In July of 2008, my mom and I attended a twelve day program at the Lifestyle Center of America in Oklahoma. At LCA, they provided a 30 Day Miracle Diet that promised to radically change my diabetes and make my life liveable again. My mom and I implemented the program from home a good six weeks before heading to Oklahoma. Good thing we did, because the program was an extreme deviation from the lifestyle I was living. For one thing, I had to go vegan. No meat, no seafood, no dairy. I was supposed to eliminate caffeine and processed foods. Fiber was promoted as being critically important to the type 1 diabetic's diet. Needless to say, it was a lot of changes, but at this point I was willing to do anything to feel better and get myself back on track. It was enormously important that my mom was there with me every step of the way and made all the changes with me. She too became vegan and cut out her two cup a day coffee routine. I was living at home at the time and my mom was the one who searched Whole Foods for all the foreign ingredients that would help in the transition to vegan cooking. She cooked the meals and helped me through the tumultuous days and weeks leading up to Oklahoma.
For me the changes in my diet were nothing compared to the withdrawal I was going through in terms of my blood sugars. I was so used to my blood sugars being extremely high that those highs became my normal. It was a big big deal for me to get my blood sugars into the high two hundred range - a good 150 over where they should have been. Like an addict going through withdrawal, I felt horrible starting this program. I felt "low" at 250 and starving all the time. I had headaches all the time and I honestly felt overwhelmed by the physical and emotional changes I was experiencing. My parents rallied around me and became my support system. Every single night we had a "team meeting" and talked about how I was feeling, what was working, and what I felt was the biggest struggle of the day. Every morning when I woke up and was getting ready for work, my dad would slide an index card under my bedroom door. Each index card had an inspirational message or funny poem that pushed me to try hard and make it through the day. A big theme was "one day at a time." If I could do it for just one day, I was already one day closer to stringing together a week's worth of good blood sugars. I still have every one of those index cards sitting on my dresser in my bedroom and read them from time to time. I also slowly began telling some of my friends about what was going on in my life and the transformation that I hoped would occur. This was tremendously difficult for me as I had been living a lie for a long time and coming clean about that was very revealing. As soon as I told a few people though, I felt the same sense of relief I felt when I told my mom in March and realized that I have great friends.
The one amazing difference that became apparent almost immediately after implementing the LCA lifestyle and having my blood sugars slowly slide into the normal range was that I was sleeping better and more soundly than I had slept in close to two years. High blood sugar impeded my ability to sleep because I was up half the night using the bathroom. I would sleep for an hour, wake up to urinate, fall back into a restless sleep and then wake up again the next hour. Senior year of college I could get away with it because I could sleep in very late most days or take midafternoon naps to make it through the day, but by this point I had been "in the real world" for about ten months, and an erractic sleep schedule made the day SO. VERY. DIFFICULT. I felt the kind of exhaustion that makes car accidents more likely and crankiness commonplace. Looking back, I have no idea how I functioned on so little sleep. Sleep is something that I don't compromise now, and it makes me sad that I cared so little for and about myself that I would strip away basic human needs like proper eating and sleeping in order to stay thin and feel "in control."
Soon it was July and my mom and I were about to head to Oklahoma. I felt so happy, grateful, and for the first time in a long time, hopeful that things were looking up. I had seen visibly results in the six weeks leading up to our trip and could only imagine how much things could get fine tuned with professional help at a world class facility. I vividly remember the night before we were leaving. My mom and I were staying in a hotel attached to the airport since we were departing very early the next morning. I remember going to bed thinking about how different my life became when I got out of control in college and how different it would be when I made some liefstyle changes in Oklahoma. Change was coming, and it felt so good.
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