The last few months have been a very large roller-coaster. I managed to keep the weight down until about the middle of January and then my sleeping and eating patterns got all out of wack. Stress and lack of sleep for more than 2 months reversed most (not all) of the gains I had managed to achieve since November.
I finally managed to find a decent family doctor as compared to the quack I was seeing before. Well, truthfully I haven’t seen him in close to 3 years after a couple of incidents that I will describe in a later post.
It seems that my A1C is high – like type 2 diabetes high. Not sure what the number is just yet but its high enough that the Doctor recommend metformin which is a first line diabetes medication.
A few weeks ago I had started to get my sleeping back under control but now I’m getting back into exercising daily again and really cutting back on carbohydrates and sugars.
I picked up one of the Contour Next devices yesterday. Have only used it about 3 times so far and readings have all been in the normal range. That doesn’t necessarily mean if I can keep it there that the A1C count will go back to normal. Apparently there is a lot of different factors that may account for a high or low reading when you have routine blood work done.
Bottom line however is that I may have been pre-diabetic for years, even before my last set of blood work 5 years ago which I assume was normal. But at the same time, this was the quack that I was talking about that was reviewing the blood work so god only knows whether there were signs back then or not.
Regardless, I’m here now.
Goals currently are:
- Maintain a 7-8 hour block of time to sleep
- Shift towards a more Mediterranean diet long term
- Exercise – at least 300 minutes per week (this is double the recommended minimum)
- Monitor (blood, BP)
In principle, the A1C measure can’t be fooled as it is a measure of the amount of sugar attached to your red blood cells. This is an reflection of how good or bad you have been over the course of the last 3 months (i.e. the average lifespan of a red blood cell). So improving that measure its a question of controlling your nutrition and exercise, not over a few days but, over the long term.
I will still be including periodic fasting as part of getting things back on track. Hopefully in three months once the next set of blood work is scheduled for, there will be a marked improvement. For now I need to wait until next week to find out exactly what my A1C actually was to see how much damage has been caused.
Currently back at 335 lbs as of today. I’m hoping to be back under 320 before end of May.