Confession, prediabetes, motivation

I have a confession to make. I fell off the "vegan wagon". On December 22, 2017 I blogged about becoming a vegan 98% of the time. My blood work for my cholesterol numbers had gone down from 236 to 213 because of my new diet. I was excited about how what I ate affected the numbers. The months went on and slowly, very slowly, I allowed many of the old foods I used to eat back into my life. I probably ate vegan about 50% of the time. I was curious to see how this would affect my blood work this coming November 2018. I had my blood work done and held my breath. Now my cholesterol was the highest it has ever been 238-closer to that 240 danger zone! And to top it all off I was now prediabetic. Actually, I looked at the estimated average glucose numbers for the last 4 years and I have always been in the prediabetic range. I wonder why no one said anything until now? My glucose numbers in 2017 were less than they were in 2016-so the vegan diet was helping. Anyway the glucose numbers are currently closer to type 2 diabetes than they have ever been. It is currently 120 mg/dL after fasting. It's supposed to be under 100 mg/dL and between 100 and 125 mg/dL is prediabetes. So now what to do? I decided that I shouldn't have "fallen off the wagon". I now have even more motivation to stay vegan.

I was surprised by the prediabetes diagnosis. I'm a tall, thin, active person that didn't eat a lot of sugar. I guess my genetics are catching up with me. My maternal grandmother had type 2 diabetes as she got older and 1 of her siblings had type 2 diabetes and 2 of her siblings had type 1 diabetes. My mother and brother don't have it. As far as I know none of my cousins have it. They say there are many things one can do to reverse this diagnosis.
1. Loose weight if you're overweight-check, I'm fine there
2. Don't smoke-check, I don't smoke
3. Reduce stress in your life-check, I'm retired now, much less stress
4. Exercise regularly-check, I run 3 days a week, ride horses once a week, do my exercise videos 2 days a week or hike or kayak. I guess I could do better at elevating my heart rate on some of those days.
5. Change your diet-this is the only thing I have left in my arsenal to reverse this disease.

I've said "reverse" diabetes twice now. Reverse is the correct word because it will always be with me my whole life. "Reverse" is not the same thing as "cure". I can reverse it's affect on me thru my diet but I can't cure it.

Prediabetes is not the same as diabetes, but from all my reading it is a serious condition in and of itself. According to the CDC about 84 million American adults, more than 1 out of 3, have prediabetes and 90% of them don't even know they have it. Prediabetes usually flies under the radar. There are no clear symptoms, so it often goes undetected for years. It's linked to a great risk of heart disease and stroke due to the chronic damage that elevated blood sugar can cause to heart and blood vessels. It puts me at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke, neuropathy, kidney failure, blindness. It's a wake up call to make some changes so that I don't develop type 2 diabetes with all of its complications. Prediabetes is a fork in the road, if I ignore it I will probably end up with type 2 diabetes down the road. If I actively do something about it, I could prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. Hence, I've now got plenty of motivation to stay on my diet and always get my exercise.

So now I'm more motivated than ever to work on my diet, it's the only thing I have left in my arsenal to hopefully reverse diabetes. And it will help to reduce the cholesterol numbers. I like the vegan diet. I also have more support this time around. I've started eating like a diabetic, watching what I eat and how it affects my blood sugar. I find that it's not only the sugar I eat but the type of carbs that I eat that affect my blood sugar levels. So I've started testing my own blood sugar levels. There are many at home meters you can get to test your own levels, mine is Contour. I figured I could guess how to eat and hopefully have lower blood sugar numbers, wait a year for my next test, and hope the numbers would be good. Or I could actually test myself, see how particular foods affect my numbers, make adjustments based on some facts-so hopefully I'll see some good numbers next November.

Prediabetes is an important condition not to be ignored. I hope that by sharing others will know to take this seriously and get help if they have this. Vegan isn't the only path to take, there are many ways to deal with this disease. The point I'm trying to make is to DO SOMETHING, don't ignore it. Please educate yourself and take care of yourself.

Catch up

I haven't blogged anything since October and now it's almost Christmas. It is time to catch up with what's been going on with us. 

In October we went to a local park, to the Hoyt Arboretum, to hopefully see some fall color. We were surprised by a few trees that were beautiful and one-the Birch-Bark Cherry Tree from China- that was unusual-it had rings around it. The Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial was also there and it was a beautiful and serene place, truly a place for reflection. 

      

   

Oct 22 we took our last kayak trip for the year. We went on our local river. Now it is too cold for this person to go. It was a nice trip with a beautiful clear day. 

   

In November we went to McIver State Park. We've been there a few times and it's a good place to go for a hike. We tried some of the trails that we hadn't done before. Mr UAW saw a huge deer and there are views of Mt Hood, Mt Adams and Mt St. Helens. 

         

   

Thanksgiving week we took a trip to CA to visit relatives and friends. Every year after Thanksgiving we go on a family hike. This years hike was great. It was in the Squaw Leap Recreation area. It's in the middle of CA in the Sierras. The Sierras have so much granite, something that is not prevalent here in the pacific northwest. It was nice to see. 

      

Every year the grandkids make a candy house. It's a ginger bread house but has soooo much candy on it they named it a candy house. It's interesting to see their creative work every year. 

      

My vegetable garden is done for the year. We now have frost in the mornings. It is now the beginning of December and the highs are in the 40's and the lows in the low 30's. Lately the wind has been blowing which makes all things colder. As I write this at 8:24pm it is 35 outside and the RealFeel temp is 24. We will be getting some rain in the next few days. When it rains it might get a bit warmer. We are enjoying the all the different seasons, something that we missed where we used to live in CA. 

I have a few projects that I'm work on and will save a blog post for each one. I guess that's it for now.