Just over 5 weeks ago, following a regularly scheduled appointment, I crossed over that line on my A1C into type 2 diabetes.  Was this a surprise?  Not really, while I eat quality ingredients, I am not necessarily the healthiest of eaters.  There is some family history of type 2.  So I've told a few people, mainly because I had to (work, etc).

Over this last while here, I've attended three 4+ hour classes to teach my how to manage my eating, use my blood glucose meter, and log what I eat and drink.  A lot of this has been frustrating, some of it has been easier then I thought.  Through all of this, C (name not used on purpose, but the people who know me, should know who this is), has been a huge help.  Letting me express frustrations, ask for help and get some advice.

I started a drug (commonly used) to reduce uptake in some areas, and increase sensitivity in others, and it seems to work well, my levels are now staying within a normal range.  Compare the last 30 days:

Vs the last week, where the numbers are mostly within range

Some of these readings are even when I was fasting (more on that below).  Graphs via mySugr (this does not count as an endorsement).

The most difficult part, for me, is changing how I eat.  I've almost always made the choice for pleasure, while eating, within reason.  Trying to keep it within reason, not gaining wait.  So now, it basically ruins a lot of staples in my life.  Pasta, very small portions, big thing of rice?, no small portions.  Sometimes I am surprised as to how much in the way of carbs there are in things, vs how much I should eat.  This has been straight up tiring.

On the other hand, it has made me adjust things to keep full (ish) and move forward.  I eat a lot more salads now.  Make sure I keep things down low, and only occasionally now, do I really seriously crave things.  This past week, a leftover salad didn't keep me full and I wandered back to look at the items in our snack filled area (like vendo-land except no vending machines, but you still have to pay).  I looked at the things I would normally snack on, then just walked away.

So while reducing my general intake of food has led to a fairly dramatic loss in weight (I'm going to credit the drug here for that, I think).  I am down 11% from my peak (4/3/2014) and 47% of that has been since the beginning of the year (~10% of the time I've been tracking my weight).  So clearly this is better.  I've tightened my belt a bit, and some things that weren't very loose are looser (especially my pants).

The frustrating part of tracking, is that clearly the app that I'm currently using (My Fitness Pal, again, not an endorsement), needs to clean up their database.  More often then not, when I import a recipe, I have to go through and edit it, especially with garlic, where it adds like 5k calories with a single clove of garlic...which is a load of crap, clearly.  They need to have something to flag items as wrong for inspection, and removal.  I have found that more frustrating then almost anything (data integrity, as many people that I work with know, is a pet peeve of mine).

So in the process of setting up a new computer, I cleaned off my desk and went through a bunch of lab reports (that I kept for some unknown reason) before I shredded them.  And I was consistently on the low side of normal, or just below normal on iron saturation.  It's amazing what a couple of percentages make.  The odd thing, is that I have plenty of the protein that carries iron, but not enough iron to carry...  So to check on that (and another condition), I had my 2nd colonoscopy before my 40th birthday.  On the positive side they found a polyp and it wasn't cancerous or pre-cancerous, however, you still have to prep for it, which is terrible...even with the shortened method (notice the lack of calories in the chart above on 3/6).  So I'm past that, I'm feeling vaguely less tired (still, on average, sleep less then 6 hours a night, with my machine), but still not quite right.  Doubled up on my iron supplement (600%+ now) and added Vitamin C (500mg) to help with uptake.

App wise, it's been frustrating to have support form one company, blame another for problem X, when you know for a fact (cause that's kind of what you do), that it is entirely possible to do what they said they can't do...  Or have them say, hey reboot your iPhone, we can't connect to Apple Health (seems fine like minutes later).  So I am still looking for better apps, but for now I'm using MySugr (paying) and MyfitnessPal (paying).  For me, I want (doesn't have to be one app):

• Easy to use (bad UI annoys me)
• Able to import recipes
• accurate food information
• calories and carbs and etc sync to times stated that they were taken (not daily amounts) (this will help in tracking carbs v glucose levels)
• syncs with apple Health
• web interface, iPhone / iPad support (syncs throughout)
• secure data throughout (encrypted in transit, encrypted at rest, etc)
• reports
• Updated frequently (I've seen a lot of relatively highly rated ones that haven't been updated in a year or more)

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

And lastly, but certainly not least, a big thanks to my wife for their support through this.