Friday, April 25, 2008

Why I started this

As the editor of DiabeticMommy.com, I try to keep up on all the latest treatments, products, discoveries on the diabetes landscape.

I do what I'm told - follow a diabetes diet, take my medications, check my levels, and try to keep my blood sugar values in the accepted range. I have had diabetes for 15 years and for 15 years have had no serious complications from diabetes (knock on wood).

However, as I've been getting closer to 40, it seems like I've been really feeling my age (feeling OLDER actually) and new health issues are popping up. I know I have to get my weight down and optimally reduce or eliminate my medications, but that has been easier said than done. I've tried all sorts of diets - Adkins, South Beach, grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, zone diet, Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, diet pills, hypnotism, nutritionists, etc. I've done all sorts of exercise - gym memberships, personal training, jogging, training for and completing a 5K, training for a half-marathon (halted by injury), etc.I usually notice health improvements. And my body composition changes. However, I don't really lose a lot of weight - especially none of my visceral intra-abdominal fat.

I have no doubt that I have willpower - because I have always given these things a really good try and have been very good. However, I stop out of frustration when months pass and I see no results on the scale at all. Or I get injured or sick from overdoing it, and have to stop with a loss of motivation.

The past few years, I have been in a cycle - I try really hard but when nothing happens, I give up and figure why try at all. This year, I had pretty much given up. I drive a carpool, and the father of the girls I drive home often tries to give me diabetes advice. If you are a diabetic, you know how this is. Often the advice you get from non-diabetics is cockamamie. Or they will say things like, "You know, you JUST gotta lose weight and your diabetes will go away." I won't go into that now.

Basically a type 2 diabetes body has been modified into a fat-storing machine, it is streamlined for times of famine. We can make due on less. Well, I can't remember the last time we had a good famine here, but my body is busy storing away. Our hormonal system sends out chemical messages to the rest of the body - Don't release the fat! I want carbs! It's the same as if we took a pill, we are drugged by our own bodies.

ANYWAY....my friend kept giving me advice, and I'd smile and say, I'll look into that, and drive away. One day he came out with a flyer for a talk about diabetes. He told me he knew the speaker personally, and that he has "cured diabetes by giving people a bunch of green juices - made diabetics lose weight and all beautiful and everything." I asked myself, "Is he not only saying I'm fat but ugly too?" I smiled and said thanks, I'll check it out.

Not too long after, my online gaming friend Kurt decided to do some research for me after hearing me complain about diabetes. He's not a doctor, but he's a smart guy. He told me he read that I should be eating vegan, and mostly raw, and cut out cheese. Hmmmm, was it a sign to at least give it a try?

So I looked at that ad again. It was for a seminar by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., and it looked like he was promoting his book "There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+Program

I looked up that book online. I discovered the book explained how diabetics could "cure" diabetes with a raw vegan diet...WHAT? Raw Vegan diet - F THAT! So I forgot about it for a couple days.

I also didn't like that they used the word "cure." To me "cure" means that it's gone and you don't have to worry about it anymore. This program is more about gaining control - and managing with diet and exercise. To it's credit, it's not easy at all to control diabetes with diet and exercise, and often you aren't successful and then have to add in medications, but this is a way of life that almost guarantees you will get control.

In spite of my doubts, I began to wonder if I might benefit from just a vegetarian diet. So I started to surf around the net and somehow ended up watching some videos by Philip McCluskey of LovingRaw.com.

For some reason I really related to him in this video. He had lost a lot of weight, was happy and healthy. He was eating a raw vegan diet and was loving it. I wanted to be there too.

So I surfed around some more and was amazed and flabbergasted by some of the blogs, testimonials, and before/after pics I was coming across. Everyone seemed so happy, so energized. It was like you see in movies and read in books when someone becomes a vampire - they are transformed into an extraordinarily beautiful person. I'm serious, many of the blogs I found showed pictures like that. Google "raw food before and after" or "juice feast before and after."

I bought a couple books - Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes by Ani Phyo and Raw Food Life Force Energy: Enter a Totally New Stratosphere of Weight Loss, Beauty, and Health by Natalia Rose. These were great books and got me excited about raw/living foods. I tried a couple recipes from Ani's book - and even got my son to eat one of her oatmeal recipes - very willingly.

