Healing Type 1 Diabetes

Monday - Don't Give up on Me!

I'm sorry I have not been posting lately. I totally failed at the 21 day challenge. It was like I was trying to do too much too soon and my body, mind, and spirit rebelled.

I guess with the raw food diet I was relying on my 'treats' to keep me going - raw chocolate, bananas, nuts, etc. When I tried to remove all of those at once, my cravings kicked in big time and I totally fell off the wagon. I've been thinking lately that maybe the problem is my acid/alkaline balance. My treats were keeping me acid and I never developed the alkalinity that I needed to let go of those foods.

I remember Dr. Joel Robbins teaching us that if you are eating acid foods, you crave more acids and that adding alkaline foods to your diet reduces the cravings. So then I found this book - The pH Miracle for Diabetes. I am halfway through this book and I am excitedly looking forward to trying their approach. Once I start, I will be posting what I am doing and how well it is working.

Wish me luck!

Tuesday - Starting a 21 Day Challenge

Yesterday I started a 21 day challenge through Frederick Patenaude. He is offering it free this time, to refine it, and he says next time there will be a charge. Well free is just the right cost for me, so I am giving it a try. The idea behind this is to make 3 doable changes in your life, carry them out everyday for 21 days and thereby make them a habit. He provides a workbook that you write in everyday and daily emails and so far it is great.

At first my 3 positive habits were:

• drink 1 veggie juice and/or 1 smoothie everyday
• jump 10 minutes on the mini-tramp or walk 20 minutes everyday
• head to bed at 11:00 pm every night

Then he asked us to refine them and provide more of the how, where, and when so I changed them to:

• I will drink one water bottle full of veggie juice for lunch and/or 1 green smoothie at supper everyday. When I run out of veggie juice, I will make some the night before. I will make sure I buy enough veggies for juice and smoothies on my grocery shopping trips.
• I will jump on my mini-tramp first thing (before I get distracted by chores) when I get home from work on work days or 5:00 pm on weekends, or walk 20 minutes outside at the same time of day. I will start and leave work 10 minutes earlier so this doesn't push my kids' & pets' evening meals to later.
• I will stop watching TV in the family room at 11:00 pm every night and head towards bed. If I am in the middle of a show, I will just save it to the DVR. I will complete all of my evening chores before I sit down to watch that last show, except perhaps transferring a load of wash to the dryer.

Is that specific enough or what? It is good to write this stuff down. In my workbook I also wrote down that I won't eat the free nuts in the breakroom at work, no raw bars, and only eat bananas in smoothies. I am ready to progress to the next level of eating/healing and I feel these things were good transition foods for me and it is time to let go - at least for 3 weeks and see how it goes.

• 7:30 am - 153 - a little high, but not high enough to take any insulin. My endocrinologist says not to take any unless I am over 200, if I am not eating. Last night I went to bed with 156, so at least it stayed pretty stable.
• 11:00 am - 128 - veggie juice - 2 units
• 12:00 pm - acupuncture & chiropractic appointment
• 2:45 pm - 49 - about 8 oz of grape tomatoes because I was crashing.
• 4:20 pm - 112

Friday - Professional Colonics can be Awesome

Right before the holidays, I was invited for a courtesy professional colonic at Intestinal Fitness. They had stumbled onto my blog and saw that I was pro-colonics and invited me to give them a try.

I have had several professional colonics done before. Most of them were when I lived in Oklahoma with a colon hydrotherapist that I really liked. Since our move to North Carolina in 2001, I had mostly relied on home colonics with my Bib Kit. I had tried two colon hydrotherapists, one with an open system in Durham and one that everyone raved about in Cary. I did not find the open system any better than me doing it at home and did not like the hydrotherapist (she just couldn't get over that fact that I was raw vegan). The one in Cary was okay, but I suspect her water pressure was low or something because she kept having to turn something to unblock the hose and that made it kind of uncomfortable.

