Stabbing My Fingers

I am getting used to testing my blood sugar. It’s a little tricky to get the right place on the finger that will generate a decent amount of blood. The depth of the poker (need to learn the real names of the equipment) matters as well. Too deep on small fingers is not ideal and too shallow on the bigger fingers won’t yield enough blood for the test.

Then there is the damn e-4 error on the Accu-Chek. This happens when you don’t get the blood in the end of the sample strip quite right. It really needs to wick the blood into it. I’ve used several of those getting the process down. Another week and I should be able to do it on auto-pilot.

The MySugr app makes it easy to capture and track. Next is really understanding what contributes to higher levels. Especially overnight. To help with this I started loosely tracking my food. I’m using the FitBit app to do this. Back in 2010 when FitBit was first becoming a thing, I used the food tracker extensively, It has a good database and is easy to use. This will help jog my memory when piecing together food/drink and blood sugar levels.

Stones

Quick fun fact – the Apple Health app lets you choose the unit of measure for weight. You can choose pounds or kilograms. And you can also specify stones.

Well played Apple. Well played.

Diagnostics

Today I picked up an “Accu-Chek Guide Me” to start tracking my glucose levels. A I mentioned earlier, my current focus areas are trigs and blood sugar. This device allow me to track progress and make any adjustments to eating habits.

I’ve made adjustments to my diet in terms of food type as well as quantity. Working to get out on the tennis courts several times per week. These will form the foundation for getting these areas back under control.

I setup the device and connected it to the MySugr app. I completed a test after adjust the depth of the puncture and got it to successfully read. I’ll be doing this before breakfast and before dinner for the immediate futurte.

Up Next: Determining what good looks like and taking corrective action.

Mindset

As I get back into my journey, I decided to update my tag line today. I like the original but want to keep a few things in mind every time I look at the site. I really love the book Food Rules by Michael Pollan where he distills the essence of how we need to think about food and eating. That makes up the first three phrases. I added the next two because I believe they are equally important to a well-rounded plan.

You must “move” as well as eat right. Activity is a core part of keeping the calories burned to intake ratio the right way.

This may just be for me, but to really keep this in the forefront of my mind and to keep me honest, I’ve found that writing about this journey is essential. You can look at the beginning of this blog and see a lot and then it fades. Along with the lack of writing is the sliding back into bad behaviors.

From: My Awakening … a long time coming (again)

To: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Move. Journal.

Modern Office Visit

Modern mobile phones have changed a lot about daily life. As the medical software field gets privacy and security inline with regulatory requirements and establishes consumer trust the benefits and uses on your mobile can be truly amazing.

When I visit the doctor these days, I get a summary of the visit shortly after it concludes. It includes a written summary of the visit, items discussed and my vitals. This pops up on my phone. Not a sheet of paper that somehow gets lost between the office and the car. I now have the ability to go back in time to see test results, office visit summaries and medications prescribed.

The biggest advancement is access to your doctor, I can chat/message directly with her. No more calling into the office, waiting on availability and a call later. Now I can ask a question or get clarification on my visit or my progress and get a quick answer directly from the doctor. This level of access is game changing.

What’s exciting is that this is just the beginning. We have just scratched the surface and I can’t wait to see how this evolves.

Subconscious Trouble

I had a dream last night. Have you ever had your partner wake up mad at you? For having cheated in their dream? Yep, been there. Well, this was a little like that.

I tend to have action oriented dreams, but this popped up in the middle and made me chuckle. I was at a dinner party and there was a bunch of food available. Some of it was intended for specific people and all of the sudden, this small but tall cake was put in front of me. I proceeded to cut a sliver from it when it dawned on me that perhaps I should skip the cake. Because of the journey I was currently undertaking. As I considered my options, I ate that dang slice of cake. I basically cheated on myself and my efforts to get healthy.

Two things stand out for me. The first is that with the health focus I’ve had, it is becoming part of my subconscious. This is good as I tend to let ideas and problems percolate when sleeping. The second may be me reading more into this than was really there, but it is about the notion of the unconscious eating. For me, an example of this is when watching TV and eating directly from a bag of chips. The show is progressing and suddenly you realize that many, many chips have been consumed. Like a lot. In the dream I recall considering if I should eat the cake while eating the cake. Deep, right?

Habit: Work on not touching my face. Prevent illness.

Remembering Full

I went out to eat tonight at my favorite place. Typically, I would eat the entre along with the two sides and perhaps an app. This has not really felt like a lot in the past, but I really paid attention to what felt like “full”. I was surprised when about half-way through, I realized that I was good. That I would need a to-go box that had about half of all the elements.

