Day 6 Bolus Basal & Unit

Today is a happy day! My Scale Came! Not just any scale but the Tanita BC-554 Bodyscan monitor! This little jewel doesn't just tell me my bodyweight, it tells me how much of what I have and some other neat things. I jumped on for a test run as soon as I could get the batteries in and give it a test run. This is not my official base line as I want to do that in the morning but here is what I got Body Weight 174.2 (I was wearing all my cloths except my socks and had stuff in my pockets) Body Fat percentage 18.5% Water weight 55.1% Muscle 134lbs, physical rating 5 (out of 10 and I guess 10 is best) Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) 1862 calories, metabolic age 32 bone 7lbs viseral fat 9lbs. A lot of cool and some unhappy but not unexpected information. Tomorrow morning, I will take it for the official test run and start recording for real, since my LA fitness weigh ins have all been morning.

Kudos to the Competetive Edge for getting it out to me so quick, I wasn't supposed to see it until Friday. Going forward they should learn how to pack boxes to survive UPS. There was one little scrap of paper that was a waste and it is only by grace that my new bodyscan monitor arrived undamaged, no thanks to UPS or the shipping department at the Competetive Edge. Next time guys take that extra 5-10 seconds to FILL the shipping box with paper. The guys where I work would never let a package leave the building like that.... ok I'm done.

So I started my day with a lovely coconut water and pineapple smoothie that I chased with my vitamin protien shake (Reliv from here on) Note to self, drink the shake first and it won't taste as foul.

I have had a few problems in the night with low BG and I should explain briefly what I am going through as a T1 diabetic to do this cleanse and maintain a high enough Blood Glucose level. First of all for those of you who don't know my target range is between 80 and 180 (I won't bore you with what these numbers mean, just know that healthly non diabetic will run between 90 and 110 almost all the time, our bodies are amazing things when they are working the way they were designed to work) I like to be between 90 and 150 but am comfortable as long as I don't go below 70 or above 200 after that I start to feel ...... let's just say less than optimal.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am checking my BG 10+ times per day, but what I failed to mention is that I am talking a 24 hour day. My meter is on the night stand by my bed and I am to lazy an low (yes I am low at the moment, but my Pod is temperarily turned off and I have treated and expect to be ok in 20 minutes or so. But as I was saying I have to check a lot and that means even getting up a couple of times in the night to see where I am at with my BG (I have to get up to pee anyway as much liquid as I am consuming, but it would be much nicer to flop back into bed and not have to draw blood etc...) So last night I tested before bed time and was at 51 so I drank an apple juice (ruining my 12 hour fast) oh well, I had to do it to treat for that low. I also turned down my basal rate to 40% of normal so that I would not go low again in the night..... I went low again about 4 hours later and at that time just turned my pump down to 10% which worked out good and I woke up this morning at 101. (read about Basal, Bolus and Unit at the bottom)

Today was a bit of a trial for sticking with the plan and the dos and don'ts of the Cleanse. I went for my 5k run at lunch, check my BG before leaving (it was 135) ate a mandarin for good measure, was having a tremdously enjoyable run when the bottom fell out of my glucose and all that I had to treat with was a caffienated GU pack (expresso love flavor) I had 2 no nos in my book, with #1 being the caffiene and #2 the non-organic GU when I had honey packets sitting in my office that I forgot to bring with me.

It wasn't the best run ever, but I got through it and returned to my office to eat a Red Delicious apple and a yummy salad for lunch,Yum it was very satisfying.

I head home from work and give my lovely wife a call to tell her I am on my way and what's in the blender for tonight, only to find that she is out foraging for ingredients at the local Asian market, so we were a little late eating tonight but I have to say that she did good in her selection for tonights dinner. We had Miso, Carrot, Ginger, Mushroom and Kale soup. I was full when I finished eating it and it tasted great. So here I sit (I can am already feeling better than I was a couple of paragraphs ago) and the one thing that is hardest for me to believe about this cleanse is how much I am not hungry.

Almost 1 week in and I am certain that this 3 week portion of my life is going to affect sustainable change in the way I eat that I will most definitely reap positive health benefits from in the years to come.

