Hi! So after finally starting my food blog I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Elizabeth (or Lisa, or Liz, or Littlebit, or Pix - I have too many nicknames and no idea how this happened). I am a type 2 diabetic, I also have hypothyroidism, PCOS, anemia and on the 9th of March 2016 I had a BMI of 40. For the last ten years of my life I had been slowly, passively, killing myself by pretending that everything was ok. My husband and I had decided that maybe the next step was kids and so, as one does, I went off the pill. As it turns out the birth control pill was the only thing holding my body together like a tiny piece of dental floss keeping the house from falling down. And the minute I went off it, all hell broke loose.
I was diagnosed as a prediabetic at 19 and I dealt with it for a little while, but then I got bored of it and carried on with my sugar addicted life. So fast forward to me as a 29 year old, and my body is not doing the things it is supposed to be doing. For about three years prior to "rock bottom" I had started experiencing anxiety attacks and hot flushes that made my life very difficult. I did not like to go out by myself because it made me anxious and when I got anxious I started getting red and flustered and sweaty. So the solution is to just go out less, stay home more, avoid scary things and see a doctor? Hah. No. If no one says the words you know are coming, there's no problem. Anyone familiar with this concept? No? Just me then? Ok…
Rock bottom was the worst and best day of my life. I had gone to see my gynae because obviously no kid was going to happen if my body wasn't behaving, so 'lets go see a doctor about THIS PROBLEM'. Not all the problems, just this one. It's just a gynae, how bad can it possibly be right?? Wrong. It was such an awful experience, but to sum it up I had a receptionist blurt out that I must be diabetic because there was sugar in my urine to a room full of strangers, then the doctor told me I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and based on my situation it was highly unlikely I would ever have kids. Oh and yes, I am definitely diabetic. No getting away from that fact. She did not test my blood sugar, or seem overly worried about the overflow of sugar happening in my body at that point. She just calmly told me to lose weight and not to go see another doctor because she would handle everything herself. I was shattered. It was literally all I could do to walk out of that exam room and not burst into tears in front of everyone. I barely made it to the car.
Now, I had known… I had always known. There was a little voice at the back of my mind that always told me this was coming, and I silenced that bitch with ice cream and cookies and pizza. Sugar was my drug of choice and drugs were goooood. But on the 9th of March someone else said the words to me and I couldn't ignore it anymore. Turns out, the doctor was useless and inept and I waited a month for my bloodwork but by that point I had already pulled my head out of my ass, bought a blood glucose monitor and done a LOT of reading about what to do now. I was in denial for a long time and it took me about a month to full commit to keto, I was sure I could go back to a "carbs during the day, no carbs at night" setup - boy was I wrong. I started testing all the time, and the first number I ever saw on my blood glucose meter was 11. Normal readings are between 3.9 and 6. Anytime I ate pasta or a potato I would spike to 10 or more. My fasting sugar was 11.7. It was very very bad.
I don't remember how I first discovered keto, it may have been on a diabetic facebook group… a lot of what I did at that point is a bit of a blur. But once I knew what others were doing to control their diabetes without medication it was as if a light had gone on inside me. I devoured all the research I could get my hands on, I did so much reading, I spent a crazy amount of time on Reddit looking at the science and the reasons and anecdotes. On the 25th of March 2016 my husband and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary and I said goodbye to carbs with a really pathetic meal of peking duck and coconut panna cotta for dessert. I started keto the very next day. I have not cheated once since that day. I found a new doctor, one who is fully supportive of keto and calls me her poster child for diabetes management. I am off my blood pressure medication, I no longer take anything for my diabetes and my average fasting blood sugar is 4.8. I did not have an A1c done when I started, something I immensely regret but it is estimated to be at 9%, now it is 5.4% which technically puts me in the non diabetic range.
The reason I say rock bottom was the best day as well as the worst is because after I got home, I gave myself 2 days to feel sorry for myself. Two days of whatever… I cried, yelled, tried to drown my sorrows (and maybe myself a little bit) in the bathtub, swore at the universe, ranted about how unfair life was but then after two days I got the fuck up and got on with the business of life. Since then I have also lost 27 kgs. My final goal is probably closer to 40 kgs total, so I have a long way to go still but I guess that is what this blog is about, the journey.
