More Toothpaste Pictures

My 14s from the summer are getting loose



So I bought these Riders from Walmart, a decidedly snug 12:




My BMI is 26.1 as of this morning. My fasting blood sugar was 111. I do feel like I am getting maybe a little burly around the shoulders :) But you know, I don't think I look like I "earned" pre-diabetes because I'm such an unconscionable couch potato.

Snit Post

Ok, I am probably getting PMS early, but I want to respond to an idea I see bouncing around on the internet-- that diabetes is a choice, and that if diabetics just get their acts together and do right things, they can cure their disease.

Here goes:

"Facing a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, many people immediately ask, ‘Is there a diabetes cure?’ Unfortunately, the answer is no.

"Once you have it, you have it," says R. Paul Robertson, M.D., president, Medicine and Science, of the American Diabetes Association, and professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Washington, Seattle. "You can make it go into remission, but it will always be there because it is a disease linked to your genetics. You can't cure type 2 diabetes because you can't make that gene go away.” But you can make significant strides against the disease, often to the point of quitting medication.

Type 2 Diabetes: Diet and Exercise Can Feel Like a Diabetes Cure

Most people end up with type 2 diabetes for two reasons. Their body has become resistant to insulin because they are overweight or obese. And their pancreas is unable to produce enough insulin to overcome that resistance.

Diet and exercise are considered essential to treating diabetes. In fact, many people who eat right and work out every day respond so well it feels like a diabetes cure, especially if they lose a significant amount of weight and their blood sugar levels remain stable.

Unfortunately, by the time diabetes has progressed far enough to be diagnosed, the pancreas often has been damaged by the strain put on it. Many cells in the organ have ceased producing insulin altogether, and there's no way to reverse the damage. That means if the patient slacks off on diet and exercise, the diabetes will return as strong as ever.

The good news: If you catch diabetes early enough, you can prevent further damage to your pancreas. That makes diet and exercise very important, and maintaining an ideal body weight crucial. In fact, some people can control their blood sugar levels through diet and exercise alone, without having to resort to medicine."

Please believe I am not trying to belittle the critical importance of good diet and exercise. Or the importance of terrorizing your offspring into maintaining a normal weight if diabetes runs in your family :P But it is a genetic problem. You can have a normal BMI and still get diabetes. You can weigh 400 pounds and not get it. It seems terribly important to me we not forward this idea that Type 2s are somehow choosing to be diabetic. It's just not true and it adds stigma to what is already a very difficult diagnosis.

My 145 pound uncle has what used to be called "high blood sugar". My 115 pound grandmother had it. My dad, unsurprisingly, has type 2. When I was a teen with a BMI of 19, I used to faint if I didn't eat right-- hypoglycemia is a precursor to Type 2. There is some evidence that insulin resistance comes first, and the extra weight comes after-- because your body is crying out for the sugar that is circulating in the blood stream rather than gaining admission to the cells.

You take some poor soul who is always hungry, craving carbs, overweight, with a pancreas worn out from years of trying to compensate. That person becomes diabetic. Then you tell him, Gosh, why are you choosing to be diabetic? In what way is that helpful?

All Over Post

I am orienting for my new job, see. Today was nice 'cause I got to ride around with my lovely friend and gossip in between patients. However, the schedule I have written up on the white board looks like this:

7:30 kids to school
8:30 phone meeting
10:00 meet coworker for orientation till 2
2:30 pick up little girls
3:30 herd little girls into ballet suits
4:00 leave for ballet 1/2 hour away
5:00 take something in to office
5:30 pick up little girls and bring them home
6:00 feed kids and supervise homework
7:00 pick up husband from work

I know people do this every day. The friend I rode with today has 5 children, a full time job, and is learning to be a midwife, so she has to take off at the drop of a hat to attend a birth. She never has any time at all: that's just a given.

You know how there are things you Just Won't Do? Like people who refuse to make airport runs, or eat spinach, or listen to rap? I HATE having every minute scheduled. If I have any choice at all, I won't live that way. Looks like they're going to offer me a regular part-time position and not just PRN, so if it works out I'm going to have to define a new normal.