And now as promised Bolus = taking insulin to cover carb intake, the equivalent of a shot Basal = my base insuling, the amount that is required to process the glycogen from my BMR Unit = for insulin purposes 1/100 of a CC There are 10CCs in a bottle and that is normaly a months supply for me.

OK Kids, I'm off to bed! Thanks for stopping by and if you have a moment why don't you follow my blog so that I can look good to people that want to see if I'm popular or not!

Michael

Day 5 - Some Questions Answered

I had a couple of questions asked after my post last night and I thought that it would be a great idea to post and give the answers to them here as it gives me something to write about besides what I ate today, posting a log of my BG, bragging about what a manimal I am for working out and doing the best spin class ever at 5:45am this morning.

Work interfered a little bit today thought (while we are on the subject of how awsome I am for working out all the time) so I didn't get to run at lunch (read, the spin class this morning left me whimpering like a little girl and I was to tired to run so instead I sat in the break room and ate possibly the best salad ever, that my loving wife prepared with me)

So on to the interesting stuff the questions.

So we are going to go in reverse order in our answers tonight.

The first question was called in on my special type 1 shoe phone by my new friend Erin. Erin is the midwest captain for insulindependance club captain and works to encourage T1 individuals to pursue active healthy lifestyles and Erin asks, "I'm intrigued by the term "clean food". Where can I learn more?" The way I heard about it was in an article online that I talked about on the first day, but initially I downloaded the book Clean by Alejandro Junger, M.D. to my Iphone (I wouldn't recomend this particular book for that) then I chased around Indianapolis and the surrounding area so that I could actually have a useable copy. I would say that this is a great way to learn what it really is about instead of reading my inept ramblings about my experience so far. Also you can go to http://www.cleanprogram.com/ if you need instant gratification. Now I will take this opportunity to warn you that Dr Junger does not recomend Type 1 diabetics doing this. I can only guess this is because of the things that I have experienced so far with some of my lowest insulin usage in years, I know that you have a pump Erin, but I will warn you that if you do the cleanse as I am, you need to be prepared to do a lot of monitoring of your BG (I am checking 10 times or more a day right now) and expect to drop your basal. I have not been bolusing for my carbs because I have been using less than my basal until today when I dropped my rate to 50% for the whole day today and bolused 50% for my carbs. This is definitely not something that a type 1 who does not have a pump should think about, the cleanse. Clean eating on the other hand is an excellant idea for diabetics of all persuations in my estimation. DISCLAIMER since the good Dr Junger does not recomend the cleanse for type 1 diabetics, I do not either.

This second question was called in by my nephew's finance, soon to be my niece in law, Karsyn on my alien hotline, and Karsyn asks, and I quote, "How's the ninja?" In a word the ninja is great and so is my new Professional Grade Ninja NJ600 blender is great too! If you ever want to do professional blending some day, this is the power tool for you.
The Ninja® Professional Blender is a professional, high-powered innovative tool with a sleek design and bone crushing performance, a true asset to any kitchen. It is perfect for ice crushing, blending, pureeing, controlled processing and disposal of unwanted bodies.
This little baby has 1000 Watts of power, a gianormous 72 oz. Pitcher and Lid (yes it comes with a lid) the destructive mechanism of this beast is a rotating razor sharp multi Blade agitator that must be made of Samuri sword steel that can likely turn large rocks into sand in seconds.

In a word, I love it, ok 3 words. BPA-free construction, this blender is non-toxic on some level.

Karsyn says she wants my nephew Steve to buy her one for Christmas, so much for the perfect wedding gift.

One of my goals with this cleanse besides getting all of the toxins out of my body is to drop off a little baby fat. As I mentioned earlier, my bathroom scale somehow got lost, but I did find a scale at LA fitness, so until my new Ninja scale arrives I will use those results. On Sunday I weighed 175 at 9am in the morning after my spin. This morning I weighed 174 at 6:45am. My ultimate goal is 160. For those of you who don't believe that I have that much to give up, I have weighed as little as 150lbs as an adult, albeit a 20 year younger adult, but an adult non the less.

One final note, I am not doing this cleanse because I have to, but because I want to. I am not concerned about living longer as I really believe that everyone of us has a predefined amount of days that we will live. What I am concerned about is keeping the life in my life. That's why I ride and do a lot of the things that seem crazy to others. I enjoy life and each day is a new adventure and I am happy that I am able to share this one as it happens with many of you!

