Qjay's thread

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Qjay

New member
I'm not a big fan of sharing too much information about myself, much less the kind of thing that makes me remember that I am overweight and not happy about it. The thing is... it hasn't been working for me so far, so I am going to try something different.
Starting Weight: 360 lbs (give or take)
Goal weight: 250, for a start.
Starting waist: 56 inches
Goal waist: 42 or less.

I'm also a recently diagnosed diabetic (type 2, mellitus), and have a weird sensitivity to starches, they REALLY blow my blood sugar levels up, making me nearly drunk, very sleepy, and making my kidneys ache. I would get that result from a single slice of bread (20 g of starch), before I got onto medication for diabetes (metformin, glipizide) and even now, if I have more than a large slice of bread (50 g of non-sugar, non-fiber carbs) I get some of those effects.

I also have a lot of joint pain from basically being middle-aged, fat all my life, and a hard worker and physical laborer, so I have taken glucosamine for a few years to help fix that. Glucosamine screws up blood sugar readings, and my doctor never mentioned that little factoid. I'm not sure WHAT all glucosamine does, but I'll post it here when I find out.

I still have a lot of anxiety and anger about needing to lose weight, because I am pretty comfortable being big. However, my knees are becoming a real problem, diabetes sucks, and the rest of my health measures could definitely use some work; my blood tests did not make me happy.

I am currently just adjusting my food intake, trying to get back in the neighborhood of 2000 reasonably well-balanced calories, and I am also trying to get my exercise levels back up to 3-4 times a week. I have been there, but only with a workout partner, never on my own, and I don't have a partner right now.

I'm trying to get to 6 meals a day, and my biggest problem is that I am having difficulty with portion control during those meals, so I overeat and then am stuffed for hours to come. I have been working on this for over a month now, and am still not finding it to get any easier, breakfast is about the only meal I DON'T have problems with this.

Anyhoo, I've been working on these problems and trying to get results for a couple of months now, and have theoretically lost about ten pounds, but at my size, that could just be water weight. If you feel like adding something to my thread, please do, but keep it positive. If you find an error, please offer a suggestion in it's place if you want to talk about it. I'm open to discussion and I like this site because of it's generally positive nature; that is something that is important to me right now.

Thanks for reading ;)

I'm going to stash some neat links here as they relate to weight loss, or other fun stuff. So if you read this part, enjoy, if not, that's okay too. ~Qjay
 
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Hi!!

First, thank so much for posting on my thread. I have thought about measuring myself. My body is so odd shaped and really I don't know how to take a proper measurement.

It is hard to share personally information. Heck, my husband who loves and adores every last fat inch of me, doesn't even know how much I weigh. The people here are all in the same boat. I've found sharing those scary details has really made me own up to it.

I wish I had more advice for the other issues you wrote about, but I don't know much. I do know the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I am currently pushing my husband to work out more. He LOVES it when he does it, but it's just getting him to do it!!

I will try and make your journal a daily read. Right now, I am committing myself to Felici, Mishi's Adventures, & yours. There are so many, but by picking a few I can encourage and be encouraged with being overwhelmed.

Have a good day!!
Joni
 
Uh-oh, now I have to post daily? Well heck...

Let's see here, when it comes to measuring, you want the tape to be in the same place, all the way around, every time, and snug enough to hold itself up, but not stretched tight. You should be able to easily slip a finger underneath it on a waist measurement, and should feel a little pressure on an arm measurement, but the best way I have found to do it: Pay attention to the way your clothes fit, right out of the dryer.

I also wear a belt and pay attention to which notch I am using. I bought this belt when I weighed 420 lbs (!!!!!) and have had to cut several new "notches" in it, so that I can keep wearing it. It may sound silly, but that belt is my best indicator of "Uh-oh, it's time to fix something... NOW!" and I just pay attention to it all the time.

Foods, yay... Doing another sandwich for breakfast, and have a snack planned later on with some canned salmon. I eat the whole can, with a bunch of pickle relish and a little mayo, lettuce if I have it (I don't today, used the last of it yesterday). It's a 7 oz can of salmon, I buy them in packs of 6 cans at Costco, for about the same price as canned tuna (nothing wrong with tuna, but I LOVE salmon) and I really love the taste of food, so I season the HECK out of it. We're talking hot sauce or garlic salt or seasoning salt or italian herbs or paprika and onion or any of a dozen other ways to make it even tastier.

I'm thinking about a popcorn snack later on, too. I will nuke a bag of popcorn, toss it into a bowl, sprinkle it with balsamic vinegar and/or worcestershire sauce, a little bit of flavory seasonings (I like paprika), hit it with too much butter spray, at least a few calories worth ;), and then sit down to eat it with chopsticks. I'm also experimenting with those Salad Spritzers on the popcorn, and the Italian is tasty. Hmm.. maybe vinagrette today.

I love food, and my eating habits dictate that I eat a certain visual amount of food. If I don't SEE a certain volume of food disappear, I'm hungry, even if I ate a pound of roast. It makes me crazy and I have been fighting this particular habit for about 3 years now, but I just keep on doing it. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not, but I don't quit.
 
