The Big Blue Post + Weekly Update 11/18/09

The Big Blue Test!

Saturday was World Diabetes Day 2009. Landmarks all around the world were lit up in blue in honor of diabetes awareness. And Tu Diabetes sponsored an event called "The Big Blue Test," in which people with diabetes would test together, exercise together, and then test again. The point of exercising was to raise awareness of how exercise can help with blood glucose levels.

Thanks to Thing 1, here is my Big Blue Test, in pictures!

Here I am, ready for The Big Blue Test! (That's my *eager* face!)

Testing: 1, 2, 3.... Used my pinkie, guess I was in a *fancy* mood.

95 before exercise!

It was a beautiful fall day, so I decided to go for a walk. I wanted to see how a lower impact exercise would affect my numbers.

I took a brisk, 15-minute walk, I'm guessing about 3/4 mile to 1 mile in length.

Here's the view from the end of my street. Wish I could have treated you to a view of some lovely horses, too, but the pasture was empty.

"Holy coronitas!!!" You can't see what I'm disbelieving, but it's a reading of...64?!?!
Must be a bad strip, I'll test again....

Second test: 69?!? Testing one more time...

Third and final test: 70! Think I'll have a little snack....

So there is some variation on test strips. This batch, on the whole, has seemed a little lower during the month, so it will be interesting to see how I trend on the next batch of test strips. But still, when I looked at other Big Blue Test participants' results on Twitter during the day, many had dramatic drops after only 14 minutes of exercise. I knew exercise was beneficial, but it was interesting to me to see how even mild exercise could make a noticeable difference. As my good friend Foodie McBody tweeted to me, "It's too bad the (weight) scale doesn't show such wonderful and instantaneous results, eh?"

I saw other participants' results going up rather than down; that had to be discouraging! There are variations on how one's body responds to exercise, and I've noticed this in my own experience. Sometimes I tend to run a little higher on race days (race-day excitement affects my blood glucose levels), when I perform harder exercise (stress on my body can raise blood glucose levels-I noticed this more when I was starting to run), and when I am not getting enough rest.

Anyhow, if you're newly diagnosed and have been advised by your doctor or diabetes educator to use exercise as part of your plan to manage your diabetes, why not try your own "big blue test" and see if your results confirm or deny the effect of exercise on your blood glucose levels? (Unless, of course, you cannot exercise due to disability or medical advice!)

Progress last week

7-day blood glucose average: 88 (met goal of less than 120) <-skewed a bit by the BBT
7-day fasting blood glucose average: 95 (met goal of less than 120)

Weight goals: +1.6. Drat, back up in the 190s! I'm not doing so hot with my eating at home...I've pin-pointed it to stress-feeding, and I need to figure out a better outlet than grabbing salty, high-calorie snackage.

Food goals:
- Brought lunch from home on only one work day, but went nice & healthy & somewhat frugally on the buying days and used protein that I already had in my desk (love dry roasted edamame!).
- Ate lots of veggies. I think this is the first weekend in some time that I didn't make my ratatouille.
- Got in at least 4 meatless meals but 0 fish meals.
- Fiber: at least 4/7 days were over 30.

Exercise goals: Didn't meet 30/day for 5 days, but I wasn't expecting to do so this week.
Total estimated mileage: 21.56 miles
- Wednesday: 20 minutes run (1.44 miles)
- Thursday: 40 minutes walk (1.84 miles) + 10 minute video (ab exercises)
- Friday: 37 minutes (20 walking the dog, .25; 17 running, 1.44 miles) + 1 hour vigorous playing at the park with the kids
- Saturday: 15 minutes walk (.75 mile)
- Sunday: 15 minutes on stationary bike (no mileage estimate)
- Monday: 35 minutes walk (1.84 miles)
- Tuesday: 60 minutes spin class (monitor broken, so I have no idea of the distance; estimating 14 miles)

Sleep: Met goal of 7 hours/night.

Goals for this week

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: below 120.
Weight goal: Maintain or make progress toward goal.

Food goals:
- Keep going with the veggies!
- Rein in the nuts and dark chocolate; pass by some of the "just a taste of this" and "I'll have a dab of that." Get the homefront eating under control.
- Bring lunch from home 4/5 work days.
- 4 or more meatless, low-fat meals and 2 or more fish meals.
- Track fiber. Minimum 30 grams fiber/day. (Include both insoluble and soluble sources.)

Exercise goals:
30 minutes of activity 5 days/week. Prepare as best I can for the Pillar Point 10K on Sunday!

Misc. goals:
- 7 or more hours sleep/night.

What, November Already?!?

What's New?

Whew! Well, Halloween is done, and boy, was it busy and fun! Things 1 & 2 enjoyed it quite a lot; they were Dale Earnhardt, Jr. of NASCAR fame and a pink cheetah princess. They had a Halloween carnival at school on Friday (I took last Friday off to attend; bonus was "date time" with Mr. Handsome-and-Handy!) and they went trick-or-treating with one of the neighbor kids (who made a great SuperMan; not just the costume but the slicked hair!) on Saturday. Perfect weather-not too cold-and a beautiful, almost-full moon. Mr. H&H hollowed out 6 huge pumpkins! We had fun carving them and making toasted pumpkin seeds. (Nothing terribly sophisticated, but Mr. H&H's "Windows 7" with horns was delightfully geeky.) And while I love the toasted seeds, sorting the seeds from the guts is *almost* not worth the trouble. Evening snuck up on us, though; the pumpkins took longer than we thought, plus we had to cook dinner, too! Ack! All of a sudden we were racing for time, and everyone ended up eating at the counter or standing up. Oh well. Our good pal "twriter" came over for the festivities; the guys watched baseball and hockey and passed out candy while I took the kids around with our neighbor. Luckily, our next door neighbors came over before I went. They had dressed up their 1-year-old as a bee, and they dressed as beekeepers; too cute!

