Thursday, November 29, 2012

Testing and Logging Data


Just after I was first diagnosed with Type2 Diabetes I began logging all the meals and food I put in my mouth and the results of each glucose test I perform. After 90 days I now have some data I can use to evaluate my progress. For instance:

My normal habit is to only eat one meal per day. I’ve always lived that way and it has never been an issue for me. Diabetes best-practice is to consume three squares a day and this means I need to add both breakfast and lunch.

So…  I started slow by really concentrating on trying to eat lunch each day. The issue is that I have one of those jobs where things get so busy that it is impossible to get away for the time it takes to eat something. From the data I’ve been able to log I can tell that I have been able to eat lunch only 49% of the time for the last 90 days.

10% of the 90 day time period I’ve exceeded my daily caloric intake goal of 1500 calories per day. Not by much but it is exceeded and that’s a fact.

13% of the 90 day time period I’ve exceeded my daily carbohydrate goal of 150 grams per day. Again, not by much but with this disease that might be the difference between sweet blood flowing in my veins and an unhealthy high glucose battery acid mixture...

I know the percentage of time my blood glucose exceeded normal thresholds and because I’ve logged all of my meals each day, by date, I can correlate the higher than normal glucose levels to the meals that I’ve eaten and then eliminate those items that have repetitively caused my glucose to rise.

I have some work to do in order to manage to my goals and hence manage the disease instead of it managing me! 

Gregory

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