The Diet from Heck

This morning my glucometer read 102. For those who have never had to worry about blood sugar, this is a “So, what?” fact. But for the last ten years or so I’ve been dealing – and dealing way too cavalierly, I have to confess – with so-called adult-onset diabetes mellitus. (There are other kinds of D.M. – juvenile is one, and gestational is another. The first of these one is born with; the second one has to get pregnant, so I’m not worried about that.) Adult-onset means that my body, partly because of too much fat, partly because of not enough exercise, has stopped using the insulin my pancreas generates, and thus I have too much sugar bouncing around in my arteries and veins. Each morning before I eat breakfast, I poke a pin in my finger, push out a drop of blood, and put it onto the stick attached to the One Touch glucometer. Let me tell you, 102 is a damned good number.

There are several ways we “type-2” guys deal with too much blood sugar. One, we get lots of exercise, a practice that burns off some of that excess sweetness. Two, we watch what we eat. Three, we take magic pills that somehow bring the glucometer’s numbers down. These last would be wonderful if they would do the job all by themselves. But they don’t do nearly enough, especially in the absence of numbers one and two. And I have to confess, I have been pretty damn sloppy about the good old one and two.

Wikipedia has some interesting information about my condition. “Diabetes” means “passing through,” a reference to the tendency of diabetics to pee often. The other name, “mellitus,” means “honey-like” or “sweet”; it refers to diabetic urine, which tastes sweet (or so I’m told. I’ve never tasted it, myself.) The ancient Egyptians and the ditto Greeks knew how tasty diabetic pee was, and in 1675 the English doctor Thomas Willis noticed it as well. It was Dr. Willis who added “mellitus” to “diabetes” to complete the name.

Ignoring the condition can result in real nastiness: damage to the eyes, kidneys, nerves, circulation. Diabetics often suffer from cardiovascular disease or coronary artery disease. They can lose extremities, from toes to legs. Diabetes sucks, basically.

Enough background. What I’m confessing now is that, in the last year or so, while I was turning 70, my morning numbers have been getting worse and worse. A few years ago they were in the 140’s, then over 150, and recently above 170. They got bad enough that I quit taking them very often; I just didn’t want to know the truth. However, their increase shows up on the blood work my doctor requires me to have done just before we meet for my biannual physical. That number is called “Hemoglobin A1c,” and if it’s a good number, it’s down around 6.0 or lower. My most recent number was 8.3, which is pretty horrible. And this number was in spite of those magic pills.   Keep it up like this, he suggested, and your future will bring you amputated toes and blind eyes. More exercise and better eating, that’s the ticket, or you’ll be sorry.

So I came home panicked enough to act. For the last five weeks I have eaten NO starches and no sugars. Well, I confess I do have berries in my morning yogurt, so there’s a little sugar. And I’m sure there’s some badness in the dressing on my salads. But that’s mostly it. I eat the aforementioned yogurt and salads, eggs and vegetables and meat, and snack on peanuts whenever I think I’m going to weep. I drink a lot of coffee. But I’ve sent all the carbs to the back room.

Think about it. At breakfast, I eat no toast, no English muffins, no cereals, and certainly no waffles. At lunch, no sandwiches, no chicken noodle soups, no paninis, no tacos, no egg rolls. For dinner, no potato, no rice, no thick crusty bread. And all day long no desserts except fruit: no ice cream, no cake, no pie, no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Oh. My. God.

However, as a result the glucometer’s numbers plummeted immediately. After a day of this treatment it read below 120. First time in a long time. And my average has remained there, below 120, for the last 33 days, which is how long I’ve been at this regime. Furthermore I’ve dropped about 10 pounds.

I’ve also done more walking than I was doing before. On voting day I walked the 1.5 miles to the polling station. On weekends my wife Jane and I stroll along Lynn Shore Drive near our house. Sometimes I’ll walk up to Starbucks, which is a couple of miles and swill some Bold Roast. But mostly, my low numbers have been due to the diet.

Holy fright! Am I going to have to live this way forever? Long walks across town several times a week? In winter? No more pecan pies, no more Ben and Jerry’s, no more french fries, or blueberry pancakes ever again? I don’t know. So far I’ve been surviving without all of them. Maybe someday I’ll lose enough weight so I can sneak a quick Ding Dong. Don’t know. For now I’m keeping starch and sugar fully at bay, and taking my walks. It hasn’t been a diet from hell, exactly, but it’s been one straight from heck. And I’ll say this: it’s doing me some good.

© September, 2014