I'm smoked. I pushed hard yesterday. I had the intention of just sticking to a leg day, but I'm half retarded at times and like to push myself rather hard, if not too hard. Before I go too far, let me make something clear:
Working out for control of diabetes and working out to lose weight and build muscle aren't exactly the same thing. Don't think for a second that you have to work out to the point of being sore.
To burn sugar out of your system, you simply need to burn energy. And here's the thing. To help, all you have to do is burn more energy than you have been. Everyone has a routine. You get up, you go to work, you come home, etc etc. For the most part, most people burn the same amount of energy just about every day. You have got to change that if you're diabetic. Walk 30 minutes. If you can't do that, walk 15 until you can walk 20, do that until you can walk 30. Then walk an hour. Then walk ten run 3, walk ten run 3 and walk it out. Then step it up even more. The point is, you're burning energy, and you're burning more than the life style that either lead to your diabetes or made it worse. Burning more energy will make it better.
Now, here's something you have to keep in mind. If you're just discovering that you're diabetic, you probably have a very high A1C. You need to knock your daily glucose readings down a good bit first. If you start working out while it's over 200, you run a very high risk of spiking your glucose instead of lowering in it. While you're still burning that build up of sugar out, it can happen. Get morning readings under 140 or so before you start working out. It's not hard to do.
Now, all that being said, we have two important things to think about beyond just burning a little energy. Fat, and Muscle. Muscle at rest burns 3 times more energy than fat. This will obviously go way up with exercise. Muscle also takes up about a third of the space for the same volume. It's not hard to see that more muscle and less fat is a good thing. To help you in your drive to drop weight, think of fat as sugar, and we all know that diabetics need to get sugar levels down. It also helps that it's true. Ketogenic diets have proven it to be true. Go to a zero carb intake, and your blood glucose will NOT go to zero. Where it will go depends on the individual, (mine hovers around 150 without exercise or meds).
Now, if you're not eating sugar, how can you have elevated blood sugar? Simple. You have a liver that magically converts fat to sugar. The process is called ketosis. Do NOT confuse ketosis and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). DKA can be fatal. Ketosis will make you a new person. The problem with ketosis is that you need an intake deficit. People that skip carbs for a meal or two then eat carbs then skip carbs will often feel like shit, and may end up having blood sugar issues. You're trying to avoid that. So if you go down the road of a ketogenic diet, stick to it. Half assing it can be dangerous.
On that subject, Keto diets like Atkins are very misunderstood, and maligned diets ever. If you decide to go down the Atkins road, READ THE BOOK. You need to understand the science behind it. It works. I've now officially dropped 70lbs by cutting carbs and doing Atkins. There are different ones though, so do a lot of research and pick one that'll work for you.
So, to condense what's I've written so far, work is good. More work is better. Getting in shape is even better. Now, what I'm doing is beyond even that. I'm a firefighter. I may go from sitting on my ass to wearing 75lbs of gear dragging a 200lb hose into a burning building up stairs inside of 5 minutes. Or slinging a 50 lb spreader to open a door. No time to stretch, no time to psych yourself up. You just do it. This is part of the reason that heart attack is the number one killer of firemen. I don't want to be a statistic. I'm already pretty strong, but I carry a lot of fat too, and that's bad. My goal in all this is to drop 58 more lbs, getting down to about 240. The stupid chart says I should weigh 200. Nope. I want to add muscle to my back, chest, and arms. As long as we're on goals, I also want to run a ten k by the end of the year.
So when I get on here and post about being sore, it's because I worked out really hard. Don't think that you need to do the same to help control your diabetes. While controlling diabetes is what this is all about, I'm going above and beyond that. So when I'm leg pressing 495lbs for reps, don't think you need to do the same.
Now, for yesterday. I'd done arms the day before, so I wanted to concentrate on legs yesterday. And I did for the first hour I was there. Then, arms being my weakness, I couldn't help but work my already sore arms a bit. Mostly my shoulders as that's where I'm rehabbing an injury.
So I did that. I shouldn't have, but I did. I decided to do one last set of leg presses, so I head to the machine and go to it. Mistake. Not because I got hurt, but because the gym's personal trainer walked over to me to talk about their program. He wanted to do a fitness evaluation as part of me being a new member. Ok I said. It went downhill. Without getting into complete lack of professionalism this douche bag had, I will give him credit that he smoked me. He took me to the point of absolute muscle failure. I probably shouldn't have done it after working out for almost 2 hours. But I did, and today I'm sore as hell. The problem is, I just want to lay down, and every time I do, I have to roll out of bed. No fun.
Stop reading, Go work!
No comments:
Post a Comment