I have been riding the rollercoaster BIG TIME the last couple of weeks. High every morning, still fighting to control my eating urges after suppertime. Because of those urges, I’ve been eating crappy snacks after supper, not counting as close as I need to, etc. This means that I’m running high or low, rebounding & overtreating, waking up feeling like crap in the mid-300s and spending half the day trying to get back down under 200.
In a recent post, Amy T of www.diabetesmine.com commented that she finds it comforting and a little unsettling to find someone at the 25-year mark still struggling with the same issues. That’s perhaps part of why managing diabetes is so damn difficult. You never get a break, and I’m tired of dealing with it all the time.
My biggest struggle is with my diet, and I guess recognizing that is a big step. It is a real struggle for me to measure everything, and to be honest with my serving sizes (funny how they just keep getting bigger and bigger unless you measure them all the time!).
I also resent the fact that I have to count everything. It pisses me off. When I sit down with a bag of Doritos, I’d like to eat them! I don’t want to count every 12 chips. Besides, you still run into issues when you get to the bottom of the bag with all the “chip chips” – you know, all the little broken pieces…
How about having to weigh 1 ounce of potato chips? I hate pulling out the scale and measuring tools to eat something. I hate it.
But, if I don’t do that, my “serving size” tends to be more what I WANT it to be rather than what it really is.
Diet control and willpower are critical to diabetes management (and just general health overall). It’s a problem that spans many more people than just those with diabetes, but I’ve got so much more numerical feedback than just my weight.
It also seems like such a vicious cycle. When I’m high, I feel like crap. When I’m low, I feel like crap. I also feel like of all the BG numbers I see (40 – 600), the target range is SO LITTLE (even with a broad range of 80 – 180). Even if I didn’t eat anything, it would be tough to stay in that range while participating in an active normal lifestyle.
I sometimes get into a “screw it” mode, where I really fly off the handle. I will end up snacking all day, often eating before my post-meal BG’s can return to target. I keep adding fuel to the fire all day.
I really don’t mean to bitch and moan so much today – I’m just tired of it all. I’m Ok, though. It’s just part of the cycle of diabetic life. I’m entitled to be in a bad mood sometimes, and expressing that is important.
I’ll kick the next person who says, “At least diabetes is manageable.” That is very true, but it sometimes seems like a lifetime of undeserved punishment and extra responsibility. It can sometimes be a real burden.
On a spiritual note, I do feel that there is (there has to be) some greater purpose behind this. I try to keep that in mind when I’m feeling frustrated.
