I had one, maybe two, good weeks on Atkins. Then funky things started happening with my blood sugar again. Despite not eating many carbs (and keeping those precious few carbs I ate to things like spinach, broccoli and baby romaine), my premeal readings started creeping up again.

Somedays, I'd wake up high--higher than when I went to bed the night before. One night, I went to sleep at 133 (which isn't too shabby for me these days) and woke up at 190. I didn't eat anything in my sleep either. That just isn't fair. If I'm going to be 190, I should at least get the joy of having done something to "deserve" it.

So about 10 days ago, I e-mailed my doctor to say, OK, what now? If you've been following this saga, you'll know that he's had me on and off meds for months now. I don't know how he decides that I don't need any meds, because when I take meds, my blood sugar is controlled. When I don't take meds, it isn't, at least not for long. My idea was maybe I should take a glyburide and wait until my blood sugar goes up again to take another.

The problem with glyburide is my blood sugar goes too low when I take it. When I don't take it, it goes to high. I think that's why I liked insulin better. At least then I had more control over how much insulin was floating through my veins. With the meds that stimulate insulin production, it feels like a major crap shoot.

So for about a week and a half, I've been sporatically taking half a pill every few days and working really hard with exercise on the days I don't take it. The cool thing is I've discovered exercise really works wonders. A good walk can drop my blood sugar 50 points or more. The bad thing is, this really isn't what I would call good control. The visit to my opthalmologist proved that.

I also didn't lose much weight on Atkins, either. I think it's because in order for it to work, your body has to go into ketosis (not to be confused with diabetic ketoacidosis) and burn fat for energy. With my blood sugar running higher, I can only assume that my liver was churning out more glucose to fuel my body. I tested for ketones several times and never had them, and I was definitely eating under 20g of carbs.

So, I am once again, giving up on another diet. It wasn't working for blood sugar control and it wasn't working for weight loss, so it must not be the right diet for my body. For now, I'm going to keep focusing on eating conciously while continuing to work on getting my blood sugar in control.

And to celebrate my breaking Atkins, I had some much missed brown rice. Yum.