I managed to track with Sparkpeople Monday (1900) and today (1350 so far). I'm definitely running over my target. Monday I got too hungry. I don't know if it's an insulin-resistant thing but I find that hard to recover from. Clearly I need to plan the day first. I know that, I get that, I just find it hard to do. I picked up the Jillian Michaels shred and cajoled my DH into doing it with me. It's as nasty as I expected. Also my husband made some remark about JM not being his cup of tea physically. It takes tremendous work and commitment to look like Jillian Michaels and to be honest she is not really my ideal either, but I had a moment's worry I was getting too cut. Then reality returned and I had a good laugh. "Too cut" is soooo not going to be a problem for me.

Also, 7 year olds make awesome personal trainers because they do everything and chirp, "That's easy, Mommy! I can do THAT!"

What Makes a Good Life?

Good health and looking your best, right? That's why we're on this road. It can be inconvenient and frustrating, but the net result is way in the plus column. What else do you need for a good life? This is my list, highly personalized and in no particular order.

1. A warm and sustaining family life.

2. Observance of customs, holidays, rituals.

3. Close relationships with extended family.

4. Great friendships, frequent casual contacts with people who care about how you're doing.

5. Enough money, so you don't have to sweat daily needs, can afford small pleasures and provide for your children and your future.

6. Enough time so that you can spend some as you choose.

7. Spiritual life and charity.

8. A pretty place to live, so that you live your life against a backdrop that makes you happy.

9. Novelty-- shows, travel, new experiences.

10. An affectionate marriage with all the usual perks.

Do I have all these? Hell no. I am strong in some areas (1, 6, 8, and 10). Others are okay. The two I am particularly missing are 4 and 7. I ran into a book club friend the other day at Wegman's. I've seen her there twice and always give her an enthusiastic hug as she is a dear soul and I am a little starved for friendship. She greeted me warmly, introduced me to her friend, and said, "It's... it's Larkspur, right?" (Not my real name, but you knew that). GROAAAAAN. How sad is that? (No, it's okay to laugh. I did.)

At one time in my life there were numerous messages on my machine when I got home telling me news or inviting me somewhere. Now two messages would be a lot. When I moved eleven years ago, I left my web of friendships and connections. There's a whole host of reasons why I haven't made a new community of friends. Part of it, I'm sure, is the pull of 1, 8 & 10-- I love my house, I love my kids, and I would rather spend time with my husband curled up by the fire than do almost anything else.

My closest friend's life is mine almost flipped-- she has literally scores of devoted friends, myriad interesting casual social contacts, but no sweetie and no children. She keeps telling me I need to put in the time, just as I keep telling her that of course dating sucks, everyone hates it (apparently not true-- check out Fatfree Me in my sidebar!) But it's the only road to a mate and children besides arranged marriage.

I read an interesting book about retirement which was very clear on the point that money was only one part of preparing for retirement. Just as important to happiness were good health, sustaining social connections, meaningful work. So if you spent all your energy accumulating wealth while neglecting your health and your friends, your retirement isn't going to be all that great.

Food for thought. I'd love to hear about what a good life means to you.

You Lose Some

Pounds (one down from yesterday, inexplicably, after going overboard on Cheat Day). And my son's long-distance GF just broke up with him again. He seems okay. I sometimes I wish I could make him 7 years old again with glasses, but of course that is not the normal course of nature and it shouldn't be. Sigh.

Thank you, my dears, for weighing in yesterday. Some South Beach fans and some WW converts. I am actually on the Beach-y side myself, and was planning a SB version of WW (no reason you can't do that, right?) It would be hard for me to figure the points without actually joining, so for this week I plan to track and report my calories. I don't know where WW points would be for me exactly-- I know it doesn't translate perfectly-- but I am going to go for under 1600 a day (which seemed so onerous a few months ago, but seems very doable these days). Today once I eat my pork chop and asparagus, unless I forgot something crucial, I should end up under 1500. Easy because I ate so much yesterday I wasn't hungry today till after Zumba at 1:30. I had sufficient bra coverage and an empty stomach so I got in a good one. My instructor did point at me midway like something from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it just turned out that my shoelace was untied. Whew. I fancy myself not deficient in It, but I'll tell you, in Zumba I feel pretty square.

