrong. Life is too boring and too hard to choose that way. Just found a good bacon too. I've become fussy about bacon and the weird chemical flavours. Next A1C is now ish. I had one in December at 59, which is getting there, but still need to work on it, get down into the 40s next. I have an arm monitor that tracks my levels and will average for me for 3 months at most, but they're not funded (should be) so when I'm broke I don't buy them, and then my accountability disappears and I eat cake. :D  

Bubbles, please journal here if cake is a'calling! Full disclosure: I am not diabetic. I had elevated cholesterol last year, which I lowered entirely through a change in diet. I am, however, a research lover, and do take the time to read up on diagnosis before commenting on people's journals. So if I get something wrong, I am 100% open to a lesson. For instance, I've seen commercials for the glucose arm monitor, but have not seen one IRL, nor do I know if they're ignored or if they make diabetics obsessive in checking their readings all day. 😟 Anyway, hopefully your new co-worker will find someone else to converse with regularly.  

It's okay in here... she was trying to dominate me. I felt pissed on. lol. You're fine. Glucose monitors are addictive, and fascinating because you can perform your own experiments and then nobody can tell you different. Everyone reacts to glucose differently, and different foods differently, so having one in my arm makes me relate 1:1 what I'm doing with its effects, and I can absolutely tell what impact it has on me. I can extrapolate to a degree - we're all genetically humans - but there are always variations in sensitivity and problems. I'm one of the 'has to stay under 20gcarbs ones'. Others are fine at 100. sigh. I lucked out. When I manage to get inside the keto zone, it's self perpetuating. I don't feel hungry and I don't feel out of control. I might even be incredibly hungry but can still just wait till I can get to my safe foods. The glucose monitor really supports my efforts because it graphs everything and remembers it for 3 months, so if I go crazy it wrecks my stats and if my goal is to get to 5, and I eat cake, then I'm up at 14 and will take another four days to get back to where I was, let alone make my target of 5. I'm on diabetes meds but fending off insulin. To me that's just the end game, giving myself more of what I'm resistant to, as I become more and more resistant, and I run out of stronger forms of insulin to use until I die, young, of kidney failure, or heart attack. Anyway I'm going to go to bed. it's 9:50pm here, I've had a successful day of staying on track, that was day 4, bring on day 5!