Hi I am new to this forum.. i have had two children in the last five years and at the age of 22 after 12 long rebelious years of this rotten disease i have discovered that i best start to look after my body as well as i can after all, I can't leave my babies with out a Mother. I'm here to hopefully get some help with my diabetes, my last hb1c was 8.4 and since the birth of my daughter a year ago i have strugguled to lose weight safely. I keep telling myself that its better to be healthy, forget what i look like, but i think about it all the time. Im still 2 stone over weight after losing 3 stone this year... insulin makes us fat though right? the closer i keep to range the more hypos and carb fixes i need. I can't believe the start of this year I was even exercising at my local gym with ketones. All in the name of Vanity. I need help big time to get back on track. So hard to exercise without going low, and if i don't take insulin, there are ketone dangers... grrr so annoying and confusing. I wish they would find a cure. I'v got this far in life i sure as hell don't want to die. So with that, the conclusion is, to control it or it will control mine and my families future.
feel free to message/add, me any nice do gooders out there.. lol i don't know any other type 1s, (a few type 2s that think they got it tough but thats about it!!)
Congratulations on deciding to make a change and welcome to the right place to find help and support/ coaching/ humor. I have had slightly different situation but have lost some weight and exercise in the name of vanity too. I am sort of addicted to it, although this is a nasty time of year for weather around here near Chicago. I have met ***very*** few T1, maybe 4-5 over the years. I don't think insulin makes us fat, I think it's food and particularly carbs. I am in 27th year of rebelling.
Hi, welcome, Im in my 28th year now...with 1 child and spent MANY years rebelling even though knowing better. By some stroke of luck I have managed to remain free of complications despite all my horrid ways. I have one son, he's 16. I too agree, its not the insulin that makes us fat, but our food choices, the amount of carbs and portion sizes. I personally had really good success with weight watchers, and unfortunately due to a really bad knee injury Im just not able to exercise like I'd like. As far as low's go are you on a pump or thought of going on one if you aren't. I spent many years dealing with either horrid insulin like 70/30 that just no matter how much I took I could not get decent numbers at all, or doing lots of mdi's. And with that unfortunately I get very frequent hypo's. Im very sensitve it seems to insulin, while I dont make ANY, I also dont seem to have as hard of a time with carbs as some people do and I have to have around 30 to 40 grams of carbs a meal or I just bottom out, somedays even with eating that many...Im still rapidly falling down into the 40's with hypoglycemic unawareness on top of it. But yet if I cut back on what I take, I don't get very good control. After many years of yes I do, no I don't I've finally taken the plunge and am about to start my insulin pump. Go for training on the 22 of this month. Im really hoping it will give me the means to be able to more fine tune the amounts of insulin I need and to be able to suspend when dropping rapidly. Seems from other's experiences on here they have managed to get much tighter control. That's my main draw to wanting to be on the pump. With injuections, once it's given there's no taking it back, so for me if its one of those days where Im just being extra sensitive Its a struggle to keep my BS high enough. Grrrrr this stuff sucks, even worse is everyone's is different too, so not much method at all to the madness we live with.
I hear you loud and clear, I too was in the same boat - well on the same roller coaster ride with injection and drop then eat and rise and injection.....And my A1C just kept inching up and up and my weight just kept inching up and up even with being really active with outside yard work, daily exercise, etc. I finally said ok to the pump (Jan 2008), wanted to perform every type of torture to the pump the first 3 months (you know, pin it to the dart board, run over it with the lawn mower, drop it from an airplane without a parachute) but kept plugging away till finally the pump numbers lined up, my A1C began to drop, and I began to lose weight - all without doing drastic dietary changes. Then I began to watch more the amount of food I inhaled at every meal and started to slowly reduce the amount, which resulted in more weight loss, and having to adjust pump settings to prevent lows. But by then I had figured me out (with some help from my diabetic educator). (hey, I am just crazy and don't easily fit into many published norms) Plus using the CGMS helped a lot, began with the Medtronic, didn't like, switched to the Dex and love. Bottom line - pump/CGMS/putting less on the plate/staying active - lost 50+ pounds and have maintained weight for past 8 months or so, and dropped A1C from over 8 to 5.9 at visit in September. Still a daily challenge, yes I still go low with heavy exercise/work even when I adjust pump, yes I still swing high when I don't count carbs right or the moon is in a different orbit, yes I still have days when I want to tie the pump (and CGMS) to a rocket and send it into outer space. Will I trade it in. No. I do believe that while no treatment option available to a diabetic is perfect, that using a pump allows so much more flexibility in our daily lives it makes it somewhat easier for "control" to be achieved. Good luck.
