Build that Wall!

I’ve written about this topic a number of times; hope no one’s sick of it!  I go back and forth on being strict and not so strict about my sugar intake; as I’ve discussed before, I am borderline diabetic and don’t ever want to have to go on medication. My latest A1C reading, back about a month ago, came in at 6.2.  That is not good.  (Your A1C, as I’ve discussed before, notably here, is a three-month average of your glucose levels and is much more accurate than random readings.)  Although my very kind and wise doctor said that he thought I would never actually hit “real” diabetes, which is supposed to happen when you reach an A1C of 6.5, he was predicating that statement, I’m sure, on his certainty that I’d rein things in on my own.  So I have to do that.  For some reason I didn’t hear the alarm bells going off when I got the phone call several weeks ago with this pretty dreadful result.  If you’re at risk for diabetes an A1C reading every six months or so is a good idea, so that means that I’ll be back at the doctor’s office in February.  Well, I decided that the bell rang as of yesterday.  We tend to think of Labor Day as the official end of the summer, but the first of the month is also a good marker, and they’re occurring almost together.  So . . . no sweets, with the exception of family birthday party desserts.  Monday we’re having a belated birthday celebration for my husband, who was off on a trip to Central Asia on his actual birthday.  (He flew back home on the day itself and since he was going, let’s see, is it against the sun or with the sun, whatever, his birthday lasted about 36 hours.)  So I’ll have a small portion of whatever I end up making for the party.  But then that’s it, until my son’s birthday in mid-September.  And I need to do what I did last year for that dangerous stretch from November to January.  As I keep reminding myself, there are so many delicious foods out there that aren’t sweet, there’s just no reason to feel deprived.

This post was inspired by my taking a look at my “blogpost ideas” folder in which I had the following statement:  “When moderation proves too tempting, it’s best to go cold turkey.”  This quotation was from a post over on the Mr. Money Mustache blog.  He’s talking about abstaining from his phone while he’s at home, although that’s not the main subject of his post.  I would strongly recommend reading it:  “Three Investments with a Instant Guaranteed Return.”  (I may have linked to this article before, but I just re-read it myself and found it very inspiring.)Well, it’s lunchtime, and I just pulled some whole-wheat rolls out of the oven.  (One of the many advantages of working from home.)  So I’m going to have a nice roast beef and cheese sandwich for lunch.  Yum!  The more I make the effort to feed myself and my family well, the less tempted I am to indulge in sweets.  There’s a larger life lesson in there somewhere!