The past week has not really showcased my best decisions during this process. My food choices were often poor and my exercise was comparatively lacking. I will get into more of those later on. Stress has also been a major factor; deadlines, projects, new responsibilities that I'm finding myself with, navigating unfamiliar social situations, as well as the growing sense of my own mortality. Time inexorably advances forward and I find myself officially a year older today. It simply reminds me of a time when I thought that being in my 20's was old, and now here I am. Older than that. Still so much to learn.
Stress is something that I am trying to deal with, but it's difficult. There is a lot going on and all signs point to it getting worse before it gets better. The projects that I am a major part of continue to accumulate, as do the meetings and the workload. Each becomes a priority and my role continues to grow larger. This is compounded with the leadership responsibilities that are becoming very real. I have people that now count on me to be present and active in their daily activities, to provide mentoring, training, oversight, supervision, quality checking, counseling... it goes on. My fierce protection of my lunch hour doesn't help and doesn't always make a lot of friends. The whole thing can be draining and I feel like I am failing them. When the phone keeps ringing with questions and I have other projects that demand my attention I can feel my patience wearing and I start to snap at people, and this is not fair for me to do. It's not their fault, they haven't done anything; they need help just like I once did. Hell, just like I still do.
Social situations aren't my strength. It takes so much effort to try and get people. I'm hard on myself for failing, but I have to be. If I'm not, then I won't get better. That's part of what this process about. Trying not to linger on that, but I still think about the person I cut off on Circle and King's just prior to Xmas heading home from work on a Thursday (if you're reading this, I'm very sorry and there was no excuse). These situations are just very unfamiliar ones and I'm never certain how to proceed. Putting myself out there can be hard, rejection isn't something that is easy to deal with, particularly when it is so easy to misread signal. One misstep and a stumble then it's quicksand, every moment feels like it goes deeper.
This digression really is to highlight things that were going on in this week for me. Food was once a source of comfort for me, for a time. Now, it's not. Now it can be a source of anxiety at best, fear at other times. I guess I tried to take comfort in it again and it was not a good idea. Promotions, holidays, birthdays, anything significant is celebrated with food. It makes sense, food has historically been scarce, the thing that we all work together for. We have a holiday that celebrates just food for the sake of having food. These activities don't work for me anymore. They cannot work for me anymore, but old habits, very old that are continually reinforced by society are very hard to break.
Tonight I had a blood glucose level of 233, which is the highest I have had since I was first tested last year. I broke my own rules, but I broke them in a big way. It's a lesson to me, that I have to stay vigilant against myself continually. I still lost my goal of one pound this week, but it was close; normally I lose a little more. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I didn't do the cardio that I normally get to at the end of my workout. For two of those days it was that I went to the gym in the evening and it tends to be significantly busier (have I mentioned that I'm not at my best with a lot of people?) and my drive to push myself is wearing thin by then. Tuesday, I was there at the right time, but my meeting schedule was packed and I simply didn't have the time; lunch was consumed in three parts during time I could snatch between telecons.
Monday also held the first official meeting with my dietitian since my diabetes classes ended. She told me to eat more carbs. Carbs, the enemy. Other than that, she seemed reasonably pleased with my progress. In some actual good news, I managed to get my glucose levels below 110 fasting on two consecutive days this week. That is obviously not the case currently; this morning I was at 140, which is not a good place to be. My resistance for weights continues to go up, which seems to baffle my diabetes specialists (I think), who continually warn me of losing muscle mass. The vain piece of that is that these growing fellows that I haven't seen in a very long time are starting to stand out even more. My next scheduled visit with a medical professional is in mid-April, when I believe I will be getting my A1C, cholesterol, probably vitamin D, and whatever else needs to be tested. Here's to hoping that goes well.
This is all coming out much more depressing that I had really intended it to, but birthdays are conflicted times. I've made mistakes this week and I need to examine what I did and why, what I can do to prevent myself from making them again. Learn from them, not let them continually weigh me down. Looking forward, I know that I am very lucky to have the support that I do. If you're reading this, you are a part of that and thank you.
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