Mission: Accomplished

Six weeks, in the grand scheme of things, is a relatively brief period of time. I thought the past six weeks of tackling the Special K 6-week Challenge would be excruciating, but they've surprisingly sped by.

I did it! Here's the stats.

• Days on the diet: 42
  
• Bowls of Special K: 84, give or take a few. (Cut me some slack. No one can resist pizza when everyone at work is eating it.)
  
• Pounds lost in the 1st 3 weeks: 4
  
• Pounds lost in the 2nd 3 weeks: 0
  
• Blood sugar changes: My BGs are consistently landing near my targets and are much more stable!

This challenge was easy. Even more importantly, I've learned tremendously from this experience. What did I learn?

• Small meals do wonders for my blood sugar. I'm going to stick to just 1 normal meal a day, with 4 mini meals.
  
• Mini meals between 15-25 grams of carbs seem to work best.
  
• My carb counting skills and my insulin dosages have been honed to near perfection. When your BGs are stable all day, you can get a better reading on how accurate you are with that normal meal for dinner.

Will I continue eating Special K every day? Probably not. But I do still like Special K. I plan to do my best with sticking to mini meals. The good thing is I know I can always count on that crunchy cereal if I fall off the wagon and need to start over, which will almost certainly happen.

The Challenge Continues

Believe it or not, I'm still rolling on the Special K 6-Week Challenge! It's day 5 of week 4 and you'd think at this point that I'd be tired of Special K. It's just as cold, crispy and delicious as I always thought it was.

The great news - I'm down 4 pounds. That's 4 pounds in almost 4 weeks, which is a pretty healthy rate based on what I've read about weight loss. I've got a few more to ditch, but I have no doubt that I'll get there one day.

The best results I've seen from this diet so far have been reflected in my blood sugar numbers. Eating these mini meals has helped me to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. It's as if my body is able to recover more easily after each meal.

I now envision each meal becoming an internal fight between my food and my body. Thinking back to how hard I've had to work at maintaining a healthy blood sugar level, and now seeing these results, I truly think that's what happens. Eating small meals means that my body doesn't have to fight as hard as it would with a big meal or a high carbohydrate meal. Then when I eat a normal sized meal for dinner, my body handles it better because isn't recovering from the last meal.

This is, of course, my own theory. I'll keep on testing it one test strip at a time.

Challenging Myself

A society being threatened with obesity seems to be the perfect environment to breed fad diets. New dieting concepts pop up constantly, grab our attention and most of us can never stick to them. I'll admit, I've never been able to.

My doctors say I'm not overweight, but I'm not comfortable where I currently am. With the start of the new year, I decided to try something new. I decided to take the Special K 6-Week Challenge!

It's a simple diet - replace 2 meals with 1 serving of Special K, have a healthy snack between meals (like an apple, yogurt or carrots), then have a normal 3rd meal.

Believe it or not, today is Day 1 of Week 3. So far I'm doing pretty good! I've had a moment or 2 of weakness but all in all I'm sticking to it, and it's done wonders for my blood sugar. It's more stable throughout the day and I'm getting more consistent numbers where I want them to be.

Whether this is specific to Special K or not, I don't know. My theory is that having "mini meals" throughout the day is easier for my body to process. I'm going to keep it up for as long as possible to see how it affects my A1C.

What Really Counts?

When I first started taking short-acting insulin, a nutritionist taught me to count carbs so I could take my insulin accordingly. Before this, I had never paid attention to the quantities of food or carbs that I swallowed.

I bought The Calorie King's Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter book and carried it with me everywhere. The book was incredible. It listed the calorie, fat and carb content for thousands of foods, including dishes from chain restaurants, and it somehow fit in my purse.

This was my bible for years, looking up the contents of each meal so I could accurately take my insulin. The problem was that no one had ever stressed the importance of looking at the calorie or fat listings in the book. I literally only looked at carbs.

Last fall, I started seeing a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. He was shocked to discover that I didn't pay attention to calories, and immediately put me on a 1,200-1,500 calorie/day diet. That, combined with a new weight lifting and cardio routine, made my body start morphing into something a bit leaner that I was more comfortable with.

Ever since my eyes were opened to the importance of calories, I started to see all the mistakes I was making with my "attention to carbs only" diet. There were foods I ate high quantities of because they had little to no carbs, like cheese, eggs, olives and mushrooms. I considered them to be "free" foods. I couldn't have been further from the truth. These calories were seriously adding up!

Now that I've been awakened to the world of truly healthy eating, I know that there is no such thing as a "free" food. It all adds up. I just wish that someone had told me this from the start.