Finding my morning mojo and Battling Liver Dump

Definitely NOT me
image:  early-riser.com

In my mind it worked differently. I was up at 6, ready to go at 7, and going between Curves for my circuit and on to Anytime for some treadmill time by 8.  It's 9:00 and I just dried my hair and am putting on my shoes.  2 hours is a substantial part of my morning.

Eventually what I'd like to do is be up at 5, have a circuit done and come home, and shower and be ready to go out the door again at 7.  Then do an evening treadmill at Anytime just before (or just after dinner)  The idea?  To block out 9 hours in the middle of the day to do "other stuff" as if I were working and driving to work during that time.  I have to admit, despite the doctors, I still keep thinking of going back to work.

So at this point today is a fail on the time thing.  But I'm not terribly worried about that, because it's not something that's urgent, and it's something I can ease my way into, and because darn it, I have lupus, and getting it going in the morning is hard, and I don't want to get up at a time that I could be functioning by 7 or 8.

Now only because I've decided to blog this morning before leaving, I remembered to put on my earrings, and even took a moment to dry my hair (I usually just let it dry any old way) and took my vitamins and calcium.  Yes, blogging really does equal accountability for me.

What I didn't do was step on the scale yet this morning, but I'll do it this afternoon (if I remember). Since tomorrow is the weekly weigh in anyway, I'm not terribly concerned with today's weight.

Unfortunately today I'm having some blood sugar issues again.  As I sit here typing, I had what I at first thought was a hot flash, but my sugar is slightly elevated (108 mg/dL) which isn't bad for a non-fasting glucose level, except that all I had this morning was eggs and cheese... which shouldn't have raised it at all, and my calcium chew, which shouldn't have gotten me up so high (my fasting glucose is generally in the mid to high 70s or low 80s )  This may bode ill for my eating plan for the day, and I'll have to watch things carefully during workouts.

Oddly, workouts also raise my blood sugar levels, a half hour workout generally gets me up an additional 20mg/dL, which wouldn't be a good place for me (personally) to be, because that's well into the range where I get palpitations.  What still has me totally baffled is how my blood glucose goes UP during exercise instead of DOWN.  You'd think I'd be burning sugars, instead it looks like my pancreas is signaling my liver to release crazy amounts of glycogen to convert to glucose for energy. What I've found out about this is something diabetics call "liver dump"  Basically it's when something (like exercise or low blood sugar) causes your liver to over-react and bump your blood sugar way up.  Apparently the way to combat this is to eat carbs before working out.

Generally when I workout I do carry some protein bars in case of a drop... but I never thought to have some in case of an increase.  What I don't want to do is to increase my blood sugar to the point where I start producing too much insulin and create a reactive hypoglycemic episode.  Especially on days like today when my calcium chews (which have 15g carb per 'serving', and are the only carbs I have in the morning) cause me to react so strongly.

... and my sugar is still going up...

Anyway, since it's up (likely) because of the carbs from the calcium, I guess it's a good time to test the theory... shoes on.... and I'm off to Curves!