I may not have paid much attention to the scale in the past when it came to the holidays, but boy, the blood glucose meter sure does help me from straying TOO out of line with the sweets. I had some noshings over the weekend, as planned. When Monday rolled around, though, I'm happy to say I got back on track. When I went to bed that night, I felt a little rumble...was that my stomach? Been awhile since I'd felt that sensation! But I knew I'd had plenty to eat that day, and it was a much more pleasant sensation than uncomfortably full. (I did the "Beck thing" and made a little mantra of it: "a little hungry feels better than belly-bustingly full." Thanksgiving should be a good litmus test of that one, don't you think? ;-D )

Oh, So You Noticed The New Decor?

Yes, it's American Diabetes Month here on "Opposite Life" and elsewhere on the blogosphere, culminating in World Diabetes Day on November 14. So I'm sporting the nifty blue template! If you have diabetes, have you heard about "The Big Blue Test"? Save a couple of test strips, and join in! Per the site: "On that day, at 14:00 hours (local time), thousands of people with diabetes will test their blood sugar, do 14 minutes of exercise, test again and share their results on TuDiabetes or on Twitter." The exercise is to highlight the importance of exercise as a tool in managing diabetes. People without diabetes can play, too: join us in 14 minutes of exercise, and be glad you don't have to poke your finger before and after...maybe do a couple of burpees (or your love-to-hate-it exercise of choice) before and after, in solidarity.

Walgreens' Diabetes Wellness Clinics

When I was in the gym locker room today, an ad on TV caught my ears and eyes: Walgreens is hosting diabetes wellness clinics in November at participating stores. According to the Walgreens press release:

"The events, held in recognition of American Diabetes Month®, will take place between Nov. 9-13 and Nov. 16-20 at most 24-hour Walgreens stores.

"Each of these locations will host a six-hour walk-in clinic offering free blood glucose testing, or, for individuals diagnosed with diabetes, free A1C testing. Free pharmacist consultations are also available. Each store’s clinic will be held on one day during either the Nov. 9-13 or Nov. 16-20 timeframe.

"Walgreens also announced it will donate $1 to the American Diabetes Association for every test performed at its Diabetes Wellness Events, up to $100,000."

To find a clinic near you here, see the Walgreens Diabetes Wellness Events page.

I found about my having type 2 diabetes from a pharmacy health screening. (Not a free one, though!) Oh, my doctor had gently noodged me about it during my annual exam, given my history of gestational diabetes, but I demurred. ("'Denial' isn't just a river in Egypt," so says the ol' saw....) Earlier in 2008, Mr. Handsome-and-Handy had gone to the doctor regarding heart health; everything's fine there, but he started making some changes toward getting healthier. I'm not sure if the vitamin D and fish oil supplements that I started taking along with him helped me wake up, but I was inspired to go to a pharmacy health screening myself. What an eye-opener that was! In hindsight, I suppose I could have had it covered by going to the doctor's office, but I think I was hoping that either all would be normal or close enough to normal that I could fix it without help. Boy, was I wrong there!

Progress last week

7-day blood glucose average: 100 (met goal of less than 120)
7-day fasting blood glucose average: 96 (met goal of less than 120)

Weight goals: -.6, so out of the 190s. Barely.

Food goals:
- Brought lunch from home on all work days - yeay!
- Ate lots of veggies. Made my crockpot grilled veggie ratatouille again, with less oil; still delicious! I should have made a bigger batch.
- Got in at least 4 meatless meals and 0 fish meals. (Met meatless, missed fish by 2)
- Fiber: at least 3/7 days were over 30.

Exercise goals: I don't think the following prepared me terribly well for my upcoming races, but oh well. Sometimes it's all about doing what you can with the time you've got.
- Wednesday: 60 minutes BodyPump
- Thursday: 45 minute walk
- Friday: 45 minutes hike/jogging, and then a strength "playout" on the backyard swing set with Thing 2. (She likes playing "Mommy's Personal Trainer"; it plays nicely into her liking to tell people what to do.)
- Saturday: Nada
- Sunday: Nada
- Monday: 40 minutes walk
- Tuesday: 60 minutes spin class (hard, but felt great!)

Sleep: Met goal of 7 hours/night. Wish they were a little more uninterrupted; Thing 2 has resumed her nocturnal attempts to get me to give up my side of the bed, so lots of walking her back to her own bed. Ugh.

Goals for this week

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: below 120.
Weight goal: Maintain or make progress toward goal.

Food goals:
- Keep going with the veggies!
- Rein in the nuts and dark chocolate; pass by some of the "just a taste of this" and "I'll have a dab of that."
- Bring lunch from home 4/5 work days.
- 4 or more meatless, low-fat meals and 2 or more fish meals.
- Track fiber. Minimum 30 grams fiber/day. (Include both insoluble and soluble sources.)

Exercise goals:
Minimum of 30 minutes of activity 5 days/week. Prepare for the Theta Breakers 5K run on 11/8 and the Pillar Point 10K on 11/22.

Misc. goals:
- 7 or more hours sleep/night.