I’m Not One of Those People…

I’m not one of those people who can jump out of bed and eat breakfast. In fact, I’m lucky if I’m feeling hungry even 2 or 3 hours later. I would gag if I had to eat before my brain was in gear.

Morning basal tests are never a problem. In reality most mornings are basal tests for me. And I know for sure that my basal is exactly right.

Note: Basal is the insulin I get 24 hours a day – the background insulin that is needed all the time, without food. If you do not have diabetes, specifically Type 1, your pancreas does this for you automagically. The most important reason is that your brain needs glucose to function. If your blood glucose is low this is one of the reasons you end up in a kind of brain-fog, unable to function.

Back to breakfast. Often, however, I don’t eat anything at all for many hours after I wake up. Yeah, that’s supposed to be bad for you. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they say.

If I end up having a reasonable breakfast within a few hours of waking, then I can forget about lunch. I’m just not hungry.

So why am I carrying around all this extra weight? No idea! Most of the time I do reasonably low-carb. All that falls over in the evening. Doesn’t matter what I do during the day – eat, not eat, snack, have big meals, the evening is the deal-breaker.

If I ever had to do lots of little meals a day (they say that’s better for metabolism), I know I couldn’t cope.

Unlike breakfast, in the evenings, I can eat when I’m not even remotely hungry. It’s a real struggle to tell myself I don’t need that snack and I’m not hungry. My brain tells me I am. Maybe it’s something to do with leptin not functioning at that time of night? I don’t know. Sometimes I’m successful at resistance and sometimes I’m not. (Yes, resistance is futile!) Even so, everything’s easier with an insulin pump. I can bolus in the middle of an extended bolus with anything I add to dinner, like desserts or snacks, or even more dinner. It’s so easy!

I think it’s the evening snacking that is playing havoc with my weight, but even if I don’t have them, I’m not losing a single ounce. It’s sooooo annoying! I think having a desk job doesn’t help either. And truly, I hate planned exercise, but I know I have to do it. I just keep putting it off. Lupus and arthritic pain doesn’t help. Any exercise I could actually do, probably wouldn’t make any difference. It never has before.

Exercise doesn’t really burn off calories… well I guess it does when you do enough of it. Figure out how much exercise you’d have to do to burn off a Big Mac! I don’t think anyone has THAT much time on their hands, let alone the effort-value. Exercise helps your cortisol levels, which in turn helps a whole bunch of things in your body. That should be the primary reason to do exercise, not the calorie-burning part of it but the cortisol part.

One time I always lose weight. When I have to move house! Something to do with skipping tons of meals, not snacking and moving bits of me a great deal (like 12 hours at a time) while packing boxes. If only I could do that every day! Moving house is coming up for me in the next few months. Something to look forward to in terms of weight loss!