Possibly, some general advice.

[Paistee]

Hey everyone.. was just surfing around google and found this site. It's my first post. I'm currently 18.. 19 in 3 days. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when I was 14. At the time I was fairly heavy, I'd say about 240 lbs. At 16 I was down to 220. About 5-6 months ago my weight began dropping. From 220, I am now down to 185. Now, this isn't from a drastic change in lifestyle. I still ate the same, drank the same, and love to game, so physical activity isn't very high. During the time I lost all that weight, my sugar levels were rather high during that whole period of time because I simply ate and drank what I wasn't supposed to (regular juice, lots of carbs as in chips and what not). Looking around I read that high blood sugar causes weight to drop in diabetics unhealthily considering it was an unexplained loss. Since I noticed such a weight loss, I've almost completely cut out regular juice and SOME junky foods out of my diet. Now I usually drink crystal light or diet coke. My weight has remained the same since. Although, I do drink sugar free energy drinks once or twice a week. Other than that I am also worried about my heart. My condition also includes hypertension (high blood pressure). To worsen matters, I am an avid smoker and have been since I was 15. I also eat very high colesterol foods such as pizza and calzones since I work at a pizza place and get them free. Not to mention, I am a fairly usual marijuana smoker, and have been also since I was 15. Recently, about 2 months ago, whenever I smoke pot, it seems my heart rate rises quite a bit, and never used to. I also get a very tiny ache in my heart - nothing painful, but it's just a small ache that now, even happens here and there when I'm not "under the influence". I do not drink, and if I do it's maybe once a month and not much. Lately I've just been kind of worried about myself noticing these things. I would like to be healthy and live long, but the desire to turn things around is very low. It's there, but I just enjoy my current lifestyle so much, it would simply throw me off.

Sorry for the long post, just felt like getting those things off my chest. If anyone has any general advice to that sloppy block of text, feel free.

Thanks

[Subby]

Hey Paistee. It sounds like you have a number of "warning signals" going off about your life and lifestyle. It's up to you to respond to that and think about making changes. We're happy to chat about those things, but you're in the best position to decide what to tackle, when. Be really happy you're open and honest about your fears, it's a great first step to dealing better with these things.

You say you think you enjoy your current lifestyle too much: but I think you might be getting an inkling that if you keep it up you may not have much of a life to enjoy.

About the only advice I'd give now is think about concentrating on one or other thing at a time. If and when you do get the urge to do something, rather than trying to change too many things and deciding it's all too hard, take things one step at a time so you can't fail but make steady progress. Play for the long game. You say you smoke, do you mean cigs as well as the pot?

One thing I know plays in the back of a type 1s mind (like it did mine) is how hopeless it is, you hear about all sorts of doom and gloom, it seems a downward slide is inevitable. It's really hard to fight that, and often comes across as seeming like apathy. Well, we do have challenges, but: it seems that getting on track, can really go a long way to not only stopping a downward slide in health, but improving it. If you work at improving your control, virtually everything about your health is looking on the up and up, compared to if you keep letting your control be lax, keep smoking, etc.

[lexdfox]

I know exactly how you feel.

I was just diagnosed with type 1 this last week and everything had to change, because in the beginning I had averages of 400-500 before every meal (!!!) It sucked cause I loved mountain dew and pizza and all that jazz, plus with my high metabolism I was super slim, so naturally my weight plummeted (129lbs at my lowest, I'm 6'1").

Thankfully theres loads of options out there as my mom showed me, and she knows a thing or two about diets with certain limitations. If sugar was your thing, I would look into some really tasty options I've found. Since I love sugary-sweet stuff, I cn be super picky with all the sugar free **** they have, but I've found that teabags and popsicles are the best, with addition to certain crackers, mixed nuts, and kiwi. Depending on what brand there are they can be little to no sugar.

And yea the whole stuck with you for life thing sucks, theres no denying that, but you just have to work with what you got. Keep the good faith :top: