I haven't been hungry lately. That's something strange for me as my problem for most of my adult life is being constantly hungry. Yes, a lot of that had to do with diabetes, and yes I'm now being treated for that... but this has come upon me in the last couple weeks. I've been under the same treatment for the past few months... and there's no effect of these drugs that should take 12 weeks to manifest.
So... what's eating me (pun intended)?
Yesterday was the best/worst experience in this entire non-hunger episode. I didn't eat lunch before going to work. Before you jump all over me, yes I DO know that you should start out every day with a good meal. I just wasn't hungry. So I made up a container of chicken salad for lunch at work, packed it with a baggie of triscut crackers, and went off to work. At that point I hadn't eaten anything for 12+ hours. At work I had a hell of a time getting TO lunch. By that time (around 5pm) I WAS hungry. Instead of my normal leisurely lunch I had to eat quickly so I had maybe a third of my normal meal.
When I left work, however, I wasn't any more or less hungry than a normal after shift scenario. I had a couple warmed up grilled burgers and some cottage cheese. The only variance I had was some Oreos for desert.
And this morning? To be honest, I'm not all that hungry.
I'll look at this more tomorrow morning... it's time to get ready for work.
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Just to be clear, I wrote the above on April 5th, and am now finishing it today on April 6th. I did this becasue I wanted to write/think more about this but was afraid I'd forget about the whole idea. And I DID forget about it until I stopped by here on my morning blog crawl. Let's continue.
I think before I continue my previous line of thinking I should cover what my normal eating habit was and how it morphed into today's habit.
I won't go into what I ate while in school (or before 2008). It seems like the far past and isn't too important. Since I've been working at the prison I eat 'lunch' at roughly 11am. At work I eat 'lunch' again between 4 and 5 pm. I then drive home and have 'dinner' at 11pm. When I started this job I wa down to around 260 pounds and fairly quickly jumped up to 270 pounds. Since those first months I've hovered between 268 and 276 pounds.
The lunches were almost always the same thing. I experimented with taking some of the previous nights leftovers to work but it was hard to estimate how much I'd eat and it got tedious to warm it up. Add in the fact that I started driving off the prison grounds to have a smoke and I wanted a work lunch that I could open up and eat. To me that meant one thing; sandwiches. So around 10:45am, I'd head out into the kitchen and plop down eight pieces of bread. Each would get a solid dollup of miracle whip and then half would be covered with meat and cheese. The exact meat selection wasn't all that important; ham, roast beef, turkey, chicken, bologna, salami, chicken salad, and tuna salad were all up in the rotation.
Two of those sandwiches would be eaten at home, two would get bagged up and taken into work. The work lunch also included a couple cheese sticks and a small baggie of baby carrots. I thought of it as a sensible lunch as I was avoiding chips and cookies/sweets. Even when there were food events at work I'd stick to my bagged lunch to ensure that I didn't fall off that 'sensible' wagon.
Dinner back at home was always leftovers and I didn't concern myself with it. I juts happily ate whatever was there. Drinks wise I'd have two cups of coffee and two cans of soda before heading off to work. On the way to work I'd drink a 20oz Gatorade. At work I'd drink another Gatorade, and have a third one while eating lunch. Those Gatorades were sometimes the 'light' G2 versions but not always. If/when I finished the Gatorade while working I'd just re-fill the bottle with water. The drive home would be accompanied by a 20oz bottle of mountain dew and I'd finish the evening with at least one can (but most often two) of mountain dew.
When I got the official diagnosis of diabetes, I was like most people.... I was lost. Thankfully it only took me a couple weeks to get my head back on straight and form a plan. I knew I'd have to make some dramatic changes to what I eat and drink. Eliminating carbs would be necessary. So I tackled the two meals a day where I had complete control... my lunches. I'd eliminate sandwiches completely as each piece of bread has about 15 grams of carbs. Take out all of those sandwiches and I'd eliminate 120 carbs a day.