Ok so 5 days and I am really getting the hang of this with managing my insulin delivery, eating and exercise in a more practical way stay tuned as the situation develops.

TTFN

Michael

Days 3 & 4 Ninja Clean

OK so I have had a lot of people ask me, what are you eating on this diet.

First of all I would like to be clear,,,, this is not a diet, it is a detoxifying cleanse that is designed to be non-intrusive on your life. I have had people say a lot of things to me about what is wrong with what I am doing, without really knowing what this is about. So please allow me to reiterate. We live in a toxin filled world, we get toxins from the air we breath, the water we bath in and the food we eat, just to name a few sources.
The concept of this cleanse is to jump start our bodies natural ability to detoxify and to go forward and eliminate all of the toxins from our own personal environments that we reasonably can. The cleanse itself only lasts for 21 days, it is not about weight loss, but a clean diet is likely to allow your body to achieve homeostasis as far as our body weight goes, which is likely to result in weight loss for many of us.

All that said, here is what you do eat
Organic foods as much as possible
Fruits – whole fruits, frozen fruits as much raw as possible, fresh fruit juices (excluding Oranges, Grapefuits, Strawberries, Grapes and Bannanas) apparently some fruits interfere with the whole detox process
Nut Milks – Rice, coconut and almond milk – no dairy including milk, butter and cheese. Etc…
Gluten Free Grains and Starch – quinoa, brown rice, millet, buckwheat and amaranth. (no wheat, corn, barley, rye, couscous or oats)
Cold water fish, wild game, lean lamb, duck, chicken and turkey
Split peas, lentils and legumes (no soy products of any kind)
Nuts, Seeds and Nut Butters (excluding pistachios, macadamia, peanuts and peanut butter)
Alkaline Vegetables raw, steamed, roasted, sautéed and juiced ( no tomatoes, eggplant, peppers or potatos)
Oils – Olive oil, walnut oil, safflower oil, etc… (excluding butter, margarine, processed oils, peanut oil, mayonnaise, salad dressings and shortening)
Non-Caffienated drinks – pure water (distilled or reverse osmosis), herbal teas, yerba mate, seltzer or mineral water.
Sweeteners – Brown Rice syrup, agave nectar or stevia (no refined sugars or sweet n low type products ).

I think that is quite a list and many of you are by now likely surprised by all the things that are on the list of things I can eat. Ok so now that this is put to bed time to talk more about me.

I discovered this morning that my Iphone alarm application has a setting that does not give you an alarm at the specified time, so I overslept, missed my bootcamp, only had time for an hour workout on the recumbent bike at home, discovered that the blender I set on fire last night trying to blend to much raw squash was not coming back from the dead and as a result, no blog this morning, so I am going to change my posts to evening until something catastrophic happens on this end so that I have to go back to mornings.

