My progress (or lack thereof) and attitude changes...

On 13 June 2005, my health insurance company (I feel silly calling them a "provider") sent out a letter advertising a free Diabetics Help Service. This would amount to a nurse calling me once a month to see how I'm doing. Well, my first reaction was "I'm doing fine and that I don't need any hand holding from a nurse". Then, I got to thinking that maybe I did. I didn't spend any time trying to figure out why; I figured the answers would come to me if I just waited. I called their number and set up an appointment. I wasn't convinced that I needed it but I was willing to check it out. I did not want to have someone ragging me about my weight or my inability to reduce it. (Kind of a flashback to all those years in the Navy fighting my weight problems.) This morning, at work, I heard my boss talking about someone he knew who had diabetics and ate what he wanted. This friend had a job that keep him on the road a lot so the man ate a lot of fast food. Apparently, he is on the verge of losing a foot and doesn't want to (no shit?). I mentioned how my youngest brother and my father had both lost legs because they had not taken their diabetics seriously. Then, I said "that is the scarey thing" and meant it. That got me thinking that maybe I should be taking my diabetics more seriously. True, I walk religiously (half hour to an hour a day) and try to control what I drink and have basically gone on the wagon. Still, I weighed myself yesterday and if I read the clinic scale correctly, I've gained four (4) pounds! The first several months, I was eating God Awful mixtures of vegetables and small amounts of meat (chicken or beef or pork) and wasn't losing weight. I find that I've settled back into a "more normal diet". Alas! We had our every-other-Thursday-lunch-for-those-working-the-day-shift luncheon. For the second time, I made homemade vanilla ice cream. My chilli, soups, etc. have never gotten a decent reception at work but my ice cream went over verybig. Very big indeed! 6 cups of whipped cream 2 cups 2% milk 1.5 cups sugar 2 tablespoon Vanilla extract Mix the whole lot very throughly and freeze in a mixer. This was very discouraging given that I was thinking that I felt like I'd lost weight last week. Isuppose I really need that nurse after all... When she calls, I'm doing to tell her about the walking and the inability to lose weight. Maybe she can send me a low cal, lose weight, diabetic friendly diet. I know that I'll "bitch mightily" (an Abraham Lincoln quote, I think...) but it might help save my life. At least, I'll be able to hear Dr. Hosteller tell me that I've lost weight when I go in for a blood test in late August (2005).