A warning from the past.

This is my Dad's fifth year anniversary of his death. He was very sick for a very long time. One of the things that gave him the most health complications was diabetes. One of the things I remember the most about him is how his neuropathy made even light hugs hurt. I know that I haven't been very good about taking my blood sugars once the doctor told me that my A1c was under where they wanted it to be. I know that I haven't been taking my medication as often as I should. I know what my excuses are. I know why I don't. Today though, I'm going to take this more seriously. I am going to take my blood sugars before and after dinner and post them just to show everyone that I actually did. I am going to take my meds at lunch and not just dinner. I am not going to let myself slip into the comfortable arms of ignorance, because I know what can happen when I become ignorant to the state of my diabetes and it scares me... Sorry for such a down post but I think I needed to remind myself of the goal that I originally put before myself once I got the diagnosis: Get my sugars low enough that I don't need meds! So here I am renewing this goal and trying to force my eyes back to the prize.

Oatmeal and Smoothie

Here is the oatmeal that KC and I made last Saturday. It is rolled oatmeal with dried cranberries, freeze dried blue berries and some frozen black berries.

First we cooked the oatmeal (about 1.5 or so cups dried) with extra water. After a couple of minutes we added about 1/3 cups of each of the berries. We added more water so that way it didn't become a death paste and so the berries could rehydrate. We then added some Splenda to sweeten it without adding any more sugar.


Here is a picture of KC's plate. We also made eggs. KC had scrambled off to the side. I of course wanted to be difficult and had eggs over easy...












So I put my eggs over the oatmeal. It was actually pretty good. This was a little carby but delicious, mostly low calorie it had some decent protein going on and it filled me up for a long time.










You will have to excuse my poor focus in this picture. This was probably my best decision this past week. I was still hungry from dinner and wanted something with a lot of protein. I have some protein powder that AAA gave me which has been doing alright for breakfasts so I decided that I would make it my base. Using frozen bananas (1 banana) some frozen black berries (1/2 cup) and some frozen mango (1/2 cup) as my sweeteners I broke out my blender. To the berries I added about one cup of Greek style yogurt and LOTS of soy milk (basically until it wasn't berry cement) I also added a splash of orange juice for fun. Once that blended smoothly I added a scoop and a half of the vanilla protein powder and mixed until smooth. With the protein powder alone there was 60 grams of protein. That doesn't add the amount from the yogurt or soy milk. It also tasted like ice cream, I'm not joking. So next time you want something smooth and cold in stead of going to DQ or out to the store to get a pint. See if you have the fixings to this and try it out yourself (if you don't have to protein powder add a little Splenda or honey since it gave the smoothie some sweetness). I bet it will be great!

GAH!!!

Ok, so it's been a while. I actually have a back log of things to post including PICTURES!!!! But I'm still trying to figure out if I need a flicker account or such to post them on to the blog. I also only did one thing I said I was going to last post and that was to weigh myself. I am still at 393 lbs. I have only been varying +- .5 lbs each time I weigh myself which is weird. I haven't found my tape measure so that hasn't been done yet. Stay tuned though to see pictures and some new recipes!

*Edit* Looked up on the Blogger help page and I don't need to host the pics through a different website to put them up so expect them tonight or tomorrow.

Today's List

Today I will:

Weigh myself
Measure myself
Figure out a meal plan for the next week
Then post it all...

So later tonight or sometime tomorrow you will get all of my (sort of) beginning stats for this fun journey to a healthier me as well as a meal plan for dinners this week. I will try to post pics and recipes as I make them. If you try any of them out let me know how you like it!

There goes the neighborhood...

So I didn't lift this weekend. My knee feels fine no worries about that I just didn't go. My house-mates and I were doing things and it just didn't get scheduled in. In other news KC made one of the most nutritional soups ever last night:

1 Huge jug of V8
1 turkey/chicken/low fat kielbasi
2 cabbages one green one purple(shred or chop)
couple cans of diced tomatoes
1 thing of Costco's chicken STOCK (not broth cause the stock just adds that much more flavor)
3-5 small red potatoes (chopped): each potato is about a carb if it is a small potato
4-5 stocks of celery (chopped)
Any other veggies you want to add
Salt and pepper to taste

Cut up the kielbasi and cook it in the pot some before anything else because it lets out the flavor and you get some nice color on it. Then add the celery(chopped), potatoes(chopped), diced canned tomatoes, V8 and stock. Let that cook at a low boil until the potatoes are tender. Add the cabbages, you don't want to add them too soon because they cook quick. Let that cook into itself. Serve once cabbage is done cooking. This makes AWESOME leftovers because the flavors meld together even more over night. This is also a pretty soup since there is a lot of color between the red, green and purple.

Et tu, Knee, et tu?

