Exercising on the Sly

For a diabetic one of the best ways to lower your blood sugar is to exercise. It's recommended that your exercise after meals as a way of maintaining your blood sugar. The hard thing about that is when you're working. After all, how do you get your heart rate up in an office? My answer is using the stairs. I know this will be hard to do in Washington, DC where security measures make stairways inaccessible to get back in to you office. My strategy is to go up and down once (I have eight flights of stairs) and then take the stairs all the way out and take the elevator back up. That is a good ten minutes of exercise which does seem to have an impact on the blood sugar.

Hey Michashell, thanks for the comment. You know what? After a week of monitoring I'm already making discoveries.

1. I can eat bread! I ate a egg sandwich (made with egg whites)! and TWO slices of whole wheat bread. My blood sugar didn't spike. WOO!

2. Tomatoes make my blood sugar go up a lot. Boo! Thanks for pointing out the tomato thing Michashell! I looked at my log and noticed that my tomato salad was making my blood sugar go way up after eating.

So the hardest part emotionally of this was telling my parents. My parents have been telling me my entire life to lose weight and eat better. I've resisted them 100% of the way. Not because I haven't been trying to eat healthy and exercise but I hated the body image stuff. I was afraid that telling my parents would be a calvacade of "I told you so's."

So yesterday I got the results of my urine test back with my albumin and creatinine levels. They were high and I was freaking out. The only person I could call was my dad who is a retired doctor. My mom answered the phone and I told her. She was shocked. When I asked to talk to my dad I steeled myself. It was bad at first. He did say things like "when you come home you always eat a lot." He also went on a big list of things I should do, all of which was covered by my diabetes management class. I listened to him and then took a deep breath and told him what I was doing and what the diabetes class told me to do. Here's the amazing thing, he apologized. He apologized for not listening and told me it would have been better if I told him the steps I was already taking first. My dad never apologizes. On top of that, he was very reassuring. He told me my levels were high and indicative of diabetes but I was nowhere near renal failure. He told me this was manageable and gave me a list of things to ask my doctor about.

I think the shrink on Grey's Anatomy was right. The point is to feel the horrible feelings and realize you won't die from them.