Getting Adjusted

I thought that Halloween would be a hard time for me this year. In my previous life I always loved my candy. At work, at least once per day, a couple of candy bars. For desert? Candy or maybe some ice cream. I was cutting back a little bit before my diagnosis, but I still loved my sweets.

And it wasn’t like I was large, either. Maybe a little heavy in the midsection, but my BMI was still in the good zone and my blood pressure was always good. I walked a lot and was (now and again) exercising to burn off all the crap I was eating.

My tongue loved sweet things. And Doritos, I loved Doritos! They’re like a cigarette; once you get one, you want more. I would often find myself snacking on random goodies just for the hell of it. Even if I wasn’t very hungry, the strong desire to just have food in my mouth was always there.

The worst was donuts. A now former team member of mine would always bring donuts at least once a month and place them next to my desk. Three of the delicious bastards would be gone within an hour, nice and safe in my belly.

It’s because of all these old habits that adjusting to a diabetic diet was so complicated. Everyone I knew, including my dietitian, told me that I could have sweet things. It’s okay, they said, so long as it was in moderation. Therein rested my problem: my tongue just wanted more. My mouth didn’t understand moderation; it understood continually plowing random crap into it. My tongue craved the sugar and once it had one, it wanted more, and more, and more…

I knew that the only way I would be successful with my diabetes would be to cut it all out cold turkey. If I cheated, I would fall back into bad habits and my tongue would try to override my brain. I had to kill my urges in order to really be a success.

This Halloween, seeing all the candy laying all over the place, I think I have finally hit a milestone. My urge to plow back a crap load of sugary food has gone. In fact, my desire to eat large amounts of food, like I used to, appears to be a thing of the past. My stomach has shrunk and I seem to be getting fuller more quickly. The other day I had a donut to celebrate Halloween with my boys and while it was good, the urge to down 12 more of them wasn’t very high. Granted, if I thought I could get away with it I would definitely do it, but this is the new me. Even since that day I can tell that my cravings are so much less than what they were before.

I could probably get a piece of candy from my kids’ pumpkins, but at this point I’m really not that interested. The thought of chocolate or something overly sweet like Skittles just doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, the thought of something like a Snickers makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.

I’m exceptionally happy that I’ve turned this particular corner because it tells me that I can make it through this. I realize that it’s only been two months since my diagnosis but the mere idea that my desire for sweets has diminished this quickly is definitely encouraging.

I have many decades left to go before this disease eventually kills me (or a bus does, whatever), so I know that what I’ve done is get over one hump in a bumpy road. It gives me some faith, though, that I will be able to manage the other bumps as I progress on my journey.

Today’s Numbers