I’d love to say that the title of this blog is about a holiday i’m about to embark on, to somewhere new and exotic. Sadly not, well, not right now. Rather, this is about a road i’ve been on for a looooooong time, but it turns out it isn’t actually a road but it’s a treadmill, and i’ve not been going anywhere, despite MANY attempts. My one or two followers may have guess which road i’m talking about….the road to a healthy lifestyle! Turns out the treadmill was actually going in reverse as joyfully i’m the heaviest i’ve ever been, which is saying something, and i’ve now reached the heady delights of the one thing I was hoping to avoid, even if by luck rather than judgement…blood work that tells me I need to sort my bloody life out. So it turns out i’m pre-diabetic for Type 2 diabetes. I mean it’s not a massive shock, but I recently had bloods taken, and my HbA1c count has gone from 5.2% in 2020 to 6.1% today. Technically that’s pre-diabetic. It’s not a shocker based on the fact I’ve not beaten the sugar demons (yet), but it is a shocker because I really did not want to get to this place. The good news is, it’s sobering result, and I can do something about it before it gets even worse. While I might not be diabetic, it’s only a matter of time, and that shit is serious.

So my road less travelled is the road I need to take. It will be a long road, and a difficult one due to sugar/carb demons, but I’ve previous been in a place where I was sugar and flour free and lost nearly 3 stone, only to (insanely) think I could ‘moderate’ sugar intake and a little bit would be okay and here I am, a few years later, at peak-fat levels, pre-diabetic and needing to sort my shit out.

I had made plans this year to swim Coniston water, but honestly I just didn’t have it in me to get the training done, and while I focussed instead on the gym and lifting weights again, my cardio ability is still lacking, so i’m not taking on any crazy challenges for now. The focus will be managing my diet and continuing/increasing training levels to get my HbA1c back to normal levels, and even more importantly, keeping it there. Now i’ve not yet spoken to the GP about the result – that call is happening on Monday – so i’m not entirely sure what they will say, but I can have a guess. While I don’t think my current markers would make me a candidate for diabetes meds, I categorically do not want to take any. Type 2 diabetes can be put into remission with the right diet, so that is the plan.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of research, and it’s interesting to see that most of the UK diabetes associations /charities etc., while recommending cutting back sugar, starchy carbs etc., still say you can still enjoy a life including sugar etc., just ‘moderate’ it. But to me, if you eat a food that requires you to take medication to mitigate the effects of eating that food, is it not more logical to just not eat the food in the first place, then not need the meds? Now of course I’ve known that eating processed/sugary foods is not good for me since, well, forever, and understood the logic around the fact that if you eat crap foods, you’ll have crappy health, so knowing something and actually doing something about it are (sadly) two different things. But this time I need to turn the knowing into doing, because I actually might really screw up my health in the long run if I don’t.

My approach for this will be to return to eating real food – meat, fish, some dairy (i don’t eat loads of it), vegetables, spices etc. and some fruit if required to tame the sugar cravings initially, but again i’m not a huge fruit eater. Essentially shopping in the outer aisles of the supermarket, cooking my own food, and keeping the carbs low. No sugar and ultimately no flour-based foods as they basically are just sugar when you eat them. I’ve done this before, I can do it again. Thankfully my cupboards are not full of inappropriate foods that I need to throw out, although I did use up some GF pasta for dinner tonight because I can’t bear the thought of chucking out food in the current climate. I’ve stopped the sugar again which was the real issue for me, and won’t be replacing the pasta! I’m not sure how long it will take to see the bloods improve, but i’ll just have to keep plugging away. We’ll see what the doc says on Monday, and i’ll report on how it’s going in due course. Wish me luck, I will really need it, ha!