In the past month, I've really gotten off track with my life. School and work seemed to be picking up, so I set a few things on the back burner (not to mention that I had a flare up with my other health conditions). The things that got pushed to the back were really major pieces of my diabetes management.
For one, I stopped working out in the way that I had been leading up to mid-March. Before Spring Break, I was working out at least twice a week (jogging 1.5-3 miles on the treadmill). But after Spring Break, life got in the way so I didn't make the time to add those workouts back into my schedule. I made all sorts of excuses: I was too tired, I wanted to go out with friends, I hadn't watched TV in forever, I had to study. Sadly, I think I've worked out a total of three or four times in the past month...that's just really disappointing.
On top of that, I stopped paying attention to my food and nutrition habits. I started eating out more than normal or cooking poorly balanced meals at home. I stopped eating as much fruit. I skipped on salads for things like pasta and hamburgers. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty.
And now, a month later I hate the results. I haven't gained any weight, but I sure haven't lost any. And the toning that I was seeing in my body is now completely out the window. I look in the mirror and highly dislike what I see, which is a way that I really don't want to feel. Working out and maintaining a good diet help me feel on top of my body's game. It makes life easier.
Even if my body had stayed the same, my blood sugars really haven't. I see a brief peak in my blood sugars from foods on a regular basis. But mostly, I see a consistent basis of highs and lows when I cut out my normal exercise and nutrition routine. The increase in carbs makes my boluses larger than normal, which often leads to lows. Then I over-treat the lows (and take in way too many calories) which in turn causes gross highs. It's a total balancing act between exercising and eating right to the point that my body and my blood sugars see some return.
But I've taken my month off and I'm seriously ready to hit the pavement running. I'm actually about to toss in a thirty minute workout tonight, and hoping for at least two more this week. I'd love to make it to the gym to get some weight resistance training done in these next few weeks as well, but I'm not sure that I'll set my goals quite that high yet.
On top of the exercise habit, I'm also restarting the yeast-free diet that I tried last summer. While I was on the diet and working out regularly, I lost eight pounds. Unfortunately, when I came back to school I stopped working out and the increased stress wreaked havoc on my diet so I gained it all back. Now I'm ready to give it another try and see if I can actually keep the weight off this time around.
For the yeast-free diet, I make my own exceptions to the rules. If I go "carb free" then I see plummeting lows all over the place. So I eat a lot of brown rice and sweet potatoes. Mostly, my diet is a lot of fruit and vegetables with some protein thrown in there. A normal day can look like this: fruit for breakfast, salad with boiled egg and a cup of brown rice for lunch, and a stew with lots of veggies and lean protein for dinner. It isn't my ideal diet and it really does make eating out ridiculously hard, but the "cleanse" is recommended by my doctor to keep my other health conditions in check.
So the next few weeks will be a little tough (since I'm adding all this into school and work), but I'm prepared to like the end results. Even if I could lose five pounds from this, I'd like those benefits. Then at least I could feel motivated to stay on the exercise wagon in order to lose the remaining weight (about fifteen pounds total). I just hope that I'll keep up with it this time and not let school and Spring Break (good thing Mexico is so over!) get in the way.