Damn but my knee hurts. It didn't hurt yesterday after my C5K but as today continues it is starting to hurt. Not "OH GOD WHY?!?!" can't walk hurt but more of a "well this is unpleasant" type. So I'm going to look up if I should ice or heat it. I think it is ice for joints and heat for muscles. So once I double check this and I get home that's what I'm going to do. I probably will take it easy for the next day or so. Sunday is my heavy lift day with AAA so we'll see how my knee is doing then. If it is still wanky then I will probably only do light lifting with it. Anyways thanks to AAA for being the first one to comment! WOOO! He also let me know that the weird upside down push up things are called body-weight rows. They are awesome if you have a chance I suggest trying them.

get your run on!

Ok, ok, and by run I mean jog and by jog I mean a slightly faster walk than your normal walk. Today I did my first bout of couch to 5K and it went alright. I down loaded the app on to my phone so it would beep every time I needed to go from walking to jogging and vice versa. So I did about 20 minutes of cardio today and I was tired but in a good way. I also made sure to take it very slow at the beginning and work my way up to a pace that got my heart beat into the range that I wanted it in and not over, which was what I was worried about.

In other awesome news KC is THE best person ever because she got me 2 cooking books done by the "Eat This, Not That" book series. The book series tells you what is healthy to eat at restaurants and what isn't but in these two books it is "Cook This, Not That". So it takes the recipes from different places and tells you a more healthy way to make it at home quickly and easily. It gives the nutritional break down of both what they want you to make as well as what you would boughten. OH! They also give you an estimate to how much each serving costs as well as the cost (at the time of publishing) the item at the restaurant would be. So you can even see how much you would be saving. Hopefully I will make some soon and throw the recipe as well as a pic up for you all.

The one thing that I want to leave you with though is how AWESOME(!!!!) Greek style yogurt is for you compared to other things. They talk about Fage Total 2% yogurt. In a 6oz swerving it has 90 calories 0g fat and only 7g of sugars! 7g of SUGAR?!?!? Really? Dude that is about 4 times LESS than Yoplait and Fage has about half of the calories. The Greek yogurt also has 3 times the protein as the other yogurts, not to mention the amino acids, and because of all of this it is their choice thing to eat after a workout. So yeah, if you want you should try it because I am going to.

Not an actual update really but more of a rant

I have never been a thin person. I always have been heavier than everyone around me. The thing is that I had a decent view of myself up until about my first year in college. I started to gain weight pretty quick in college because I stopped doing sports like I had in high school (3 season athlete) and I could just eat as much as I could at food service. When I would go to the gym during college I always felt awkward and I never had a plan (*Note: always have a plan or routine before going to the gym! You are much more likely to get things done!) So I never went much. My last year I did start to walk to school which was about a 1/4 to 1/2 a mile one way I'm guessing. This is good since I was working as a pizza delivery person. As I got back to the Twin Cities where I am from it took me about a year to get my finances together enough to afford a gym membership. (I swear there is a point)

One of the first non-strength centered lift days me and my friend, amateur fitness buff AAA, we did an exercise where there is a bar which you held onto and then walked your way underneath it. It kind of looks like you are doing an upside down push up. As I was getting into position I started to worrying about the bar cage falling over because of how heavy I am. It had to be over a thousand pounds plus there was weights on the other side of the cage for storage. There was NO way I was going to make it fall over but that is what I believed. I felt the same thing when we were working the lower back when we did back extensions. I thought I was going to flip the entire thing over. I did not realize until then how much my self confidence has faded because of how much I weigh now. Insult to injury of course is the fact that I'm diabetic. So I can't even pretend that at this weight I am healthy because I know that I am not. I don't know. It's just weird to go from being the large, healthy, active and confident person that I was in high school to this even larger, unhealthy, self-doubting, lethargic person I seem to have become. So... this is more depressing than I meant it to be. I will update tonight about my first couch to 5k workout later tonight.

I confess...

I'm diabetic (type II) and I am 25 years old. This blog is going to be me talking about different things from my work outs, weight-loss and fitness goals to my blood-sugars, medications and anxieties. I am currently 392 lbs, though if you saw me on the street you probably wouldn't guess that much. At this point I am doing high intensity weight-lifting and even though I'm watching my calorie intake I have flat lined when comes to weight loss and have even gained some, though most of it is muscle. Because of this I am going to start adding in the "Couch to 5K" jogging exercises into my routine. This will hopefully do a couple of things: 1) aerobic exercise helps keep blood-sugars low and 2) it will increase my metabolism and help me loose fat weight. Though HIT with weights helps my blood-sugars stay low all around it is not helping me loose weight any more. So, hopefully, my post tomorrow will be about my first Cto5K workout.

PS: Look out for random recipes that I will post. I will try to add pictures at some point as well as nutritional info!