Ellie's Elephants

Do you enjoy exercising? Why or why not?

I wish I were one of those people who LOVE to exercise.  I like how I feel after (I hate how I feel during) and the health effects are nice.  But, I'm not.  I hate it.  I don't think I'd like it if I didn't have diabetes but I  know diabetes doesn't help...  do you have any idea how much more work it takes to exercise with type 1?   

Some background you need to understand this post:

1)  Exercise makes blood glucose level go down

2) Food (carbohydrates, specifically) makes blood glucose go up

    a) food items with simple sugar (juice, regular soda, etc.) make blood glucose rise fast(er)

    b) items with fat take longer to absorb carbohydrates and make blood glucose rise slow(er)

3) Insulin makes blood glucose go down

A person with type 1 has the figure out how to find the happy medium of those 3 items above to get anything out of a workout.  Not to mention physical & emotional state of being (stress, illness, injury all do crazy things to blood glucose levels).  

Normal range for blood glucose would be 80 - 120mg/dl - I'm guessing most type 1s over age 16 in shooting for numbers somewhere in that range.    Before exercise, people with type 1 usually need to get blood glucose up at least above 150mg/dl.   Then, we need to lower our insulin rates to some yet to be discovered scientific method so that what the insulin would have done to lower glucose levels is actually done by the exercise.  So, eat food, lower insulin, exercise and hope for the best.  

As someone who has trained for and completed century bicycle rides (specifically finishing 105 miles on one day in Death Valley, CA in 2009) it took a lot of trial and error to get the carbs in, exercise out and insulin injected to something almost understood.   I also noted that after exercising strenuously (Spin twice a week, bike rides twice per week, etc.) for several years I had gained weight (not the side effect most people, myself included, were hoping for).   I mean, when I sat back and thought about it... most of my exercise I was trying to cram into small windows (meaning... 45 minute spin sessions... so instead of lower insulin dose 45 minutes before, ensuring BG was where it needed to be to start was missed, and I tended to just consume carbs to cover low BGs.  Which, of course, means i was consuming more calories to exercise than I was exerting.   

After six years of riding now, I might have a slightly better understanding of how to deal with exercise and diabetes.   So yeah, exercise and I are not friends.   We barely managed to not kill each other.