Good Gawd, we're twins !! (in some ways). Your diary coulda almost been my own had I not lost 90 lbs before I found this site.

Surprisingly, this site has small numbers in the diabetic enrollment but I beat that drum a lot about diabetes awareness and how bad that disease sucks.

I got my results from my A1c test Wednesday and it's at an all-time low of 5.2 which probably is about as low as I can go now, any lower and my blood sugar will be so ridiculously low, I'd probably die from hypoglycemia.

My lifestyle changes has really helped me get control of my numbers. I hope you can get yourself on a path to a better life through diet and exercise, you'll be surprised just how much improvement is waiting for you once you get it all going your way.
 
When I read that you had been all the way up past 700 on your blood sugar, I was almost ashamed. I was running in the 300's and treating it like the world was ending, so while it was dangerous enough to affect my vision, and high enough that I could have been admitted into medical care for it, I have now realized how much worse it could have been.

Thanks for dropping by. ;)
 
I was clueless about diabetes and numbers. They said your sugar is 780, I said 'yeah, so what are you trying to tell me ??' I was completely oblivious to the numbers and dangers, all I knew was I didn't feel too frickin' spiffy.

They sent me home 6 days later at 200 and educated, I muffed it up the first week and soared back up to mid 400's. It took me 9 months to learn how to get down to 120 consistently. Now if my blood goes over 100 I wanna know why. I've been rock steady 85-95 for about 6 months now on just 500mg of Glucophage whereas I was a 2000mg user for almost 3 years.

It's mindblowing what weight loss has done for my diabetes and my day-to-day living, At least I'm not sleeping 18 hours a day anymore and I haven't had blurred vision once since *knocks on wood* I still have symptoms though and may always have them till I check out of the Big Blue Marble *shrugs*
 
I'm having to learn everything myself. My doctor was an overpaid idiot, so I am having a lot of trial and error. I'm self-dosing up my glipizide and metformin to much higher levels than he set me, but it's hard to find reliable dosing guidelines online. The doc said he was going to run me up to 2000 or more metformin and the glipizide was going up, too. So I increase carefully and track how I feel.
I still can't get below 100 on my glucose meter, but I am averaged out at about 150 fasting. I'm hoping that it will get better when my stress level goes down over the holidays. At least I don't worry about overeating at Xmas dinner, I have a little bit of everything I like, then settle down to do some damage to the celery sticks ;)

I love celery... And lettuce! And broccoli, too. :D
The hard part is I like them even better when they are covered with fatty deliciousness, *shakes head sadly* but I can still enjoy them plain. I'm SO glad for that.
 
My best source was talking to other diabetics and using the support group at our local hospital that met every Monday night. The intake worker saw me this summer and asked me to return and share my lifestyle changes with the group so I went out and gave a speech. The internet has been priceless for material not to mention the diabetic forums (that's how I found this site).

My doctor never seemed like he cared too much either way and never went out of his way to be much help but then he's a busy man so I didn't expect him to hold my hand through this.

I'm glad you're experimenting (safely I hope) with what works and what doesn't. It's pretty key to dig right in and get busy with trying something that'll work for you. Too often onsets rest on plan A and diabetes is so interchangeable by person that I doubt there is sure-fire method in volume.
 
This is why I love this forum!! You can always find someone who knows exactly what you are dealing with!!

Qjay, I really liked the idea of just using my clothes to gauge my weight loss. I like having the scale numbers too. . .but I am trying to break the habit of weighing daily.

And really, this isn't about numbers. It's about how we feel. I'll feel pretty good when I fit in my smaller jeans!
 
Well dang. I blew my daily allotment yesterday with some late-night snacking. I had stayed up too late and was tired and got hungry, so I had my dinner and still had about another meal worth of calories left. I was all right, but still hungry (and out of safe snacking stuff) So I went to pop some popcorn for my savory snack recipe, and stopped dead cold when I saw my box of multi-grain chex.
I haven't been able to have any for over a week (I love chex cereal...) so that was pretty much all she wrote. I had a big bowl (probably 3 servings, way over what I had left for the day) and it was tasty and I knew I had blown it, so I added half a cup (or thereabouts) of gummi bears to the mix (stolen from my roomie who is always pushing sweet snacks on me) and called it a night. I was stuffed, it felt wonderful, and I did still manage to stay under 3000 calories, which isn't bad as far as my normal diet tends to go. I feel like I should feel guilty, but I just can't ;) It felt so good to let go and overeat, and it was such good comfort food.
And it was after midnight, lol. So I am just counting it toward my holiday food, and I have been pretty good today, going so far as to order a large bowl of soup and a single curry entree and split it all with my mom (who drove 150 miles to visit me today). We went out t eat at the best Thai restaurant in the world today :D
Fun, but I should have skipped the (incredibly delicioous) Thai Iced tea; it's very sweet.
Well, it could be worse, right?
 
