Is Diabetes much of a Challenge

Life is a series of challenges, Type 2 Diabetes is just another challenge. To me the biggest problems are history and misinformation. I have had type 2 for around 14 years now, everything they taught me at the newly opened Diabetes clinic at the local hospital 14 years ago is pretty much useless information now. We are creatures of habit but Diabetes treatment is forever changing. The meds, the diet the ideas are always new and different.

Unlike a lot of other of life's challenges we label ourselves with this one. Either as diabetics or the more politically correct “person with Diabetes” If we are going to label ourselves why do it with the name of the illness? How about calling ourselves “The person that lives healthy lives” or “ The person that eats low carb”? Personally I don't believe in labels due to illness but no matter which label you prefer the old or the newer they both refer to an illness there fore are negative labels. Why do that to yourself?

I wear a medic alert necklace, why because if I am out on my own and go low that will help them know what to do for me, Some don't like it since they think it will reflect poorly on them as if having an illness makes them weaker. I can't control others perceptions nor would I want to I see my medic alert necklace as a positive helpful thing so why would I care what someone else thinks of it. If I see diabetes as a weakness then that is what it is but I now look at it as just something else to deal with. I read food labels now as a matter of habit. I don't plan meals since my wife and I only have healthy stuff in the house it really dose not matter what we make. If I do have to eat out I have checked out the nutritional values of most place online before I go and if it's not available will stick with plain foods with I know will not put my food plan to far off.

I learn new things every day and my food plan and way of treating Diabetes is always changing. I
think that is the biggest change Diabetes has made on my life is I don't have the luxury of being a creature of habit. But almost anything worth doing in life isn't easy so why should the challenge of Diabetes be any different ?

But then again how much of a challenge is Diabetes? Compare it to raising kids or succeeding in your career or just keeping you and your family happy is just eating right and doing a little exercise harder than any of that. Yeah we have to take meds and test our sugar but how long do either of those take? Sure sometimes it's hard to find the time to do the things we have to. but compared to the time it takes to die a slow agonizing death thanks to diabetes many complications what 30 minutes a day to exercise?

Keep your goals realistic, if you set your goals to high you may fail. Do it one step at a time. When you have conquered the challenge of Diabetes you may realize it wasn't that much of a challenge.

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.