It’s been about three weeks now of a much more strict regimen. To keep my sugar readings in line, I’ve dropped a lot of bad habits, started going to the gym four days out of seven, started counting calories, and in general denying myself many of the comforts I previously held. Why would I do this? Well, if you’ve been following, the ‘Beetus is a harsh mistress.

You may also recall that it was goddamned hard to get the numbers to start slowly creeping down. But, I seem to be doing well on that count.  It ain’t great yet, and I’d say my median score is somewhere around 176 mg/dL, but it’s better than 190-250 mg/dL at any given time. With any luck, I’ve shaved some points off my A1C – but there’s no way to tell until I have my next blood test taken.

The further good news is that my morning numbers have been slowly dropping. I haven’t had a 200 morning in a while, so something is going right. Also, I have found that late night exercise is where it’s at on two counts. First is that all the machines are free at around nine on a weeknight, so that’s a score any way I slice it. Second is that when I work out late, my morning numbers seem to be better than usual.

I’ve even got back to being able to do some of the stuff I could do the last time I got into shape. The weights have been increased on the machines by about ten pounds each, and I finished two 5K elliptical runs in the past two weeks. I even had a really good time on one of them – 2.2 miles in 22 minutes. That’s two ten-minute miles no matter how I slice it. And my heart is still in my chest!

All things considered, the change has been a positive one. I’m getting out of the house more, I’m seeing results (nine pounds!) and I think that this could all work out so long as the Holidays don’t just destroy me.

And the holidays can be real hard on the sugars. Halloween alone should be enough to cause me to go comatose simply based on proximity, and when you add in the average Grands! biscuit intake through November and December, well, let’s just say it ain’t pretty in my family.

So it’s going to take some pretty iron will to get through to the new year without tanking the sugar numbers. I get tested in another week though and if nothing else it’s going to be the first step on a long path. Wish me luck, and be sure to take cover when those flaky, delicious biscuits get tossed into your family’s foxhole. It’s loaded with all the carbs you shouldn’t eat.