Staying Positive

Living with Diabetes is all about attitude. It's about finding a way to stay motivated to do what you must to survive. In my case I found it easier to do what I could to start instead of thinking about the things I couldn't do. Thats when I understood what living with this illness was all about.

When I started going to the gym I could walk the treadmill slowly and used that as my starting point. I tried the elliptical but thought it was an torture device, I just couldn't do it for more than a couple of minutes. So I stuck with doing the treadmill and after a few weeks I could go further and faster. I started getting bored with it so I thought it was time to do the elliptical again. It was still hard at first but it was easier and after a couple of months was able to do 4 miles at a time.

It's the same with food if you stop eating everything bad all at once you will probably not stick to your meal plan. So Instead of doing that try eating a healthy food you like. Then add more healthy food to your meals , once you find you are eating more healthy food then you can stop eating stuff thats bad for you but do it one item at a time not all at once.

The most important thing is to find the positive in any situation. If your a1c was a 10.0 and you go back and your a1c is a 9.0 don't focus on the fact that it needs to be lower focus on the fact that you did go down a point and work on expanding what you did to get it to go down. Numbers can be the biggest trap for us. If you eat something you shouldn't and test right away and it's to high now you have a negative situation and by testing you are adding to it. If I cheat I don't test, being high for a few hours is not going to do much harm if it's a once in a while thing and really won't change the a1c that much. Instead of worrying about what I did wrong today I think about what I did right yesterday and what I will do right tomorrow.

Another big problem I find people running into is Doctors visit. I got lucky and found the right Endo for me on my second try. I have heard from many people who dread Endo visits and actually put up with a doctor that will yell at them if they haven't done all they needed to. If your Endo or Doctor visits don't have a positive spin on them it's time for a new Doctor. No matter what my numbers have been when I walk out of my endo's office I am feeling better than when I walked in and am ready to do better than I have.

The moral of the story for me is if I dwell on the things I can't do, if find I run into a lot of stuff I can't do. If I dwell on what I can do I find I can do more than I thought I could.