So Sunday, I left you with “I’m off to a spin class.” I did the class and it was amazing what happened. I sipped my sports drink the whole time of the 45 minute class, to the tune of a full liter 17 carbs, I had left the house with a BG (from now on read Blood Glucose) of 94 took in 60 carbs in the form of a Reliv vitamin shake that I generally supplement with twice per day and that normally requires 3 units of insulin, worked out intensely for 45 minutes and my BG was 95. If only I could always have my BG at 95,,,,, but then I wouldn’t be diabetic if that were the case now would I?
I came home and enjoyed a lovely blueberry cocoa smoothie and worked around the house until time for lunch we met Melissa’s family for lunch at the Spaghetti Factory downtown. I had chopped romaine with avocado and basalmic dressing, endured the servers advice for what we should do on our cleanse, had a nice visit with Melissa’s family came home and had some chickpeas and Quinoa (which by the way is the only vegetable product known to man that actually contains all 8 essential amino acids making it a complete protein). More on that subject at another time along with the answer to the question that many of you are asking right now, “Michael, if you don’t eat meat, where are you going to get your protein?” Just laying this out as a teaser for a future episode to keep you coming back J
For dinner, we decided to duplicate the squash bisk from the night before, except we ran into a problem,,, the squash was bigger and rather than do the smart thing and dump it out when it was obviously straining our 10 year old $49 blender, I did the thing any power tool crazy man would do in this situation and I continued to blend even though a prodigious amount of smoke was coming off the motor. We had bisk and I didn’t have to dump it out and blend half at a time…. Actually I did. More on this in a minute.
So I went to bed early last night in anticipation of my boot camp this morning and you know what happened with that.
I turned my basal insulin down by 40% when I went to bed at 8:30 with a 119 BG but woke up 2 hours later with a 79 so I turned it down to almost nothing 10% of normal which is as low as my Omnipod will allow, apparently given how low my basal normally is any way.
This worked out great and I woke up this morning with a 96 at 6:15 to late for my boot camp. I wanted to be a little higher than that for the workout I had in mind and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t crash so I turned my pump completely off for 1 and a half hours and had a 121 when I was done. That worked out good, but next time I will turn it down to 10% instead and I think that will be better. I was kind of pressed for time to get to work, but I thought I would have time to put a quick smoothie together, that would have worked out good, except for the fact that I had truly killed the blender the night before and it wouldn’t budge this morning. So Melissa said that she would get a new one for me and tried to get me to spend $500 on our dream blender, I talked her down and we got a really nice commercial grade… should I say? Just read on.
So, I ran 5k at lunch, but it was a snails pace (31 minutes) I just wasn’t feeling it. But in spite of the slow pace it was nice to be out in the warm 40 degree weather! Came back and had a nice lunch of apples, mandarins,beans and Quinoa. Drank herbal tea and finished the day.
I headed home in anticipation of the new, yes you guessed it, a Ninja blender,, KKKEEEYAAHHH!

http://www.ninjakitchen.com/Ninja-NJ600-Professional-Blender.shtml
Melissa had blended up a wonderful dinner of cucumber mint soup and we ate it with great gusto.
Ok, I have to get to bed and get up for an early spin class in the morning (I will be sure to use the alarm that gives and alarm tonight)
See you tomorrow for Day 5!

Michael

Day 2 Not to Bad

So I started off yesterday planning to circumnavigate Indianapolis on my bicycle. I have done a lot of cold weather riding but all of my road biking in really cold weather has been limited to trips of 10 miles each way to and from work. My longer experiences have been on Mountain Bikes and last year I was out for 6 hours in 5 degree weather.

So I figured a 100 mile trip on a road bike with the temperature hovering between 16 & 17 should be no trick. What I found out were some crucial differences as a result of the speed you travel when road riding vs trail. Read windchill. I have some really good gear that has kept me plenty warm on short road trips and on the trail in the past and I had counted on using hand and toe warmers at some point as well. Next time it will be about an hour in.

My hands started to get cold about that time (1 hour) and so I was pulling them back into my mittons (I have these special lobster claw bicycle specific mittons) to warm them up. Just my fingers and thumbs were cold. The sun had just come up and I figured that even though I was pretty sure any rise in temperature was negligable, that I would be ok to ride about 30 miles before I stopped and put in my warmers. My core was at a perfect temp and my feet were still comfortable by this time, but when I would stop at stoplights my breath was billowing out in clouds that kind of made me feel like I was breathing fire,,,,, only a lot colder.

So this was my second day on my cleanse as you all know and I have to admit to a little bit of trepidation in doing this trip with this recent change going on and not sure exactly how it was going to effect my blood sugar, so I turned my OmniPod down by 60% on my basal rate and I was armed with lots of Stinger Packs of Organic Honey fortified with Bee vitamins.

For those of you who are not familiar with type 1 diabetes, your basal rate is a steady drip of insulin that a pump gives you to mimic the way a pancreas gives a variable steady rate of insulin to your body. When you exercise a non diabetics pancreas will slow down the flow of insulin, I have to do it manually.

So I think the sun had been up for maybe 20 minutes when my Garmin started flashing a low battery indicator to me. Under normal circumstances, I would have kept going, but givin the weather and the cleanse, I did not think it was a good idea to continue without knowing how far I had gone or had to go, plus my heart rate is always a good indicator of how I am really doing and without it I am prone to push a little to hard. So I cut my trip short and headed home netting 30 miles yesterday. Next week I will give it another try.