I almost always figure that there's no reason to talk half measures, so I went for a complete elimination of those carbs. I went right into salad territory. Green lettuce, onions, olives, bacon, hard boiled eggs, peas, and dressing. Yes, technically there are still carbs there but mostly in the form of dietary fiber. Even with the dressings, I'd say I dropped that 120 down to about 10 grams of carbs.
That lasted a little over a month. There is only so much salad that a man can take. I think the biggest problem was variety. I could spice up the salad with all sorts of variations, but it was still lettuce, dressing, and various toppings. If I couldn't stick with the diet, then the diet is useless. So I brought in chicken and tuna salad. My first foray with those was to eat them with a fork so that I'd avoid bread... but that just isn't palatable. I then tried celery and while that was better than alone, it still didn't work. So I brought in crackers. I'd say when I eat my current chicken salad with triscut crackers that I'm still saving about 90 grams of carbs. The lettuce salad lunches are a think of the past.
I also currently mix in some wraps. The flatbread that I use has 15 grams of carbs, but where bread sandwiches required two slices of breadk, these only require one flatbread per two wraps (I cut it in half). Still a big carb savings, especially as I think I can sustain it for a long time.
The glucophage also has to take a big bow as it curbed my thirst in a MAJOR way. I still drink my two cups of coffee, but I only have one soda before work, drink half a G2 on the way to work (the other half is consumed at lunch), drink a G2 while at work, and have my 20 oz soda on the way drive home. That same soda is finished at home so I don't drink any more after that.
I'd guess I've been on this system of 'lunches' for about three weeks and its going well. But this past week I've grown.... less hungry. I'd still eat the same but felt that I didn't have to. I finally just didn't finish it one day at home and felt fine at work. The next day I didn't finish it at home, nor at work. And I still felt fine. Then came Saturday.
This past Saturday I skipped lunch (at home) all together. I just felt no need to eat anything before going to work. I had packed a normal amount of my chicken salad and triscuts and expected to be hungry enough to eat it all at work. Well the fates smiled upon my plan and then took a big shit all over it. I WAS hungry but just before my lunch break an inmate had a seizure.
If you've never witnessed a seizure before it can be quite frightening. As a nurse however I have to suppress that and get more knowledge. If this person has never had a seizure before, it's a major emergency. Seizure activity rarely begins in adulthood, so a 'first' seizure is a problem and can indicate a lot of bad things. But if the person has a history... well it's nothing really. A seizure may look scary but it isn't anything more than a sneeze to someone with a cold. It happens. You protect them from harming themselves while seizing, get them into safe place, monitor their post ictal state, and then send a note to the doctor.
This inmate has a long history of seizures so I was more or less watching over him until he 'came out of it'. That took about an hour and a half. By that point I had little time left for lunch (I had to get the medline prepped). So when I got out to lunch I could only eat about 1/3 of what I had brought. No breakfast, no lunch, and only a few bites for 'dinner'. My expectation was that I'd be starving and overeat when I got out of work.
Except I didn't.
I just wasn't all that hungry. I did eat, but I ate a normal 'dinner' at home. Burgers, cottage cheese and some Oreos. OK.. the Oreos is something I'd normally avoid but that was more about having a sweet tooth rather than an attempt to sate a powerful hunger.
I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. Changing up my diet for these past months hasn't changed my weight. I'm more or less eating enough to maintain my weight considering that I don't exercise all that much. Maybe... just MAYBE... my own internal hunger is making a change. If I stay at this level, I'll lose weight. If I can lose weight without feeling hungry, that means I could maintain a lower weight without extreme effort.
260 pounds. That was my weight (roughly) when I started work. It was also the lowest I've weighed since high school. I was 220 pounds when I graduated in 1992 and 280 pounds in 1994. I still have the stretch marks to prove it.
Getting down to 250 or less would be a major milestone for me.
And every pound I lose is less weight my body has to maintain. That means diabetes will be less and less of an issue. I can't honestly expect to ever be 'normal' again. The diabetes has more than likely permanently damaged my pancreas... but maybe one day I could take the minimum dose of glucophage instead of the maximum dose!
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