Rachael: Update

I haven't updated in awhile.  Reason being, I haven't kept to Paleo very well lately in the last few weeks.  I was battling illness, then I went away on vacation, and I just haven't been able to buckle down and just plain do better than I think I should be doing.

However, I realized that I'm selling myself short.  Compared to the crap I've been eating in the last couple of decades, I'm doing pretty well. At least the scale and my latest blood work tell me so.

Since embarking on the Paleo style of eating, which I believe we started at the end of May, beginning of June I have:

Lost 25 lbs.and dropped almost one whole point on my A1C. That's big news!

If you are not familiar with the a1C, it's a blood test that shows a diabetic's blood sugar average levels going back for the past 3 months. How they gauge it goes something like this:

if you test at a 6.0 or under, you are considered a non-diabetic
if you test at 6.1 to 7.0 you are considered a diabetic with well-controlled blood sugar.
if you test at 7.1 and higher you are considered a diabetic with uncontrolled blood sugar, and are at risk for more severe complications as time goes on.

To give you an idea, in 2008 when I wasn't taking any medication or watching my diet at all, and was hospitalized with a leg injury, my a1c was 10.2. I was put on insulin while in the hospital, and converted to diabetic meds upon my release.

Since then, my numbers have gone down, but way slower than I'd like. I've had my meds adjusted over the years, and have made half-hearted attempts at controlling my diet, with mixed results.

Insurance will only pay for this test once every 6 months. So the previous time I'd had this done was in February 2012, and tested at an 8.2.  It was again, and improvement over the last test, but still not where I or my doctors wanted it to be.

So when I took the test again at the end of August, I knew that it would cover the entire time I'd been working on going Paleo (end of May/early June).

I tested out at a 7.3.

It's pretty amazing to have dropped almost a full point in 3 months.  My doctors were ecstatic and frankly, so was I.

I need to keep reminding myself that I am within .3 of being considered well-controlled.  If any of you know me personally, to be considered well-controlled with anything in my life is highly improbable. *snort*

As I said though, I've been letting life get in the way of my eating correctly for my body, and even though I don't have weight gain to keep me in line (yet), I have had some joint pain. I need to listen to my body, and not continue to make bad food choices.

But I also need to remind myself that I also don't eat like I used to.  I would say that my bread intake is less than 5% of what I eat. Or to put it another way, breads and processed carbs are in maybe 3-4 meals a week, instead of in every meal.

At 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, then a bread product (whether it be a tortilla or something like that) 3-4 times out of 21 meals is a heck of a lot better than what I was averaging before.

It's a balance not to beat myself up too badly, and yet not to let myself "celebrate" too much for what I have already accomplished.

And I really need to be more active here and on our companion facebook page in order to keep myself accountable.