Rolling Through the Diabetic Valley

When I was first diagnosed with mild Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, I went into a real funk, understandably enough. Luckily, it was intense, as my fear mixed with my grief over the deaths of my parents, but it was fairly brief. For the next few weeks I half-heartedly toyed with getting a little more walking in, and trying to limit my eating, but it was only half hearted. The next visit to my family doctor was a shock. Normally my gp was a pleasant young woman who didn't lecture me on my weight, and even though she insisted on weighing me, did not even tell me what it was if I didn't want to know. After hitting the 300 pound mark I really didn't! By that point in my life I thought I was through with dieting. They didn't work, and I was just trying to accept myself as a large woman.

This visit was different. She asked me how I was doing with the "lifestyle changes" and I waffled and hmmed and hawed... She sternly told me that between the hypertension and the diabetes, I was dealing with two life threatening diseases which also had the potential to make me suffer greatly over a long period of time by losing kidney function and developing neuropathy as the nerves in my extremeties are slowly starved of what they need. It was sobering enough to make me cry, right there in her office.

My switch got flipped. So, I was scared straight and off and running, trying to reduce my weight before the grim reaper caught up with me. Well, not running, walking, actually. I had been on a zillion diets in my 35 + years by this point, but this was the first time I was doing it for my health and not just my self esteem. I was scared back on the diet wagon again, following my old weight watchers diet that I had been off and on since my early teens.

There's an observation in the Overeaters' Anonymous Guide to the 12 steps that points out how, contrary to popular belief, overeaters often exhibit a great degree of willpower, and it's true of me: For periods up to a year, I could maintain incredible self-discipline around food. I can remember being 12 and being on my first big weight loss diet where I lost 60 pounds, going from 180 to 120 in about 9 months. I didn't eat sweets at all at that time, and I can remember even boasting that I was fine just smelling chocolate. Sigh, the hubris of the young...But it was a cycle, the old roller coaster. I would lose a large amount of weight and then gain it on again, plus more.

Well, hubris isn't just for the young, because I was back on the wagon, with more zeal and big talk than a born-again televangelist! I squirm when I remember how self righteous I could be to friends who asked me about my secret, "just common sense, really" I'd smirk. Over the space of the next year and a half, I lost over a hundred pounds, and the symptoms of the diseases greatly lessened: I was still on vasotec, but my blood sugars were in a normal range.

This time would be different, I vowed. I celebrated my new found size by taking some of the money I had inherited from my parents and going back to Grad School. I was a new person and I was going to realize on of my dreams: studying painting in New York City. What could go wrong? In many respects, it was a great couple of years. But I had absolutely no idea of how to cope with the world without the filter of food. Inside, I was still the woman who coped with stress by boxes of chocolates hidden under the bed.