It's 4:22 a.m., and I really need to get to bed, but here's a quick report on tonight's walk. I didn't do the 14K route I'd threatened to do, partly because I started so late (around midnight), but I did walk 9K out to the Han River and back without stopping and with no problem. It really does seem to matter whether and how much I eat as to whether I can do any distance walking at all. See here for more on the relationship between eating and angina.
If I do try to walk across Korea, I'm going to have to eat comparatively early (and meagerly) in the day, i.e., during the final stages of the daily walk, around lunchtime, after which my only sustenance can be just diet drinks, sugarless tea, and water. Either that, or I'll have to eat immediately after I stop walking for the day, and I won't be able to eat much—maybe a few cans of tuna. I'll probably also have to take my meds about an hour before starting out every morning to give the meds time to get thoroughly into my bloodstream and remain there for (presumably) most of the day's walk.
I also thought of something regarding friend and commenter Neil's observation about my not losing weight despite fasting (or eating minimally) as I've been doing for several weeks: I take exogenous insulin. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone, and as Dr. Jason Fung has pointed out, people who take insulin often gain weight as their bodies aggressively retain fat (keeping in mind that gaining weight and gaining fat are not the same thing). Insulin is supposed to help with lowering blood sugar, but ultimately, it's not good to keep injecting exogenous insulin into the body. So I'm going to keep taking the rest of my meds, but I'm going to give insulin a break for two weeks, and we'll see whether that affects weight loss at all.
In case anyone's wondering, no, I'm not secretly eating candy and ramyeon and pizza, as much as I'd love to. I'm at a stage in my downward health spiral where a huge influx of carbs would basically kill me, and while I might feel happy ingesting those carbs, I'd immediately regret it as I plunged into a hell of my own making.
Glad you managed to get a walk in without pain. Is it safe to stop taking the insulin, though?
ReplyDeleteWalking lowers blood sugar, so it's a safe alternative to insulin without causing my body to want to retain its fat. I had an unpleasant argument with my boss last year, before my short walk along the Nakdong River trail, about carrying insulin with me. My boss suddenly thought he was a doctor, and I didn't take kindly to that. I did the walk without my insulin, and everything was fine.
DeleteThere is certainly no shame in a 9K walk, even if it was less than the planned distance. You are doing the right thing by listening to the signals your body is sending and adjusting accordingly. If this turns out to be the new normal for you, then you can find a way to modify your distance walks to accommodate your limitations. So, keep doing what you love, even if you have to do it in a different fashion. Good luck!
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