The Rambling Road: Experiments

Last week, I learned the hard lesson of not eating too much at one time, something I hope I don’t soon forget. But, the experience got me to thinking about the side effects, especially as they relate to my blood sugar that I am monitoring twice a day.

When I went into the hospital, my numbers were dangerously high (along with apparently everything else being dangerously out of whack…), but a regular course of insulin injections brought them down to more manageable levels. Since I’ve been home, my numbers have still been high, but far better than they were.

What I wanted to find out is whether I could affect those numbers even more by changing my approach to what, how, and when I am eating, how much water I am drinking, when I am taking related medications, and how much physical activity I am getting.

Granted, those are a lot of variables to monkey with at once, but they all have a common component of metabolism, and metabolism is a key factor in my greatest risk factor, that being the fact that I am still well overweight.

As things stand now, I am waiting to eat until I am discernibly hungry, which means that I don’t have a regular meal time schedule as it is difficult to predict when I might be hungry. Further, I am consuming massive amounts of water, right now at least a gallon to a gallon and a half a day. I also increased the time between doses of my medication to spread it more evenly through the day. Finally, I am using a regime of “natural movement” exercises to increase my physical activity as I build up the stamina to do more.

I have been following this plan for about three days now, and the result is that my blood sugar number was in the “normal” ranger for the first time in quite a while yesterday afternoon and again tonight. Granted, this plan is not without cost, as I suspect some part of my fatigue is related to the change in quantity and timing of calorie intake, but my hope is that I can retrain by body to get used to the change and also lose weight in the process.

Presuming my numbers stay where they are supposed to be, I will continue this process for as long as it works or until I come up with something better.

DLH

Read more at my The Rambling Road weblog…