So I got home and was freezing indicating that I should have stopped sooner for the hand and foot warmers. I only warmed up after a nice hot shower. Melissa came home and had made a trip to the Winter Farmers market so she had lots of cools stuff for us to make out lunch.

We cut up and steamed a wonderful combination of cauliflower, bok choy, butternut squash and kale, which we covered with a yummy lemon, garlic, olive oil dressing, toping off the meal with some Trader Joes Organic Black Beans and Quinoa! It was delish and there was a lot of it.

Dinner was a simple Butternut Zuccini Bisk that we made in the blender and through all of this we had some fantastic herbal teas in our little teapot that our friends Brusce and Elizabeth Tapp brought us over from Britain! We are getting a lot of use out of this teapot lately.

So finally the changes that I have noticed so far. This morning my teeth felt really clean and I think whiter. I have not take a bolus for a meal since Friday afternoon at roughly 3pm. I am having to drop my basal rate on my insulin to keep from going to low. Last night I left it at 55% of normal and still dropped 10 points on my blood sugar through the night.

So far so good, and now I am off to a spin class at LA fitnes and in to day 3

Eat Well

Michael

Day 1 a day late

Ok so I am technically on Day 2 but I just got out of bed and was so busy getting ready for my first Sub Freezing Circle City Century ride last night that it slipped my mind.

Yesterday went well, with a couple of minor hickups since I had some soup that had been heated that needed to be eliminated. The short story is that I did good. I resisted the temptation for elk beef sticks at work (even though my gut reaction was to snap one up and I even reached for one when offered before I realized what I was doing) I inadvertantly ate a bag of peanuts. But I ran my fastest 5k since I started back and my first Sub 30 in a while. I felt really good after that. It was less than ideal conditions, with the wind at my back on the way out and of course in to the wind on the way back. I still managed a negative split!

So today I am going to go to the store after my ride, I plan to forage for lunch while I am out, but should have everything together by tonight.

Those of you who I have promised more information to, I will definitely be lighting up your emails tonight as well, so when I say everything together, I mean EVERYTHING!



Oh yeah and I bought a new scale yesterday, but it will be a week until it arrives :(

My Clean Beginning

Today I am 11 days in to my latest lifestyle change. I have made a commiment to clean up my diet and it has been relatively painless.

A week ago Saturday, I started to wean myself off of coffee. I have been a hard core coffee drinker for years and I was not relishing the thought of giving up the wonderful taste of my favorite morning beverage, let alone going through the headaches that were almost certainly going to be apart of this withdrawel, but I had a plan.

On Saturday, I started cutting my coffee with half water. On Monday, I switched to green tea, which has 70% less caffiene. By Wednesday, I was down to a single cup and on Thursday, I was free of caffiene! I have to tell you that it feels great!

The idea is to eliminate toxins from my system, or rather eat in such a way that my body has a chance to catch up to it's apparent toxin overload. Caffiene was just the start, I am currently in the pre-cleanse portion of a cleanse, or what I will henceforth refer to as the elimination period, because I am gradually elimenating elements from my diet, so that my cleanse will be less intrusive on my busy life. Same idea as gradually quiting coffee.

It all started when I read an online article in Outside Magazine onlineabout this guy who decided to do this 21 day cleanse and I read the book "Clean" by Alejandro Junger. The idea is to get your body into a situation where it can detoxify like it was mean't to.

So now I am at the end of day 11 of the elimination period (a little longer than the book recomended but this is what is working with my schedule). In the last 11 days, I have mostly eliminated Dairy (had to consume a few things so that they did not go to waste) eliminated all flesh food (meat) with one minor exception at my family dinner, I had a half slice of ham, one piece of bread (at the same family dinner) plus I have successfully instituted a 12 hour fasting period every evening.

The results so far is a slight loss of weight (no idea how much since our scale has misteriously disappeared) A persistent pain in my foot has gone away. I am running easier than ever and I have a tone of energy, waking refreshed every morning. Also my insulin use has gone down by about 20% per day and my ability to hit my target blood sugar has gone up from 60% to 85%.

So this weekend, I will start the real cleanse and we will see what supprises are in store...... Think I need to order a new scale