A large reason for starting this blog, or anything at all, leaving some sort of record out there stems from having type 1 diabetes. The fact that we, as a modern community, still do not know what exactly causes it. Having diabetes means we now have to learn how our body reacts to sugar, stress, activity, and how much insulin to give as a result. Growing up, it always seemed to kind of manage itself since I was so active all the time. As I have gotten older, I find myself stress eating more, or just stressing more which has uncontrollable fluctuations on sugars to its own degree. It just feels like some days I am in a vicious sugar coated feed back loop. It is as simple as eating like a normal human again, and not binge eating like a crazy sugar raged adolescent, but somehow it happens, and I would like to talk a little bit about it. The past few years of my life I look back on and think to myself, "you were living in a fantasy land." I would eat like when I was "training" all the time for cycling and being a bike messenger, but I was not burning nearly that many calories. I was obviously still active and I burned all the calories consumed still, managed to still be nearly the same weight as five years ago even. When I was a bike messenger, it was easy for me to consume healthy nutritious wholesome long lasting foods. Every morning you were slapped in the face by whatever weather was happening and usually a morning USPS office mail call, and they were not always light. So to make my life easier, I always made sure I ate well, it was easy to do so. As career paths changed over the years and I morphed into a slightly different version of my prior self, a less hard core, high energy and heart rate self. This resulting calmer approach and lack of enthusiasm for a particular sport eventually took a toll on my diabetic health. I eventually got it under control with fasting and saw amazing results. But that would lead to some out of controlled nights as well. After reining that in, and understanding the process of what is happening inside our body I was able to make it happen, and it is still the implemented technique I use to help control my sugar levels, almost daily. I however saw great results and wanted to see how far I could take it and eventually took fasting too far, and started to see negative results. I began to realize this and let fasting be for a while and fell into some more lax eating habits. As this past spring rolled around I began to find balance and clarity with it all. Then our entire world got flipped as cv spread throughout, and that had an impact on everything and everyone. I was lucky enough to spend the first few months at home, getting back on track and trying to help anyone stuck at home with nothing to do. It was a perfect time to lend a hand as a virtual personal trainer. I made a few different at home simple body weight youtube vids for anyone looking to get into fitness. As the months passed I spiraled and lost sight of the goals and fed that void with junk food. I was nearly only consuming pre packaged trash and I could see this having a direct impact on my day and how I would go about it. I started to really notice when I wasn't able to sleep at all. I would break the habit with outdoor leisure and fun but nothing really pushed me to do endurance sport again. The exact thing I used for so many years to give my body that extra little boost, along with insulin to manage my sugar levels. So in reality, I was just doing the basics any human should do for daily activity. The all time low personally, just 5 weeks ago when I broke my wrist. I went through the stages of grief about it. Luckily kind of fast, injuries always have a weird impact on me. They suck and I hate the process of having to start back over, but a lot of my life lessons or self discovery moments have come from this "healing time". Spiritual Zack believes his wrist broke because he himself inside was broke. I was nutritionally broke. And again, this is very clear in my blood results from the past few years now, unfortunately, of visiting the doctor. My A1C was high, and I would take the steps to correct it, then fall off the band wagon a month or two after seeing my doctor and being struck with the reality that comes with aging and diabetes. I would get mad at my doctors for not helping me attack diabetes from a different angle. So this all just built up for some time and with the pandemic looming and no real sign of what I am doing career wise, stress took over and I binge ate pretty hard, for a while, thus bringing us to the present. Zack's healing journey. At some points, I remember squinting my eyes to read what my blood sugar was. I had my glasses on and I did not just wake. This is an incredibly scary feeling, knowing, as a diabetic, that eyes and extremities (and all vital organs obviously) are directly impacted by poor sugar control. The eyes are by far the most important. I would see my ophthalmologist every six months, and every time we would talk about my sugars needing to be dialed in a little more. He would also tell me my eyes are looking great! So that tells inner sugar feen zack its ok. I would notice other things like weird sleep patterns, if I slept at all sometimes. Spending hours a day just trying to get my sugar back to normal, to get the "courage" to make a proper meal for yourself, just to heat up something in the microwave because you have no energy from trying to regain sugar control. It all came down to laziness. That laziness led to poor food choices which led to poor, if any nutrients, to pass through my body, thus feeding my brain with a poor thoughts and a rather bleek outlook on life. I will be the first to admit that to anyone. That is why meal prep is so important. A lot of people complain about the time and I understand, it is in fact time consuming, but again, when you have a broken wrist to heal up, you got nothing but time. And going into this injury, I knew how crucial certain foods were at this point of recovery. I will dive into that more when I recall how I broke this mental funk of being so stuck on processed foods and unhealthy sugars. But first, let me jump ahead to my "eureka" moment. What happened for me that made it all click? Clearly this had been going on for some time, years now, and I had tried multiple things to help but somehow despite living a "so called regular normal active healthy life", I was feeling at an all time low. A friend of mine told me the simplest statement, "you have to be ready to do it." Simple as that, this had been going on for years for whatever reason, and I have obviously gone over all the possibilities of emotional stress eating in order to help cope with all of this as well, but at the end of the day, for whatever reason logic never worked. Processing food for thought, pun intended, didn't make a neurological switch take place in my brain to help break the sugary addiction. And this is a strong addiction. There are studies that prove sugar being equally if not more addictive than cocaine. So I am battling some forces here, if ya know what I'm saying. Not to mention, when your blood sugar gets low, it naturally craves it. I remember taking too much insulin, on accident of course, then your blood sugar drops so you see an opportunity to eat a little extra at "snack time" then you end up not taking enough insulin to cover that "little" extra. So now an hour later your blood sugar is still high so you cover with some insulin, but maybe it was too much and now in another thirty minutes you are going to have to drink some more juice or eat more carbs to bring that back up. It can be a terrible cycle. This being compounded by my lack of heart monitoring work outs led to more bad thoughts and it continued to spiral. But it all stopped. It all changed when you are finally willing to accept all the wrong doings you have done. Put aside all the stuff that wasn't working. Take a good look at where you want to go from here and be ready to change. Come to the table, literally, everyday with that mentality and be ready to do some self discipline if need be, but be ready for that change, and BE THAT CHANGE in your food! When all that finally clicks everything else begins to fall in place. The mind fog clears, the muscles recover faster, you begin to sleep better, and in my case my sugars start to stabilize again like when I was little kid and did not have to worry as much about controlling it. These all have tremendous impact on your body and keeping that Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) is a great way to keep the ball rolling and take the good with the bad, while staying focused on the long term goals. If you know me personally, you may think that I am always positive, and I try to be, honest I do, but lows in life are a reality, and I believe firmly, necessary for a change. May not be a positive change, that choice comes from the decider and how they see their own reality. I continue to have a positive outlook and see negative things as a way to grow and change for the better. That is how I have always looked at my diabetes ever since I was diagnosed. Yes there are days I am angry I have it and days I am sad, wondering if I could have done something different. At the end of the day, I have it, I have goals, physically challenging goals I want to conquer in my life and I need a physically able body to achieve said goals. So the big push, personally, for my reason and readiness for change was simply longevity of life. I can't be fit if I'm dead. Nothing I want to do can be achieved if I am so reliant on insulin and pharmaceutical wizardry to help cure something I know I can better manage simply by eating healthy raw organic foods. So with those thoughts swirling in my head every time I enter the kitchen or get some belly hunger static, I find myself making the proper choices to "feed" this longevity goal. At the end of the day, its the long game were playing, so everyday is a battle. Stay fit fam; and remember health is wealth!