Navigating Autumn with Diabetes

I think autumn is for me a difficult time because it's not always I can't always go out because of the weather even though I do want to but I feel I'm not walking as much as I was in the summer just gone so autumn is quite challenging. I want to eat a lot more comfort food and I feel that I still eat a lot of Is it dodgy food? I stay at home and watch quite a bit of TV. And when you're watching TV, especially in the night, it becomes a habit that you'll have your cup of tea and then you'll have biscuits with it. And it just becomes a routine and before you know it, you don't realise how much sugar you're taking in. So it is a huge problem for me, like the winter months as well, but it stems and it starts from the autumn. And how do you face those challenges you've mentioned? have a bit of a reality check and then I tell my husband because I have a craving oh I really want digestive chocolate biscuits and then I say to him I don't want any more don't buy any more and then he'll buy Jaffa cakes and I think okay that's not a good idea either so I read the back really carefully and think oh my god is that the amount of sugar per biscuit and then I tell myself it's doing you a lot of harm and sometimes I can control that willpower and sometimes I give in but more than likely now it's been for me I've been able to control and compress my the temptations. And are there any particular things that you know the healthcare professionals you come into contact with can do to make you feel better or help you to prepare for these autumn months? I haven't really done it specifically by season but I am getting help so it's going to help me in in the autumn months. I'm actually on a monitor now and I've started insulin because my sugars over the years, 23 years, has really gone out of control in the sense that my pancreas is not working efficiently. So it wasn't, I discovered just recently that it wasn't the food that I was doing necessarily, it was the fact that the cells weren't, the glucose weren't going into the cells, which was giving me abnormal reading, especially in the night when I wasn't eating anything, I was on a fasting stage. Anything else the healthcare professionals can do to help for you to prepare for this autumn? Yeah, I think if they could give me a glucose monitor that would monitor my sugars on a regular basis, because I know they're not available for type 2 diabetes at the moment, so that would really help me to control my sugars with regards to also checking the food labels which isn't always accurate. So if I know that I've got an alarm set off because my sugar's going too high, I can control it. I can be aware of it and then take the appropriate action. And aside from, you know, perhaps in the future having a glucose meter, are you making any particular preparations during these autumn months for the coming winter in regards to your health, your diabetes? No, I think the autumn, the whole of the seasons, I mean even autumn, it's just something that you would do every season. So autumn, for autumn I've started thinking about my timings of my food. So it's really important that I don't have a late breakfast because I would normally get up and have a cup of coffee and that was the wrong thing to do. It's really important for me to start with my breakfast first, have my breakfast and then have a proper lunch to regulate my blood sugars because I'm not actually fasting and I don't want to fast especially in the autumn. I don't want to be fasting because the days are now getting a little bit less, shorter. So I think it's really important for me to to eat my dinner really quite a good time like between six and seven or even early if I can so then that will help me to digest it take my medication and then prevent the further sort of highs that I get in the night so that's preparation that I'm doing now for autumn. That's lovely thank you Samina and if you're going to motivate others with diabetes to take more care of themselves during autumn? Any message for them? Yeah I think autumn time is the time that you can slip going gaining weight again because you're doing less exercise, you're not actually sort of really active but maybe if you can try and join a gym and do some light gym work or classes that you enjoy even if it's like once or twice a week it would be really good to keep yourself motivated and then you can carry that on to the following season as well. But yeah exercise and looking at just healthy choices again. I keep stressing that but there's apps that you can use and I use two particular apps. One that monitors my weight every week because I am very particular about my weight moving up and down so I do find in the autumn months my weight starts creeping up so regular checks on my weight and then I use an app called carbs and cows which also tells me exactly visually the picture the amount of sugar blood sugar that's in and that has really shocked me. I didn't realize how much blood sugar, how much sugar was actually in simple foods and then I discovered it's just lethal. If you don't know you're eating it and you think why is my diabetes getting out of control? Well this is the reason why. So monitoring in all areas is very important. And if you think of online communities for people with diabetes, how How could this help people with diabetes in general? The online community is a huge valuable source of knowledge, of information. You learn from each other. I mean, attending the community that I've been attending in the Acton diabetic group really made me think and really think that oh gosh I didn't know that was out there I didn't realize you could do that why why am I going wrong because I'm eating the wrong kind of flour or I'm eating the wrong kind of pasta so there's knowledge of food there's knowledge of lifestyle control how little changes can help you and that's really valuable because you're listening to people have experienced it and gone through it and you think, God, yeah, it does work. So it's that knowledge, passing the knowledge from one person to another and then it expands into something else and it leads you into places that you never even thought about. And it's a valuable source of getting together, making friends, socializing, encouraging, and it's just something that should always, always be there.