To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. ~ Buddha

I have written often recently about the period of languishing I went through during the last couple of years. Like many of you, the height of the pandemic brought me too much tragedy, people who died, were diagnosed with cancer, suffered strokes or nearly died from COVID. As I wrote in my recent post on Mardi Gras, I recently feel like I’ve turned a corner and things are getting back to a new type of normal.

One of the things that I was happy about during this tough period was that I kept exercising pretty regularly, however there is one major place where I fell short, my blood sugar. This has been an ongoing struggle for me. The fact is, there are just too many things that I really love eating that are not good for me. Add to that, that I’m really kind of out of vices, no longer much of a womanizer, clean and sober I really only have two vices left, gambling and carbs. Let’s just say I’m a lot less exciting than I use to be. So, when things get tough I often turn to comforting foods. That is usually the things I grew up eating, pasta, potatoes and of course most of all pizza ad Coca-cola.

So, in trying to get this back under control I’ve started a 7 week program to get my numbers down. I’m currently in week 2. What I’m doing is my standard workouts each week with weights, I lift about 5 days a week, cycling through bicep, shoulder, chest/biceps workouts. I also do shoulder exercises about 4 nights a week that had been prescribed to me by my physical therapist. I also walk/run 20 miles a week, typically walking 3 miles a day with a couple of days where I run a mile, I really hate to run and so am just getting that back into my routine.

Most importantly I’m severely cutting carbs, basically going keto although it’s taken until later this week for me to get to the minimal level of carbs needed for this and now the fun part of making sure I’m consuming enough fat to get the macros right so I get into ketosis.

So far, so good, in the two weeks I’ve dropped by morning sugar numbers by about 80 points. I still need to bring them down another 60-80, yes, they were very high. But hopefully over the next 4 weeks I’ll be able to get there. One nice side effects of all of this is that I’m starting to drop some weight, I’ve lost 4 pounds in the last two weeks, which should also have a positive impact on my blood sugar.

The tie-in to happiness tonight is a very simple and old cliche, health and happiness are integrally linked. My blood sugar being high doesn’t drastically impact me a lot, when it’s real high, I get a little neuropathy in my feet, some blisters, and it increases my bathroom frequency which can disrupt my sleep a little. As those numbers decrease, those issues pretty quickly disappear and I can report they have already. So hopefully I can stay disciplined for another 4 weeks, get my numbers down and then reasonably maintain them, we’ll see. ~ Rev Kane