keeping fit – Diabetes Diet

Running and Diabetes Part 2

Apr 25, 2018 Emma2 Comments

Shoes and mini eggs. The Diabetes Diet — Yes, yes, I’ve been RUNNING, therefore I need carbs.

Runners don’t smile at you when you pass them—a sign, I always thought, of why you shouldn’t add running to your life.

Aye, that painful grimace tells you all you need to know… Running is a fool’s game; its rewards are not worth the pain. If you’re not built for distance slogging—i.e. Kenyan skinny—give anything other than a dash for the bus a miss.

Some foolish notion, however, made me take running up once more at the end of last year. And it was okay. I didn’t grin madly at people, but I got the runner’s high. Albeit, the buzz doesn’t last long enough to justify the effort you put in.

And I got to listen to a lot of podcasts. “This is learning by osmosis, EB!” I said to myself. I picked worthy ones, such as those designed to help me improve my writing career. If I just listened to what the gurus told me why bother putting any of it in place? The lessons would all filter through subconsciously. Sales would result! [Spoiler alert—not so far.]

Then I thought entering the Glasgow half-marathon would be fun. Which it was, in January—y’know, when it was months away. And now the end of April hurtles ever nearer and I’m no further forward than eight and a half kilometres (five miles), less than half the distance. Woe!

I’ve upped my game. The five miles feels like an achievement, seeing as I haven’t pushed beyond three in years. My training plan, thus, is add one kilometre every week to the big run and run another two 5ks a week. Do Pilates once a week to stop self seizing up.

As for tempo training, HIIT stuff and dragging myself up and down hills and all that other serious runner stuff, forget it.

Goal? Half-marathon completion, even if it means walking some of the distance.

Running with type 1 diabetes is challenging. Any endurance exercise is. As well as dealing with breathing, effort, aching legs and all that, we battle see-sawing blood sugars not only during the run but afterwards too.

Blood sugar levels that are too high make you tired and exercise will often send them soaring higher. When your sugar levels dip too low, tiredness happens too, you’re at risk of collapsing and you need to eat.

Picture of a Hike bar. The Diabetes Diet — Hike bars–great running fuel.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

The best runs are when I’ve had level blood sugars all day.
Hike bars—the Aldi cheap version of a protein bar—are brilliant running fuel. I have half of one before, half afterwards. The raspberry one is nicer than the cocoa one.
I’ve a talent for finding routes that are treadmill flat. And sticking to them.
A runner’s backpack is worth buying. I ran my last half-marathon, clutching a bag of jelly babies and my blood sugar equipment in my sweaty hand. If you’ve ever run holding something in your hand, you’ll know how irritating it is. By the end of the race, the jelly babies had morphed into a gelatinous mass.
Your Fitbit shows you getting fitter as the time I’m spending in peak heart rate zone has come down since I’ve started tracking the runs. It’s gratifying.
The Type 1 Run Podcast (mentioned here) is incredibly useful. It amuses me that I’ve had diabetes and exercised with it longer than most of the guests have been alive, but you’re on a lifelong learning curve when you have diabetes. I learn something from every guest.
I seem to run well the day after drinking. My body welcomes the chance of sweating it all out. As it leaves my body, the alcohol acts like petrol… Don’t do this at home though kids!

This time round, I’m planning a support crew. When I did the half-marathon ten years ago, I did the race with another runner, but had no-one waiting for me at the end or around the course. (Cue violins.) In September, I’ll have my husband and friends dotted at four-mile intervals, armed with food and water. And umbrellas for themselves. It’ll be late September, and this is Glasgow. Rain’s 95 percent guaranteed.

And is it too early to plan my post-race meal? Readers, I’m low-carb most of the time, but the minute I cross that finish line, I plan to fall face down on a ginormous plate of fish and chips, doused in salt and malt vinegar.

Only places that do light, crispy batter, crisp chips that are fluffy on the inside, home-made onion rings and mushy peas need apply.

Massive disclaimer here—my experiences are personal. They are not recommendations, especially the last one. On a serious note, endurance events can be dangerous, not just for people with diabetes, as this year’s London Marathon proved again.

Exercise Versus Activity: Walk About A Bit and Then Go Home

Dec 7, 2016 Emma4 Comments

Exercise. What does it mean? An interesting article in the Daily Telegraph* recently highlighted what exercise isn’t or what it shouldn’t be.