It seems pretty straight forward now, but we’ll see how it goes a bit later this evening. I’m drinking some water and will have some fruit as needed.

Action: Need to find some good resources on A1C and trigs.

Decades

I seem to operate in 10-year intervals.

2000 the hike
2010 the first real focus on health
2020 this time with feeling

Well, I’m older now and have some work ahead of me. This will include updating my knowledge of nutrition, refocusing on eating well and moving. Of course. I re-read this blog today. There is some good stuff here 🙂 One thing I noticed was the high number of posts early with fewer as time went on. One of the key elements to help with a lot of things in life is to journal. It acts a bit like a contract with yourself. It is also a way to really think about how things are going, reflect and document progress / setbacks. Growth mindset.

Health Update
Weirdly, I seem to max out around 245-250 pounds. If you review the blog, you can see that the real work lasted about six months. The spell was broken as a result of the best pizza in the world. But that is another story. After that, things returned to the way they were before. Which translates to not a lot of exercise and eating as if the world was ending.
I moved about five years ago and the home owners association is pretty big. We have several pools and more importantly tennis courts. Me and my wife never played before but turned this into an excuse to get outside and have some fun. That has been the extent of my focus on health recently.
That said, I’ve done a little more on food choice over the last few months.

	Apr-07	Sep-09	Aug-18	Feb-20
Total Cholesterol	216	240	236	157
LDL Cholesterol	116	145	160	82
HDL Cholesterol	29	35	33	43
Triglycerides	354	302	262	219

Blood test results

It’s worth noting that the most recent results are pretty damn good. However, there are a few things I need to zero in on: triglycerides and blood sugar.

Health is not only about weight (see most of the results of the test above), but it remains important. I am currently 17.5 Stones (245lbs). I’ll be back with posts and stats updates. Mostly for me, but if you are here – thanks!

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And move. And journal.

Basketball

After doing the weight portion of my workouts, I’ve been spending time on the basketball court for my cardio component. Right now, it is a lot more fun than the treadmills. A few things I do:

Start with a series of laps around the court – dribbling of course.
Dribbling drills – forward, backward, pivoting.
Body circles – passing the ball to myself around my waist as I move around.
Shooting – left and right-handed.
The new thing I did today was to be on one end of the court and throw the ball to about mid-court. I then ran down the ball and finished with a layup. Good for running, better than a normal layup and was fun!

Right now, I have visions of getting into an old-man, out-of-bball-shape league. Would also like to consider getting into a similar soccer (indoor) league. Need to get some skills acquired again and build up some stamina.

Timing

I think I mentioned it in already, but as I think about where I am today, it bears repeating. A few things have to be in place to really get a great start to a lifestyle change.

Your mind is bought into the need for change. The ‘bit’ is flipped. As I mentioned in my first posting, for me this just happened. Intellectually, I knew I had to do something about my overall health and weight. However, there was not enough internal buy-in to do anything about it. But on that early July day as I looked down into an incredible valley at Rocky Mountain National Park and realized that it would be foolhardy for me to attempt a big hike, my bit flipped.
As with any change, be prepared for a difficult transition. At the very beginning, it is not too bad. You are excited about making the change and will follow whatever plan you created. It becomes challenging when you are into it for a few weeks and the luster has worn off of the change. The food starts to seem a bit bland, the workouts are tough. This is where you need to remind yourself why you started down this path (see item #1). To me, this is where the power of journaling/blogging comes into play. You can review the progress you have made. Re-celebrate the wins and think about the misses as you get yourself back on the tracks.
One other key element is having time to focus on what you are doing at the beginning. It is so important to not be in the middle of chaos while trying to make big changes in your life. This is not an excuse to push this off because you are busy, rather a caution to put a little thought into when you will have time to focus on you and your goals.

I bring this up again as I consider what’s happening around me right now. Work continues, of course at breakneck speed; school events seem never-ending and weekends are now consumed with sporting and other extracurricular activities. I just joined a gym and am making an effort to get there 4 times per week. Monday and Tuesday, I went early, before work. Wednesday was a rest day and I was going to go in this morning. However, that did not happen (hello snooze bar). My secondary plan was to go in the evening. I had to run a few errands getting ready for the weekend. And then a few more and finally was ready to go. at 9:30p. My wife made the comment that I picked a less than ideal time to join the gym with everything else in high gear. I thought about what she said and replied that this is just part of making the lifestyle change. Life is busy, things pop up and we need to ebb and flow to accomplish the things we believe are important. Then, stepping off my soapbox, I considered all the time I invested upfront in educating myself about the road I was now travelling upon and reached the same conclusion I did awhile ago…timing is everything.