It's been just about 3 weeks since last I posted.
First of all, I can't believe it's been almost 50 days since I started the initial 10 day Blood Sugar Solution. It's crazy how time flies.
So as I said in my first post, I had started the Blood Sugar Solution mainly because of suspected PCOS, insulin resistance, and my high blood glucose test results. Secondary reasons of course include weight loss, hormone balancing, and health but I initially bought this book for the sole reason of getting my blood glucose levels DOWN.
And as you know the initial 10 days were a success. Well, as far as the things I can measure at home they were a success. I lost 4 pounds, a good amount of inches and I felt great. It was around this time that I received a book in the mail that I had forgotten about. I had signed up via a promotion months ago for a free book by Dr. Sara Gottfried (whom I love) called "The Hormone Reset Diet". As I have stated previously, I have Estrogen Dominance by way of low progesterone. I've known this for over a year now because my initial test results with my practitioner showed this. But we didn't try to combat it til recently because my thyroid was the first thing on the list and it took us almost a year to get that at a manageable place. Anyway, so I'm in the midst of tackling my blood sugar when I get this book and I'm excited because in my gut I just KNOW that if I could get my hormones balanced it would make a world of difference.
But I was conflicted because I had committed to doing The Blood Sugar Solution (from hence forth to be known as TBSS) until my next blood test. Well imagine my surprise when I sit down and open her book and the foreword is by Dr. Mark Hyman (author of TBSS) so I'm hopeful that perhaps I'm already on the right track. And then as I dig deeper and deeper into the book I realize I'm already doing like 99% of what she suggests for hormone balancing. And as far as diet was concerned, it was almost spot on with what TBSS was having me do. I was super excited because that meant what I had already been working on was doing double duty for me. It was helping my blood sugar AND my hormones. Not to mention that my doctor had JUST prescribed me a bio-identical progesterone cream. Now all I needed was time to work it's magic.
And then came the end of my first 30 days. I hit 10 pounds lost. That's huge for me. Granted, that big loss of 4 pounds in the first 10 days really helped make that number so big but still, I was ecstatic. But I knew I still had another 3 weeks to go until my blood test and so I stayed the course.
Those weeks went fast. I had my blood drawn on April 24th and then we immediately went on vacation the next day. We took a trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona because neither one of us have ever been. It's a pretty long drive (7-8 hours) but totally worth it. Seriously. It was awe-inspiring.
And even though my blood had been drawn, I STILL stayed the course. It wasn't the easiest thing on earth but it was definitely beyond doable. Especially because my fiance has been doing this with me the ENTIRE TIME (FYI he has lost TWENTY pounds so far and NO he is not overweight). I packed LOTS of snacks and did some googling on restaurants so I knew what I was in for. It worked out great. The only thing I had to make tiny exceptions for was sugar. I allowed it in certain foods because I thought it was for the greater good. For example, I packed us some organic beef jerky that was gluten free but it had been cured with sugar. I also packed larabars, sweet potato chips, baby carrots, homemade ham spread, grain free granola, lots of water, and unsweetened almond milk. And when we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were a lot of healthy options everywhere. We only went to restaurants for dinner and it was easy enough to find steak/chicken and vegetables. Menus were even marked for gluten! In Sedona, we hit up a Whole Foods and replenished our snacks for our drive home.
That brings us to May and I'm STILL on point with food. Besides the sugar I allowed on our trip, the only other "discretion" I had was on May 2nd. We went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron (we are HUGE Marvel fans) and in celebration of the movie, we took some non-GMO popcorn (grain) that we bought from Whole Foods. Yeah, that last sentence there makes me sound like such a hipster but I kid you not, we felt like we were sneaking handfuls of candy from the candy jar.
And then finally, I had my doctor's appointment on May 5th. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous. I had been working so hard on getting my blood sugar down. And all I could think the day before was "What if it didn't work?". Seriously, crazy nervous. I didn't care that at this point I was now down 11.2 pounds I just wanted my blood sugar to be down.
And it was. It went down NINETEEN POINTS. That's HUGE! I do need it to go down just a little bit more to a place that she's more comfortable with but she feels CONFIDENT that it can be done. My insulin also went down. In fact, almost ALL of my numbers were rocking the normal range. And not high-normal, NORMAL-normal. Well, ALMOST all of my numbers. My testosterone is a little high but she feels like that is a result of my progesterone cream and it should resolve itself in a couple of weeks. And besides, she said what I'm doing already is what she would tell me to do to get it down otherwise. So the plan now is to wait THREE MONTHS til I see her again. That's the longest we've gone between appointments in over a year. Trust me, it's a good thing.
As for my diet, I told her what I had been doing and she agreed it was best to just keep on keeping on. She said my insulin resistance is improving and the hope is that with more time under my belt with my diet I will eventually REVERSE it. Can you imagine!!?? After that, she would adjust my diet for maintenance.
So there you have it. I have 3 more months but I'm not worried one bit. I'm so excited about my results that I'm hopeful for the future now. I can honestly say that hasn't been the case for awhile. Oh and since my doctor's appointment I've lost another 2 pounds.
So since I started TBSS on March 23rd, I've lost 13.2 pounds and dropped my blood sugar by 19 points.
It's been crazy but honestly it's been worth it. I'm always hesitant and nervous about the future but I'm going to do my best to keep at it because I SO want to see those numbers down even more when I get my next blood test in August.
I'll keep you posted!
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