I've lost 16 pounds in the past 7 months or so. The bulk of it was lost over the summer when I was working out on average four times a week. And the last few pounds slid off within the first month of school, with the increase in activity on a daily basis and the lack of frequent calorie consumption.

My clothes are baggy now. I have jeans from high school that I'm still squeezing into though, so I'm determined to lose a little bit more weight. My body feels better, looking in the mirror is much more appealing these days than it has been in the past. And I'm proud of myself for working so hard to make this happen.

So when I showed my mom a pair of pants that have about three inches to spare around the waist, her response threw me. "That's really great!" But it was followed with "Are you sure you're not losing weight because you're running high?"

First, my A1c has been within a moderate range in the past few years. Not high enough to cause weight loss, for sure. And second, the highs that I've been having lately are not paralleled with the weight loss. I lost the weight before I saw all these recent highs (which my mother actually didn't really know about).

It just irks me that my hard work is ignored or overlooked because diabetes might me causing my results. For once in my life, I've worked hard and diabetes hasn't interfered. I did it on my own.

And I want that to be known. I want my weight loss to be my doing, not the results of elevated blood sugars or skipping insulin shots or whatever. Working out four times a week wasn't something that diabetes did. Running miles at a time, building stamina and endurance, going to exercise classes on a weekly basis...diabetes wasn't there cheering me on or helping me out.

In fact, diabetes made it ten times harder. I'd be in the middle of an amazing run with long stride and wind in my lungs, when my legs would give out and my head would spin. Or I'd be concentrating on abs and thigh muscles when my stomach would throw a fit of nausea because my blood sugar was soaring too high while working out. So many things that diabetes did to make losing weight and exercising right so much harder than it should have been.

Now, I don't have time to work out that often. And I feel my muscle turn into flab. I see my shape lose the tone that I loved so much. And I think that my health complicating everything the way it does is exactly why my hard work is slowly slipping.

So I really hope that I see some relief soon. I'd love to be back in the gym, to spend the afternoons running until I can't take it anymore, to see the scale dip lower again. I just need these medications to stop messing with my life so drastically: for the highs to disappear, for my skin to clear, and for the fatigue to vanish.

And no, the highs aren't affecting my weight. I'm skinny all on my own!