Good Body Buddies

I don't want to have diabetes. Type II diabetes comes with a stigma. If I have Type II then it means I deserve it because I ate and lazified my way to a deadly disease. Everywhere I turn I see messages that obesity causes Type II diabetes and the only way to manage it is through dieting and exercise.

I chose to get past the stigma and investigate whether or not I had diabetes because I had run out of options. I have tried dieting and exercise, acupuncture, thyroid treatment, hormone treatment, sugar-free and wheat-free diets. Nothing I do seems to make the scale budge. I can't even remember how I arrived at the decision to investigate diabetes or how I found the site www.bloodsugar101.com. I ended up reading the book by the same name as the site and was shocked by what I read. The author, Jenny Ruhl turns everything I previously thought about diabetes on it's head. She says "While people with diabetes often are seriously overweight, there is accumulating evidence that their overweight is a symptom, not the cause of the process that leads to Type 2 Diabetes". What? Diabetes causes weight gain instead of the other way around? To top it all off, she goes on to list increasing evidence that diabetes may have many causes including environmental pollution, autoimmune or viral attacks, and genes. The fact that diabetes and obesity are spreading at a faster rate than food consumption and lack of exercise patterns to me seems to suggest something "bigger" is going on here. Perhaps we are literally "catching" obesity.

Please read the article You Did Not Eat Your Way to Diabetes because she explains this so much better than I can. I have read it multiple times in order to help myself feel better about diabetes. I have been testing my blood sugar for a few months now and it appears that I probably have diabetes. But thanks to Jenny Ruhl's book, I am okay with this and believe that treating it might turn out to be my path to weight loss. Much more to come on this topic.

I just have to share a fitness blog that I am starting to read daily. It is called The Great Fitness Experiment. It's written by Charlotte Hinton and it's absolutely pee-your-pants hilarious and interesting. She writes about things that I think in my head but never think to write about. For example, she has a post titled A Hoochie Trapped in a Feminist's Body about the internal struggle she experiences from the guilty pleasure of listening to rap music with questionable (to put it mildly) lyrics when she works out. I too am a raunchy hip-hop workout playlist addict and I struggle with it sometimes but never thought that anyone could relate. I would also never be able to write about it in such an entertaining way so I won't even try.

My two biggest complaints I give any doctor are weight gain and depression. I have tried a myriad of therapies over the past couples of years in order to address these primary issues and some secondary issues. A brief list of these therapies have included thyroid medication, hormone creams, mega dose supplements, anti depressants, vitamin D, and sun lamp therapy. So far, none of these treatments have eased my depression or helped me lose weight.

After feeling so bad for so long and having so many failed attempts to feel well, I feel like I am at rock bottom. I started to analyze my "depression" and how it seems to be getting in the way of doing the exercise that I need in order to lose weight. My depression feels much more like what I imagine chronic fatigue syndrome must feel like. I simply have no energy. And when I say "no energy" I don't just mean for vigorous exercise. It's hard to admit this but I mean that I can barely function and have been feeling this way for about two years with the last year being the worst. I spend most of my day laying down. Any small movement makes me feel dizzy, exhausted and sleepy. In a given 24hr period I average about 12-16 hours of sleep and I don't feel rested when I am awake. I am barely functioning.

Typing in a list of symptoms brought me to a condition called "Adrenal Burnout". I'm not sure if this is my problem but I think it warrants further investigation given the extreme nature of my exhaustion. Here are a few symptoms associated with adrenal burnout:

• low blood pressure
• low body temperature
• low blood sugar
• chronic exhaustion
• need for excessive sleep
• decreased perspiration
• muscle weakness
• depression
• weight gain
• symptoms not helped by thyroid medication

As far as treatment goes, there seem to be no quick fixes. In fact, many web experts suggest it can take anywhere from 1 to 5 years to fully recover, depending on the severity of the problem. This is not good news for me (or could it be a life-changing opportunity?) at this point in my life. I have decided to consult an acupuncturist before doing anything else because that was next on my list of treatments to try anyway. I will keep blogging on my acupuncture experiences and adrenal burnout.

Update on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:41AM by Georgia T.

After this post I did a six-weekly session of acupuncture (all I can afford at this time) and I believe it really helped. If you don't have a needle phobia, I highly recommend trying acupuncture. I felt stronger each session and I now have enough energy to exercise moderately. I am also continuously working on improving my diet, sleep habits, stress level, etc. I feel like I am about 60-70% back to my healthy self. Wish me luck!

I always love to see people's weight loss incentive outfits. I realize that most of us have an entire incentive wardrobe in mind, but I am always curious to see what is the absolute number one item of clothing that weight loss participants are dying to wear. Here is my incentive dress:

I have this in a size 8 hanging on my wall for motivation. It's a true incentive dress because I think my arms are my worst body part and usually the last part of my body to shape up. I got this on clearance (but I would have paid full price) from my favorite store, Macys. This dress is similar to another favorite dress I wore in the past during a skinny period: