Tag: prediabetes

I hate to move it move it

On By MezzoSherriIn Be Your Own Beautiful, Don't you want to be thin?, Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

So I mentioned that I had a less-than-wonderful endocrinologist appointment near the end of January. Basically, my A1C level is elevated after however-long of being stable.

And it could be a post-2020 dumpster fire kind of anomaly. After all, my stress has been through the roof since last fall, what with a very COVID Christmas, the presidential transition (and insurrection) and coming up on the first anniversary of this COVID life.* And to be honest, I paid just about ZERO attention to monitoring my carbs or sugar intake during the latter months of the year. Plus the fact that I’ve been sedentary as fuck since this COVID thing started. Most of my activity in recent years has been of the “functional fitness” variety: walking from the parking garage to the office building, being on my feet at work, airport and city walking during my almost-monthly business trips, plus the recreational activities of play rehearsals and dance choreography. And none of that has been happening for the last 11 months.

Two potatoes with cartoon faces drawn on them, sitting side by side on a dollhouse-sized couch.

So, the spike in my A1C level could be temporary. Or it could be a progression in whatever level of pre-diabetes/insulin resistance/whatever ethical doctors really call it I currently have.

Jury’s still out on that—more observation and follow-up testing over the next few months to see what’s what.

But regardless of what the diagnostic outcome is, feels like a good time to get my butt off the couch.

Which, alas, isn’t anywhere near as easy a task as that sounds.

Because this past week, I’ve come face to face with the depths of how diet culture has completely destroyed my relationship with healthful bodily movement.**

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Time passes

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Meta-Blogging2 Comments

It has been—

[Looking at calendar]

—3 weeks since I last write here on JALC.

[Allow me to pause one more moment to turn said calendar over to February.]

A calendar showing the first 2 weeks of February 2021.

Now there’s a few main reasons for my radio silence. First and most prominently, I was on deadline for a stretch. An inevitable part of life for the non-profit grants professional. Especially one as prone to procrastination and over-scheduling as I can sometimes be.

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A white ceramic cookie jar with a red lid. The jar is decorated with a drawing of a rooster and the words: "Kellogg's, Good Morning"

Addicted to Air

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Flagrantly Feminist, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Self-AcceptanceLeave a comment

I’ve talked a time or two already about how my pre-diabetes diagnosis has me looking at various ways to reduce the amount of sugars and carbs in my daily food intake. What that also means is I have stumbled across so many books and websites that play on the tired old trope of “sugar addiction.”

I’m not going to amplify any of those sources here tonight—you can find them easily enough by making your own visit to Professor Google. Besides, you don’t need to know much more than the fact that this metaphor is out there loud and strong in the culture to be able to ride along with my complicated feelings on the topic. Mostly critique, but some small resonance, as well.

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Help That Truly Helps

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance1 Comment

I’ve been talking around the fringes of my pre-diabetes diagnosis for a few posts, between the questionable nature of the diagnostic category, and my continued adventures re-engaging with yoga. But it’s feeling as if a more generalized circle-back on the topic wouldn’t be a bad thing tonight, especially since I am still 100% mid-tome in my reading of Wolf Hall.(1)

First things first: even though I am beyond cheesed at the suspect nature of the whole “prediabetes” terminology, given what I learned last week about the topic, I’m still choosing—at least for the moment—to continue using that term for my diagnosis. Because however problematic the U.S. medical system’s application of that term may be, it is the U.S. medical system in which I have to exist right now.(2) So I might as well keep using the diagnostic label all my medical professionals are going to be using on my chart.(3)

Now, I reserve the right to change my mind about this down the line. But it’s where I’ve landed for the nonce.

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If I Lived In Iceland, I Might Still Be Healthy

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Self-Acceptance4 Comments

Every now and then, when the endless brouhaha of U.S. culture and politics start wearing me down, I indulge in the mental fantasy of becoming an expatriate in Iceland. It’s one of those fantasies that’s almost completely divorced from reality: most of what I know about the country comes from seeing various friends’ vacation snapshots. I have absolutely zero understanding of what it would take to emigrate, and I presume that my professional skill set as a non-profit fund-raiser wouldn’t have much (any?) value on the Icelandic job market.

Still, any country that has such a well-established tradition of Christmas book-giving sounds like the sort of place that’d be right up my alley. So I continue to hold this Icelandic emigration fantasy—loosely, but holding onto it nonetheless.

Now it turns out that being in Iceland would also impact my recent diagnosis.

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Good Fatty, Bad Fatty

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Self-Acceptance2 Comments

As I continue coming to grips with last Friday’s diagnosis, I’m facing up to some uncomfortable emotional realities around the Venn diagram of overlaps between my life, my habits, my body and my diagnoses.*

Now, I don’t think I was wrong when I theorized that part of why I was thrown for such a loop last Friday had to do with me (falsely) believing that I was off the hook, only to have a sudden reversal of fortune. But another huge piece of this is just a plain old shame spiral.

The conventional rhetoric around Type 2 diabetes and my version of prediabetes is very much that it’s, like, totally preventable. That makes it very easy for me—in my usual perfectionist, hard-on-myself way—to think of myself as being “to blame” for being prediabetic. And that self-flagellation takes me down the shame path pretty darn fast.

I am now 100% in the ranks of the “bad fatty,” and I am having all kinds of shame and sadness around that.

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February Recap and Looking Ahead

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Health at Every Size, Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study5 Comments

So, with the end of another month, time to milk another post out of the ongoing process of monitoring my progress on all these reading challenges. (One, two, three.) As with January, I’m going to do a small snapshot report on where I stand in regards to my initial reading plan, and where there’s been changes.

And, in light of the new diagnosis and research project I have going on, I’m also going to be putting some thought into a change of direction for the rest of 2019.

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Sweet as Sugar and Ready to Punch Someone

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir6 Comments

I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours being low energy and feeling sorry for myself. Yesterday afternoon, I had more annoying & distressing follow-up from last Friday’s distressing news, so I gave myself yesterday evening and most of today to lick my wounds and regain some level of equilibrium.

I’ve held off on writing about what’s going on for this past week because I was waiting to get to some place where things were sufficiently processed/sorted/settled that I’d be able to lay things out clearly. However, I’m realizing that my thoughts and feelings are likely to be changeable for a nice stretch of time, so I might as well just start talking about things. So, welcome to JALC: The Messiness.

Here’s what’s up: Last Friday, I officially received a diagnosis of prediabetes.

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