I'm Starving

Sometimes I eat when I’m depressed. Sometimes I eat when I’m bored. Sometimes I eat when I’m restless. Sometimes I eat because my blood sugar is low. These days, though, I’m eating because I’m starving.

I’ve changed my workout slightly and I’m burning more calories. That’s all I can attribute it to, because there’s no other logical explanation for it. I’m just hungry.

When I was under the weather, I upped my insulin to cover the fever and such. I had plans to drop it back down, slowly, but given the extra food I’ve been eating, I’ve only dropped it one unit and I’m still seeing some highs (always at night, dang it) that I would rather not see.

I’m trying to reconfigure my eating habits so at least I’m inhaling good carbs. One night for dinner I grilled all sorts of veggies and had a major pigout on them. (Okay, okay, so I followed it with a mini ice cream sandwich with butterscotch sauce and Cool Whip; 152, thank you.) I’m also addicted to mini fresh mozzarella balls—no carbs, but fat. Sprinkle them with a little salt and I’m in heaven (any kind of cheese, really, inspires all-around glee).

I don’t know if it’s my experiences with diabetes over the last five years, or if it’s my advancing age and therefore, advancing wisdom, but I’ve learned to listen to my body a lot more. When I was 25, I’d ignore the hunger so I could still fit into my favorite jeans. Now, when I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m tired, I sleep (yesterday I took a 15-minute catnap at lunch time in a semi-comfortable chair in the mall next door to where I work, while pretending to read Slaughterhouse Five…). When I feel like my blood sugar is going low, even if the meter doesn’t register it yet, I eat (and about 75% of the time, I’m right). It seems to be working for me.

Now, I just have to listen to what my body is telling me, then give it a really good reply (yogurt, not mini ice cream sandwiches with butterscotch sauce—at least some of the time. But not all of the time. Because life wouldn’t be life without butterscotch sauce. And mini ice cream sandwiches. Or cheese.).

As always, more to come…