Beyond frustrated, probably more like angry

In the ongoing saga with my low blood sugar, I went from frustrated to pissed off.  I had a good, hearty breakfast in preparation for a long workout at the gym.  Right before I hopped in the car to drive over there, my blood sugar level was 145.  That was perfectly fine because I had just finished eating about thirty minutes before.  I felt that I would be okay during my workout.  I put a nutrition bar in my purse to eat on my way home afterwards, so I felt pretty armed. During my hour and a half workout, I hit the machines pretty hard and I was just oozing sweat.  It was a "good" sweat, though.  Although, towards the end, my fingers started tingling and I was starting to feel out of sorts.  Uh oh.

I got in my car and ate the nutrition bar on the way home.  As soon as I got in the house, I went straight to the kitchen where my monitor was to test my finger.  My blood sugar had dropped from 145 before my workout to 56.  Dammit! Like I said, I was past frustrated and was just plain pissed off. What can I do to be normal around my blood sugar?  I'm just so confused.  I definitely am tracking everything and have the soonest available appointment with my doctor on January 15th.  Sure, I could go in to see another doctor, but I want to see her.  She is the one that first diagnosed me with diabetes, helped me get to Optifast and has just been through everything with me having been my primary care doctor for the last 15+ years. I want to get her advice on what I should do.  The food plan that the Optifast clinic gave me just isn't going to work for my situation.  If I was still following it, my blood sugar would be even lower than it is now, which is unimaginable for me.  Anyway, after I had the low reading, I chewed on four Lifesavers that I bought yesterday to raise my blood sugar.  Basically, the remedy for low blood sugar is to eat 15 grams of carbohydrates, which is one serving, until it raises and stays elevated.  I decided that I was going to let it go and just try to move on from there.  However, I am going to call my doctor's office tomorrow and see if she can squeeze me in sooner.  Sometimes she does have a couple of appointments held off of the books, so I'll see what she can do.

Trying to move past my anger with the blood sugar, because it wasn't doing anything good for me, I spent the day with my mom.  She took me to lunch and then she went shopping with me so that I can buy a new bed for my guest room as well as an office chair and coffee table.  It was nice to spend the day with her.  For Christmas, I bought her a sapphire earring/ring/necklace set and she wore it today, proud of the way I treat her.  She told me that it made her feel very special and loved.  I am amazed at how far our relationship has grown.  From a childhood of abuse at her hands has grown a very special mother/daughter bond where we work through our issues and have grown to really love and respect each other as adults.  I can be honest with her and she can be that way with me.  As I was paying for the furniture at the counter in the store, she told me she's really proud of the woman I've become.  That meant a lot to me and the anger I was feeling earlier was completely gone.  Things really get put into perspective a lot and what seemed like a huge deal before is inconsequential later on.  Funny how that works, huh?  In my heart, I know things are going to work out just fine with my low blood sugar situation, I just don't know what that's going to look like at the present moment.  I need to trust the process and keep doing what I can to be as regular as possible.

All of this is part of the normal process of life -- working through things until you find solutions that work for you instead of taking it out on your body through food.  The purpose of my writing and this blog in particular is not to convince you to do the Optifast program or even to convince you to lose weight.  It is my journey of how I got up to 417 pounds and what I have done/am doing to walk away from that life into a healthier one in every way possible.  I think Optifast is a wonderful program, but it's not my intention to convince you of that.  It has meant so much to me in my journey, but it's only a very small part of the adventure I find myself on.  If you want to know what the program is like, you definitely can read old posts I've written during the days when I was on the fast.  It's the same thing with the weight loss in general.  I have come to absolutely adore and love exercise.  I look forward to it each day.  I wish everyone could fall in love with it the way I have, but that, again, is not my purpose here. 

I suspect that you follow my blog because you're interested in my story for various reasons.  Maybe it's because you, too, can be described as obese (or worse), you've struggled with weight your whole life or there's some shame associated in some way with your size.  Maybe you're here because you are diabetic and don't want to go down the same path I've gone down.  Maybe you're part of my support system, either in person or online, and you just want to find out how I'm doing.  Or perhaps you read my postings because my story is interesting to you in some way and you're privately rooting for me to conquer the weight battle and stand victorious on the other side.  Oh dear friends, I want the same thing, too.  This stuff is hard, it really is.  The entire world judges a person with a weight problem far more harshly than any other addiction, but believe me when I tell you that food addiction is a real thing and many people suffer from it.  I will never preach on my blog about the right way or wrong way of doing the Optifast program or weight loss in general.  What I will do, though, is continuing to talk about the things I'm going through.  I hope that it reaches you in some significant way, even if nothing more than being interesting.  I am the face of an overeater, but I am also the face of a very scrappy fighter --- Kick Ass Kathy.  She's baaack!