My story is very similar to others posting here. I'm type I for 25 years on MDI. I have one daughter, now in grad school. I had my share of rebellious years too but like you, jessstar, my motivation to take care of myself came when I realized that my daughter needed a mother and I had to do it for her. I applaud you, jess, for taking that step to take care of yourself.
I managed to have good control of my diabetes for many years with shots but am now going through menopause transition which has turned my system upside down and sideways. I've also become hypo unaware. I just recently started the dexcom cgm. I tried out the medtronic but didn't like it so went with the dexcom because it's much more comfortable for me. I've only had the dex for a few weeks now but would be lost without it. I wish I'd gone that route long ago. Being able to see when I'm going up or down at a fast rate helps in knowing when to finger stick and treat. The peace of mind knowing that my dex will let me know if I'm low or approaching low is tremendous.
I'm also going to a pump soon. For years, I couldn't past the idea of being hooked up to something. Now I'm anxious to try the pump to get my control back. My endo never pushed me to the pump before because he said my control was good with shots and the pump would give me incrementally small improvements. Now I need those improvements so it's worth the extra work to me to get my control back.
I'm also hoping to lose more weight with the pump. I've managed to lose about 10 pounds over the past year but it's been a slow process, especially when those lows slap you in the face. It's so frustrating to me to have to pour calories into my body to treat a low when I'm trying so hard to lose weight.
Glad you decided to join us! I am hitting my 28 year diaversary in Jan. If you don’t have the book already, I would suggest getting Using Insulin by John Walsh – it will teach you all the stuff that your doctor hasn’t told you about insulin.
A pump is not some magic fix to all your problems so don’t let anyone push you into that unless you actually want one. I used one for 8 months and had more problems than was worth - my A1c actually went up, not down. I build up scar tissue easily and had a lot of problems. I rarely had a site last 48 hours before it failed. Animas had to replace two pumps in 8 months. The first one was injecting too much insulin in me – that did absolutely nothing to cut down on lows.
As far as the weight loss, you can do it! I gained about 65 pounds when I went thru a bad foot infection & managed to take it off (doing MDI I might add). I do better with weight when I can exercise. I say I have the world’s slowest metabolism – when I gained the 65 pounds, I was eating 1200 calories a day.
Some things you can do is cut back on carbs. Pay attention to how many calories you eat per day and cut back. Write down everything you eat – I read about a lady that didn’t realize she was consuming about 700 calories a day in coffee creamer alone until she started writing stuff down. Use glucose tablets for a low – candy might taste better but has more calories in. Watch your salt intake. Some stores inject sodium into their chicken to give it a longer shelf life. To maintain weight, you need to exercise 55 minutes a day, 6 days a week. You can’t exercise 30 minutes a day for 3 days a week and expect to lose weight. If you need to have a snack to be able to exercise without going low, include that snack in your daily calorie allotment. Don’t look at it as you need to have 100 calories in juice plus the 1200 calories you want to eat for the day – you can have the juice but then you have 1100 calories left over.
Your looking at things right! Good for u!!! I've been a Type 1 since I was 10 and found that after I had my daughter's I started taking much better care of myself. I had a cousin who was a Type 1 when I got diagnosed but she's gone now. She helpped me quite a bit in understanding about D. Now I've got alot of 1st cousins with Type 1 and my oldest child but b/f that I went for about 10 years or more doing it all by myself. Ur in good company here so anytime u need any of us just ask.