Since then I've bought a LOT more books and will share my favorites later.

Anyway, this inspired me to at least give it a try. I never intended, and will never force myself to go 100% raw, but I try to aim for around 80% - so I still get to have my favorites once in a while.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

My First Post!

Hello!

I am currently Juice Feasting...and am on my 11th day now. I'll post later about the details and WHY the hec I'm doing this .

Right now I want to go ahead and get to the kewl stuff - pics! I'm already feeling and seeing huge differences. I've lost 10 pounds. It's not really apparent on my body, and I don't hear lots of people saying they think I've lost weight, but I really see the difference in my face right now.

Here are some of the changes I've noticed:

  • Clearer skin
  • Liver spots going away
  • Some long-time facial bumps going away
  • Inflammation and puffiness going away
  • Whiter teeth, plaque going away
  • Softer skin
  • Fresh breath, fresh body smell
  • Increased energy, feeling lighter
  • Arthritic aches and pains are mostly gone
  • Better mood - happier, clearer thinking processes
  • I also have had these yellowed/scarred areas in the inner part of my eyes. I've been told that's from sun damage because I live in the desert and often don't wear sunglasses - that's going away too!
  • Oh yea, and I got a pair of denim shorts I wear all the time. I gotta hold them up now. If I jump up and down, they fall down!
  • Another kewl thing is that I notice the color of my eyes changing. I have hazel, mostly brown eyes, but lately the green is really coming out.

Okay, here are some BEFORE pics...you can really see the inflammation going. These pics weren't taken on day 1 of the juice feast, but the first one was within the year. The second one a couple months before. I didn't like taking my pics. :( I'm trying to recall if I have an even more recent one, and searching. But I can tell you, on day 1 of the juice feast, I looked the same, if not WORSE and I weighed the same. I started this way of eating because I was so fed up:


BEFORE:




And here I am....on day day 11 of the juice feast.....
AFTER:


I don't know. I don't think that's bad for 11 days!


Hopefully I can keep this up for a bit. I would LOVE to do this for 60 days - which symbolically would represent the time I've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. (It is said each day of a juice feast is worth about 80-120 days of healing - and I was diagnosed about 15 years ago).

ANYWAY, as much as I would love to keep it up for 60 days - I doubt I will be able to afford that. So now my new goal is to continue juice feasting until my fasting blood sugar hits 85 without medications or I run out of money - whichever comes first. I may run out of money here pretty soon, so I hope it goes down soon!

When I stop juice feasting, I am going to switch to an at least 80% raw vegan diet.

DIABETES...oh yea, I should mention how that's doing.

First of all, I want to say I am doing this on my own and taking my own risks. I try to learn all I can about diabetes. I'm the editor of DiabeticMommy.com. And my own doctor tends to let me do what I want - literally stating, "Go ahead, you seem to know what your doing."

I personally don't feel "juice feasting" is harmful for me. I don't have serious complications. Plus juice feasting is not starving or fasting. I have figured I'm still getting at least 1600 calories a day in the form of 4 quarts of special homemade green vegetable juice, 2 tbsp hemp oil, 1 tbsp bee pollen, 1 tsp powdered kelp, 1 tbsp powdered super green formula, and 1 tbsp spirulina.

Before the juice feast I was taking 2500 mg of Metformin/Glucophage (500 mg over the max recommended dosage), 40 units of Lantus at night, and 15 units of Humalog with meals.

My blood sugar levels had quite a range. In a day I could register a low of 11 (yes, 11, and I didn't pass out either) and then skyrocket to 250. On "average" my fastings were usualy between 90-120 and two hours after meals I was around 180.

When I started the juice feast, I stopped everything. The first day my levels hoovered around 250. Each day my levels went down about 10 points and they didn't fluctuate through the day. As of today my levels are pretty steady around 150 and they get lower everyday. After a juice "meal" it goes up about 10 points.

I think the missing ingredient is more exercise. I've been pretty casual with my exercise lately, and gotta do something more regular. So I'll be starting to add that in - man, if I can find time.

I'm also going to try to drink a cup of cinnamon tea with dinner from now on - just boiled water with a cinnamon stick. Yummy.