I originally wanted to call this entry my weight loss journey, but as I began to think about it, my journey is more than about weight loss… it’s about my health. I used to be very healthy and active when I was young. In high school, I played football and ran track. After high school, I was involved in intramural sports in college. As I got older, got married, and had kids, I became less active, and like a lot of people, I kept eating like I was far more active than I actually was. In high school, I played inside linebacker on our football team, and I had a playing weight of 182 pounds. By the time I was in my late twenties I was about 235 pounds, by my mid 30’s it was 280 pounds and my mid 40’s it was about 330 pounds. Looking back, I was putting on about 50 pounds per decade, or about 5 pounds per year. When it’s only 5 pounds per year, it creeps upon you, and you don’t realize how big you are getting.
About four years ago, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and I figured no big deal. I will just take a pill once a day, and it will be ok. It wasn’t ok. One pill a day became two pills a day, and eventually three pills. By January 2020, I was neglecting my diabetes and sometimes taking my medicine and sometimes not. I was never watching what I ate. Daily blood sugar testing, that was never happening. I went for about five months without a test. Probably because I knew I was going to have high numbers and didn’t want to deal with it. Then in January 2020, I switched physicians and went in for a physical so that my new doctor would prescribe me the other medications I needed. I was on different medications for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I was a mess. They say that for many people, they don’t make a change until they are faced with a crisis. This was the day that was a shocker for me. I was in a crisis. My blood sugar that day was over 450, and my A1C was over 14. My doctor said I needed to make immediate changes that day, or I was in danger of becoming insulin-dependent, possible blindness, neuropathy, and possible future amputations caused by diabetic complications. Why didn’t I do something before this visit? I was trying to convince myself that my diabetes wasn’t that bad even though I wasn’t checking it. After all, I had lost just over 30 pounds in the last six months and wasn’t doing much at all to lose it. I should have known better. The extremely high blood sugar level was causing rapid weight loss. It was my body’s way of screaming for help.
Thud. That was the sound of a brick just hitting me. I immediately changed my diet that day. Gone were all the sugar and complex carbs. I was focused on a low glycemic index diet from now on.
Along with the changes to diet, I had to get more active. At my size, running was out of the question, so I had to start a walking regime. I had heard over the years that you should get in 10,000 steps a day, so that was my goal. I started off slow at first just going on 1 – 1 1/2 mile walks in the morning, then adding a walk in the evening so that I could get my 10,000 steps in. There is a famous quote that says, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.” These are my first steps. Follow along with me on my health journey by following along in my blog to see what happens next.