Feel Good Inc.

When I was about six or seven, I started reading The Baby-Sitter's Club books. I read them until I was about twelve or so, from memory, and the first one I read involved Claudia breaking her leg. ...and what does that have to do with my diet? Well, reading those books was what first introduced me to the condition of diabetes mellitus. I'm more than passingly familiar with it now, of course, but even though I was a skinny kid I was aware to some degree that my mother was unhappy with her own weight and I feared in a vague way that one day I would be fat, too. So, as I read about Stacey having to not eat sweets and be careful with her diet, I actually began to hope that one day I too would be a type one diabetic and therefore my eating habits would be out of my control -- or at least, under a control that was not at all voluntary.

In an odd way, child!me understood the way my mind worked better than does adult!me. Scary stuff.

Still, this came to me a couple days ago as I was walking back to work after lunch, frantically calculating times in order to work out when I could eat another cracker and my apple. This diet I'm on involves careful timing of my different "streams" of food. While I can cross the streams (Egon would be disgusted -- and Venkman does not thank us for the helpful safety tip), I have to get the timings right within them. I also have to weigh out my portions and make decisions about what I want, and...I realised suddenly that this is what life for a diabetic is like. And...while I certainly no longer wish to be a diabetic, I think Mini-Me had a point. I need to have real structure in order to get anywhere, and...now I have that structure.

I haven't done any weighing yet -- I am leaving it until Sunday morning at the earliest -- but I can feel something different in my body. It's hard to articulate, which is frankly a little humiliating for someone who writes as much as I do. I mean, my clothes are already starting to feel looser. I wouldn't say it's noticeable to anyone but me, but I...slide inside of them, just a little. And I am more aware of myself in space. My muscles are aching somewhat, but it's nothing odd. They just feel like they're...tightening. It's not uncomfortable. It's like I've felt a couple weeks into an excessive exercise routine. I focus so much on thought and imagination that I often forget I have a real live body. I think this is just me fitting back into it.

Otherwise, I've had hunger pretty much every day, but again it's not a normal hunger. I don't crave anything the way I did before. I've looked past chocolates and chips and wine the last couple of days with only an emotional feeling of loss. Even then it's only been thankfully mild. My body doesn't actually want me to eat these things. My mind is just remembering. It won't forget, not ever, but...it's nice to know that I don't need these things. I'll have to hang on to that thought in the days ahead.

In the meantime, I really need to start drinking more water. I have a headache today, though that's probably partially because I had a hellish day at work. So...end of day five? Things are going fine. Here's to all the days being as good.