Taking Tablets

Ohh my  word, it has been a long time. I'm sorry, my adoring public, I shouldn't be letting you down like this. So, what is new?

Well, the beast that is diabetes has grabbed me by the earlobes, in the same way that Chris Tarrant used to grab unfortunate children during Tiswas. The prize I win is a selection of tablets, which reduce my sugar a bit, but not a lot. The gliclazide worked pretty well, but I was worried about early Beta cell failure, so I'm now on something called sitaglyptin, which works in a different way. Instead of making my pancreas produce more insulin, it stops the insulin in my blood from being broken down. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much insulin there to preserve, and since I've stopped taking the gliclazide, my sugar has shot up into the teens most of the time. Yes, I know, it's too high.

Weight wise, I'm down to 12 st 6, which is not bad. I lost 6lb in July when I did a week trekking in Europe and managed to walk over 130 miles in six days. It hurt, but it was a great achievement. Who knows, maybe I'll do it again next year. The exercise certainly makes me feel better, but it is hard to get going when your sugar is so high you just want to sleep.

I'm still suffering from an ice-cream addiction, but I'm not really taking in much other sugar. I'm having to be really quite careful and often spend the evenings pacing the living room to try to get the gloop out of my blood. I suppose the good thing is that, unlike gliclazide, the new tablets don't promote weight gain. I'm a pound lighter than I was in July. I hope the trend is futher downwards.

Exercise: Back on Form

Back in December I listed some of the challenges I was facing.

Problems
1) Ice cream addiction.
2) Working a 60 hour week, with no personal time.
3) Means all extra-curricular activity, like exercise, has been shelved due to lack of time and exhaustion. 

Solutions to this problem?
1) Win the lottery.
2) Give up work.
3) Go and do some exercise.
4) Stop eating ice-cream. 
5) Relax

So, here we are in March and how far have I got?

1) I haven't won the lottery. I keep trying, but some other git always pips me to the post.
2) I haven't given up work, but I have slightly reduced the workload and applied for two other, less stressful jobs. Actually, getting one of those would be like winning the lottery.
3) I have started doing lots of exercise and I feel 3000% better. I can't tell you how much better I feel now I'm up and moving again. I must remember how crap inactivity makes me feel.
4) I have reduced the amount of ice-cream I'm eating, but not managed to give it up completely. I think I have a sugar addiction. There are times when it actually hurts in my chest. It's the same feeling like when I used to crave cigarettes before I gave up many decades ago. It's probably some sort of solar plexus twitch.
5) Not a hope in hell.

Listen to your Leptin!

I really want a t-shirt telling the world to "Listen to your Leptin". It would be just sooo cool. The 25% of the country which is overweight would be doing well to heed the advice.

Leptin is the protein that tells your body when it has had enough to eat. Obese people actually produce MORE leptin than svelte people but, get this, us fatties just ignore the signals and carry on scoffing. We need to reduce the background noise so the message can get through to our brains... this means, yep, you guessed it, eating less. 

It's a vicious circle: the fatter you are, the harder it is to hear the leptin; when you slim down to a normal weight, it gets easier. 

So, mantra for the new year diet?
 
Listen to your Leptin.