Qjay. Hi! I have seen your posts elsewhere and just wanted to say hello. How's it going now Christmas is over? I hope things are going well for you. :)
 
It's all good, I am pretty much back on today; I went to the theater and watched Eragon, my companion insisted on standing in line and discussing each of the food options before we went in. It was REALLY rough smelling the popcorn, all covered in the deadly golden butter substitute, but I managed to avoid buying in. I got a bottled water for 4 bucks, she got a hot dog combo with a huge soda and some sour patch kids.

I was so glad I sneaked in a baggie of almonds; I wasn't hungry, but I sure wanted to snack. I had a few of the candy pieces (about ten, not bad) and counted them as a "meal" with the nuts I had. About 300-350 calories, I figure.
Then I went over to dad's house for a bit, had about 4 oz of turkey then later had a couple of low-carb homemade soft tacos with some low-fat sour cream. Tasty, and only about another 4 oz serving of lean ground beef, maybe an ounce of cheese, and a bunch of lettuce, tomato, and salsa, so it was another meal or two, but I stretched the whole "dinner at dad's" thing out over about 3 hours, so it was almost like 2 separate meals.

I broke after ten o'clock and had another snack and another bag of almonds, but overall I could have been much worse off. I also had a serving of pumpkin seeds, roasty, salty pumpkin seeds.. mmm...

My roomie keeps putting these incredibly tasty candies out for me, so I politely told him he should not leave chocolate almond clusters on the counter, or else they might get thrown out... his bedroom window. So he thanked me for the reminder and made "Yum-mmm-yarble-crunch" sounds as he stuffed them in his mouth on his way to stashing them in his room.

He really thought he was being nice by offering, which is what finally pissed me off about it; he wouldn't stop trying to force them off on me. At any rate, I am in the clear again and back on my full blown CostCo diet tomorrow, and trying to stay healthy. I need to avoid the late nights an watching TV, both are a bad trigger for me to eat. At least I have my mornings under control, eh?

Don't focus too much on the roomie there, I may vent about him, but he's a good guy, for the most part. Nobody put my hand in the bucket of choconutclustery HELL, so I don't blame him, and he did get rid of the stuf when I made it clear they were really bad for me EVEN THOUGH I already eat almonds pretty much every day. *sigh*
 
Qjay said:
I need to avoid the late nights an watching TV, both are a bad trigger for me to eat. At least I have my mornings under control, eh?
Click to expand...

I so relate to that. I just can't stand the stress of watching much TV at this stage. It seems to be okay in small doses, and if I'm really interested, and well fed. Otherwise it kinda drives me crazy!!

It's great to hear that you are still heading the right way and making decisions about controlling what you eat.

Have a good day.
 
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That is my attitude when it comes to food and dieting. I always compare my day to an 'before dieting' day. As long as they don't look too similar, I don't beat myself up.

I am human and I love food. So I am going to eat things that aren't so good for me. As long as it is kept under control, no worries!!

And you are better than I. . I can not resist popcorn. . infact, it's normally the reason why I go to the movies to begin with!!
 
Qjay said:
Don't focus too much on the roomie there, I may vent about him, but he's a good guy, for the most part.
Click to expand...


Yeah ok, but he did yarble - that has to be dealt with.













:D

I'd keep the candy and throw him out the bedroom window !!




Good to see you back on track ;)

How's your bloodsugar numbers doing ?? Holidays spike ya up at all ??
 
Thanks for the support, folks :D I'm doing pretty well, I have just been so busy and have had so much fun slacking off, that I missed a lot of opportunities to come here and post.
I've been over 2000 calories most days, but have the added bonus of always being hungry. A lot of it comes from getting my blood sugar controlled, I think. I am now down in the range of normal blood sugar for the past few days, even after meals, but as a result I seem to feel like I am starving all the time. I eat plenty of food, the hard part is figuring out when to stop. :(
Well, I have taken the first few steps, right? I might as well see where it goes from here. ;) I hope everyone had a good New Years Eve and has partied their ****s off :p
I'll be irregular in my posting for a few days, I still have some time before classes start back up and I am chained to this chair again. See ya soon! ~QJ
 
Hey Qjay thanks for stopping by my diary. I've been doing the measurment thing as well. I measure myself everyday. I know its crazy but I just do it. But I also just started to pay attention to the knotches on my belt. And I the clothes dryer thing too now lol. Its funny how when people are trying to lose weight they start using the same small things to notice the difference in their weight. I figure I'm not down a size until my jeans come out of the dryer and they feel loose. What's really annoying though is that i was measuring at my belly button for my waist and I realized that's complete BS cause my belly button has definitely dropped closer to my hips and I have a really high waist. Like I would never ever be able to buy a pair of pants that are suppose to fit at the waist cause they would need to have about 12 inches of fabric from the crotch to the waist. Its sort of ridiculous. I think I should start measuring my arms and thighs now too.

Good luck with everything and keep up the good work. It sounds like you're doing great. And good thing about telling your roommate about the candy. I just have to stop myself cause I know my family will not stop bringing junk in the house no matter how much they say they want to lose weight.
 
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