I Still Struggle

I am still struggling somewhat with fasting consistently. I go so many days with ease and fasting itself IS easy. At least I feel like it’s easy for me. For sure, physically I find fasting easy to do. I can deal with a little hunger. It doesn’t really last that long. The struggle is psychological for me. A mental dilemma is more like it.

It may be an hour after eating, or it could be 8 hours after eating when I face the dilemma; do I eat again or finish my fast? When it happens, I am not hungry in the least. I don’t completely know if it is habit or emotional eating. Sometimes I just want to eat when I don’t need to. I guess that would be a habit. 

When I was in my 20s, 30s, and half way through my 40s, I ate whatever I wanted. And I probably should have figured out how to stop doing that before I turned 40, but I can’t see how I could have. I lacked knowledge and I had a lot of wrong information.

In those early years, what worked to control my weight in spite of the crap I put in my body was working out. I noticed around age 35 that it was getting harder to stay in shape with that method. I kept trying to eat what I wanted and going to the gym, and running, which was getting harder to do. Around 36, I did try to figure out what I should be eating. That lead me into several fad diets, and the yo-yoing began.

I guess I’m kinda slow because I didn’t figure out the high carb thing wasn’t working until I was 52. That’s when I finally discovered the low carb connection. The keto diet seemed like a God send. I lost nearly 40 pounds. I regained 20 pounds of that weight, but at least with intermittent fasting, I haven’t regained anymore.

I didn’t learn about how blood glucose and insulin affected the body until I was 56. My doctor at the time kept telling me I was becoming insulin resistant. Maybe she told me what that meant and I missed it, because she was not convincing enough. By the time I figured it out, I was a full blown diabetic and fat as hell. 

The meds are horrendous! The first one they prescribe for me was metformin in the form or a pill. It gave me stomach cramps every time I took it. One morning while out and about, too far from a bathroom, I crapped my pants! Oh, yes, that happened. After that event and my refusing to take any more of the stuff, my doctor prescribed Trulicity. It was a once weekly medicine delivered by injection. It performed the job of keeping my blood sugar in check, but it made me very nauseous. That’s as bad as stomach cramps. I figure it was just a matter of time before I threw up in a public place.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to give intermittent fasting a try. It was mostly to try to lose weight, but I knew it would also affect my blood sugar in a positive way, and it did. Fasting got my blood glucose levels back to complete normal in a year and six months later, my A1C was normal again.

If I wasn’t still getting positive results with my A1C, I might have given up by now. However, each day, I do my best to stay on the course. It is discouraging because I really need to lose weight.