Insulin Resistance

Yesterday I had a follow up appointment with the endocrinologist after my initial appointment and lab work 3 weeks ago. My lab work showed that I am have Insulin Resistance. It is good to have some answers, and the IR makes so much sense given the struggles I have had over the years. What it means for me is more dietary change. I've returned to Spark People (today, at least... I have a bit of a spotty record when it comes to tracking consistently) to help me track my food.

According to my blood tests, my body requires about 4x as much insulin to process glucose as a normal system does. That insulin flooding my system does two things: 1) It tells my body that I need to eat more. 2) It tells my body to store the resources as fat. The more I weigh, the more insulin my body produces. The more insulin my body produces, the more it stores the food as fat, the more I weigh. It's a vicious cycle.

Fortunately, if we can get the upward spiral to head the other direction, it will be a vicious cycle that works in my favor. If I can get my insulin levels lower, I should start to lose weight. If I lose weight, my body will produce less insulin. HOPE!

I will be going on MetFormin to help lower my insulin levels, and implementing a low carb diet (in addition to the GFDF I have been on the last 2 years). That means limiting carbs and pairing them with protein when I do eat them. Taking sugar (the majority of sugar, at least) out of my diet is going to be difficult. I can do it, but it's going to take work to figure out which staples we use that need to be revised/replaced. My GFDF diet has been fairly high carb, so it will take some adjusting.

That's where I am today. I weeded some stuff out of the pantry, which needed to be done anyway.

The endocrinologist's office weighed me at 70 kg. That's 154 lbs. Official high. :( Boo. I'm going to start by working to lower that by 30ish lbs. I don't have a real plan at this point, but I need to come up with one stat.