Waffling

Well, actually, beignets not waffles.

My Boyfriend's Back, hey na hey na, so it would take a lot to upset me, certainly more than 2 pounds up on the scale which was the case this morning. He brought beignet mix back with him and as it is Cheat Day, I made those. Yummy. I am wishing to get down a few more pounds solidly and I keep kicking around Weight Watchers. I don't have a coupon and I have been hemorrhaging money lately (35% off at Coldwater Creek, yikes) so I am bouncing around the idea of trying to do it at home for a week. I would stay with my points, which I am semi-arbitrarily calculating at 23, and just not track on Cheat Days. If I could do well with it for a week, I could justify the money to join a meeting. I could just stick closer with my current plan, but I am liking the idea of mixing things up. Assuming the bounce up does not represent 7000 actual calories eaten in excess (which it better not), I have only a couple of pounds to go to make my Hot 100 goal and only 9 pounds until my BMI is 24.9 (cue clouds and Celestial Chorus).

What do you guys think? Should I try this or would I just be tampering with success?

That BMI Thing

Ordinarily the WL blogosphere and I are just one big basket of snuggles, with deeply similar opinions on most topics. But there's one where I am apparently a renegade, which is the subject of Chunky Monkey Mamma's intriguing blog post over on Cranky Fitness (see my sidebar, sparing me the labor of making a link).

The opinion as expressed by the majority is that BMI is complete horseshit, and should not be measured at schools or conveyed to parents.

My thought is, it's all information, right? There's "Your hemoglobin is 9.3" and "I saw your husband clinching a redhead in the Denny's parking lot." Most people seem to feel that telling parents about their kid's BMI belongs in the latter camp, Information That Does More Harm Than Good.

Since it's my blog, this is my take on it. Pull up a chair.

What is BMI? It's just a fancy measure of weight versus height. We do it all the time when we look at someone's blog stats-- they weigh 173 pounds, for example. We look to see if they're 5'1, 5'8 or 6'1. If they're 6'1" and 173 pounds we stop reading their blog in annoyance because damn it, this isn't a proper WL blog, they're not even fat. See? BMI in action.

Most of us know that BMI doesn't measure body fat or muscle mass or athleticism. But it does take a stab at measuring. And the majority opinion seems to be saying that because it's not a perfect measure, we shouldn't take it or communicate it. They don't want to know, they don't want the kids to know, because it's upsetting.
The thing is-- if my doctor takes my fasting blood sugar and it's 113, it's very upsetting. I'll be worried and possibly even pissed at my doctor. Does that mean she shouldn't tell me? In my case, that measure had a very real and helpful impact on my behavior. It's possible, seeing objective evidence that a child's weight for height is unusually high, a parent might investigate further and possibly make some changes at home.

I'm not afraid of a number. Well, okay, some numbers, but not that one. BMI may be flawed (it is) but it is widely accepted, used by everything from the World Health Organization to research studies to insurance companies to Weight Watchers. Not forgetting weight loss bloggers. My kids tell me height and weight is taken privately: no one sees the letter except for the school nurse and the child's parents. Our letters actually take pains to describe the limitations of BMI. How the parents use that information is up to them, just like any other measure including grades, test scores, or vision screening results.

If this were any other number, like cholesterol or nearsightedness, we wouldn't be pitching fits over flaws in the system of measurement. It's because body weight is such a wretchedly loaded topic people don't want to know and some even get angry if a potential problem is mentioned. My doctor never said a word about my weight at any point, even with fasting blood sugars over 100. I'm sure she's been conditioned not to. Is she really doing me a favor? What do you think?