A London gym – I won’t name them because I don’t want to give them the publicity – recently issued a press release, where they boasted of a class so extreme that they had defibrillators on hand.

Exercise is vital for type 2 diabetics – and type 1s too, though there is less research on exercise and type 1s, as there are fewer of us. The health benefits of exercise for type 2s include:

It helps your body use insulin more effectively, which will give you better control over your diabetes
It burns extra body fat
It strengthens your muscles and bones
It improves your blood flow
It lowers your blood pressure, cuts LDL cholesterol levels and raises HDL cholesterol
It boosts your energy and mood, and it de-stresses you.**

Exercise: The Definition

But what is exercise? Is it the kind of class where they need defibrillators on hand because it’s so hard? As the exercise expert in the Telegraph pointed out, don’t bother paying for that class. Just do 500 burpees in a row as fast as you can.

For all the people who post that irritating, “go hard, or go home” meme, nine out of ten of their readers will think, “I’m off home”. Not, “Yeah! I’m gonna exercise till I puke”. Who wants to do that and more importantly, who can keep doing that?

Think in terms of activity instead. Instead of “go hard, or go home”, try “walk about a bit and then go home”.

Low levels of activity performed regularly throughout the day count. What sounds more do-able to you? Getting changed into your gym gear, walking or driving to said gym and doing an insanity class you pay for featuring lots of burpees and lunge jumps, or going for a 15 minutes’ walk two or three times a day?

Body Weight Exercises

Other activity ideas include housework, standing instead of sitting in front of a computer, walking up and down your stairs frequently and doing short bouts of body weight exercises while watching TV.

There is a place for hard exercise. If you’re an athlete, you need hard exercise so you can compete. The rest of us? Not so much. The occasional high-intensity interval exercise session can be practised once or twice a week (the 4-minute Tabatha method, for example) if you like. Insanity classes are not HIIT. They are just hard, exhausting, stressful exercise sessions that people use to punish themselves.

As you might have guessed from the angle of this post, I love walking. I do about two hours a day, split between walks to the shop/library/train station and then all the steps I perform in general. I used an online tracker for a while to count it up and then stopped once I knew what I needed to complete 10,000 steps a day. (And it’s not as much as two hours, more like one hour 15 minutes.) I am fitter, happier and healthier than I’ve ever been in my exercising life.

If you can increase the amount of time you are walking, stretching and lifting so that you minimise the amount of time you are sitting, you provide your body with the benefits it needs. For further reading and information, I recommend you check out the work of Katy Bowman, who promotes movement and activity over exercise, and suggests various ways you can add activity to your daily life.

*I can’t find the original article unfortunately.

**So long as you don’t do insanity classes!

Exercise and Type 1 Diabetes

Oct 20, 2016Oct 19, 2016 EmmaLeave a comment

A very small (six people!) study out last week revealed that type 1 diabetics might benefit from exercise.

Often, studies confirm what people have known for years, but additional confirmation can be comforting. The study comes with the usual caveat – further research is needed – but what it basically says is that the six people with type 1 diabetes who were monitored over three months had better blood sugar control, needed less insulin and had fewer hyperglycaemic episodes than the seven who did no exercise”.

The study was carried out by American and Italian researchers. It focused on middle-aged people using insulin pumps. It gathered information on metabolic activity, and inflammatory and autoimmune parameters.

Educational Programme Including Exercise

The researchers concluded that studies on greater numbers of people were needed, but the study’s co-author Dr Livio Luzi said an educational programme for type 1 diabetics that focused on “insulin injection monitoring, diet and exercise” would be highly advantageous.

The findings are to be published in an article in Cell Transplantation.

No Need to Huff and Puff

Do you need any further encouragement? You could wait for the further studies, or you could just decide exercise will benefit you anyway and do it until you hear otherwise.

One further point that the Diabetes Diet likes to make – exercise doesn’t need to be horrible. If you hate huffing and puffing (and I certainly do), don’t do it. If you don’t enjoy something, you are unlikely to keep it up. Walking is effective – see this news article on the benefits of a brisk 10-minute walk after meals for type 2s – as is anything that involves moving about, bending, lifting and stretching such as housework and gardening.

Lifting weights is also beneficial for anyone with diabetes (type 1 or type 2) because it can help build or preserve muscle mass, which makes you more sensitive to insulin.