Now with this newly opened clinic in Raleigh, I have finally found a local colon hydrotherapist that I like and the facilities are great too. Before and after the colonic you have complete privacy as there is a private bathroom right next to your treatment room. Gabrielle Diamante was my hydrotherapist and she was great! Very knowledgeable, sweet, and supportive of the raw vegan diet. They have the latest in colon hydrotherapy gadgetry and the water is triple filtered before it even goes into you. Check out their great FAQs on their website. For those who don't know much about colonics, these are very helpful.

Gabrielle pointed out what was coming out and there were tiny, tiny starters to stones, orange vitamin powders that I wasn't absorbing (maybe my Vitamin C powder that I just finished up - I won't be buying more of that!), some feces of course, and lots of gas. She suggested I should switch to liquid vitamins - less stress on the pancreas and since I have Diabetes that is a great idea. She sells some and I will consider it when I finish up vitamins that I have.

I felt much better after the colonic and then for the next few days I had very large bms. I think that was because all that gas got cleared out and now my body was playing catch up, now that there was room in the colon to be able to do so. I will probably still do some colonics at home on occasion with my bib kit, but I expect I will be back to Intestinal Fitness and I highly recommend them to anyone else who lives in this area.

• 6:45 am - 147 - after eating 2 raw bars last night (due to my sugar levels crashing) without insulin, I feared my blood sugars would be very high. So this isn't bad, considering...
• 12:30 pm - 195 - I guess this is my normal rise in bs after getting up - 2 bananas - 5 units (1 for being high)
• 2:45 pm - 190
• 3:20 pm - 20 oz of veggie juice - 3 units (1 for being high)
• 5:00 pm - 76

Thursday - I'm Back...

I took an extended holiday break from blogging, but I'm back now and plan to get into the routine again.

I did finish up that Rawvolution box and decided gourmet raw food for several days in a row is definitely not for me. My breath smelled, my stomach gurgled, I gained a couple of pounds, and when I went for a colonic (which I will post about soon) they mostly helped me to release lots of gas. If I lived near the restaurant, I would definitely visit it on occasion for a yummy gourmet raw meal but I will not be ordering another box. I think the box might be great if there were multiple people who were going to eat it up and that way it would be a one or two day treat. But, like I said, I may be weird and others may love to eat this type of raw food day in and day out and do very well with it.

I prefer ordering and having on hand some raw flax crackers, raw nut butters, and raw chocolate instead for an occasional treat. I can have a tiny raw flax cracker with just a dab of raw pecan butter and it will satisfy me and then I may not eat those again for another week. They last a long time, so no rush in eating them.

I did cheat over the holidays and drank some private label cranberry wine that we won at a party. My husband doesn't drink, so it was up to me. ;-) It was very good and I just drank a little each day.

For Christmas dinner I ate raw veggies and some raw yellow squash spaghetti and raw tomato sauce. For New Years eve dinner I ate raw veggies and onion bread (that I ordered and will post about later) with avocado, tomato, red bell pepper, and lettuce on it. Very yummy! One of these days I may get a dehydrator and make flax crackers and onion bread for myself.

My New Year's resolution is to start juicing again. Tuesday night I made some juice out of swiss chard, dandelion greens, carrots, celery, and rome apples with my Champion juicer. It made a three day supply, if I drink 20 ounces (a water bottle full) per day.

• 8:00 am - 263 - not sure why I am high this morning. I did fall down yesterday and injured myself (will post about this later), so maybe my body is out of whack from that - 2 units
• 8:30 am - handful of nuts
• 10:30 am - 177 - didn't take insulin with the nuts - 1 1/2 bananas - 4 units (1 for being high)
• 2:00 pm - 106 - handful of nuts
• 4:00 pm - 98 - veggie juice - 2 units
• 7:00 pm - 178 - a large salad of red leaf lettuce, red bell pepper, mushrooms, & tomatoes with a dressing made of 1/2 an avocado and juice from half a lemon and then some raw chocolate for dessert - 3 units
• 10:45 pm - 45 - started feeling low and getting sweaty, I guess that was too much insulin - 1 raw bar - 10 units lantus
• 11:10 pm - 43 - still crashing - 1 raw bar