Vince’s Story: Living with Type II Diabetes

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know that Vince and I started on the Arbonne “30 Days to Healthy Living” program back in February and we’ve both lost over 30 pounds.

Are we finished? I mean, do we look all svelte and beach-body ready? Wellll, not so much. We’re looking much better, but as I’ve said – we’re still a work in progress.

And we’re also realistic. We are quickly approaching the Medicare/AARP years and – trust me – we’re never going to grease up our abs and enter a bodybuilding competition. 

Notice I didn’t say “grease up our six-packs”? We don’t have no stinkin’ six-packs. Heck, we’re still working on eliminating our kegs!

But I digress.

Anyway, for Vince – losing weight was a secondary purpose in starting the program.

His first priority was managing his diabetic condition.

Vince was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic in 2006, which was before I met him. After he was first diagnosed, he was on a mission to reverse that diagnosis. He lost weight. He ate the proper foods. And he exercised.

But he was still taking Metformin every day, which is a medication to control diabetes.

I didn’t have any experience with diabetes, and I now realize I was not very helpful to Vince since I craved pasta and crusty French bread and chocolatey sweet treats – all those things a diabetic should steer clear of and avoid.

And, so, after years of not paying attention to our diets, Vince’s A1C tests, which measure a person’s blood glucose over a 3-month period, were pretty high. I’ll explain more about the A1C test in a bit. But the bottom line was that Vince’s doctor was threatening to put him on insulin if he didn’t make some drastic changes to his diet and lifestyle.

While I should mention that anyone starting on any diet program should get his or her doctor’s approval, Vince just jumped in head first.

On the other hand, there was nothing in the Arbonne program that was really radical. It sounded like it – I mean, we had to eliminate coffee/caffeine, sugar, dairy, gluten, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, soy, and a whole list of other foods. We were to go free range, cage-free, grass-fed. No corn. No white potatoes or rice.

No bread. No pasta. No pizza. Oh my!

But we did it. Our mantra was the same as everyone who starts this program: We can do anything for 30 days!

And it was amazing how much better we felt. But what was even more amazing were the results Vince was getting. His glucose readings every day began to inch down toward the normal range.

After the first thirty days was up, we allowed some of those “avoid” foods back into our diet. But we wanted to keep going with the program, so we switched to a more careful “80/20” program. So we only occasionally allowed ourselves a treat such as a glass of wine or a plate of pasta.

But you know what we discovered? We didn’t enjoy that pasta quite as much as we had previously. And trust me – I was the pasta queen. I used to have it weekly. Now I indulge maybe quarterly – if that.

And, okay, so I still enjoy wine just as much as I ever did. But I stick to one glass only every so often.

We continued to have our Arbonne shakes every morning and I prepared a healthy green salad with organic grilled chicken or maybe some wild-caught salmon (for Vince) for lunch. Dinners were either another shake or some organic veggies and a little protein cooked in healthy fats such as avocado or coconut oil.

After several months on the program, Vince had his regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment.

His doctor was thrilled. Vince’s A1C was in the normal range. Plus, his doctor could see all the daily readings on Vince’s glucose monitor that were well within the normal limits.

Again, for those unfamiliar with diabetes, there is an end-all/be-all test that diabetics live by. And that is the A1C test.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, “the A1C test is a blood test that provides information about your average levels of blood glucose, also called blood sugar, over the past 3 months. The A1C test can be used to diagnose type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. The A1C test is also the primary test used for diabetes management.”

A1C Results and what the numbers mean:

Diagnosis                            A1C Level

Normal                                 Below 5.7 Percent

Prediabetes                          5.7-6.4 Percent

Diabetes                              6.5 Percent or Above

Now, clearly, I’m not a doctor nor do I play one on TV (I think that line was from a commercial…), so the information above is very simplistic and abbreviated. Your doctor can explain it to you much better than I can. But what I do know is that you can’t “fake” the A1C. Since it measures over a three-month period, you can’t eat well for a couple days and hope to have a good reading.

So Vince’s medication has been cut in half. And he’s working with his physician on cutting it back even more. He would love to eliminate his medication altogether, but this is a decision he and his doctor have to work on together.

As Vince and I both say – there are MANY programs out there that can work for a person who is trying to eat healthier or lose weight – or even manage a health condition.

But what we know for sure is that Arbonne’s 30 Days to Healthy Living program has worked for us. And it has worked especially well for Vince. (Since this IS his story, after all!)

If you’re interested in learning more about the program, we’d be happy to share some information with you.

And while I never want you to think my blogs are a big ol’ advertisement for our business, you can access our website to learn more here: vincentncordova.arbonne.com.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with more later!

Kicking My Diet Soda Addiction

I am a recovering Diet Coke (or, more recently, Diet Dr. Pepper) addict.

Is “addict” the most appropriate word? Maybe. Maybe not.

But I have been drinking diet soda ever since I was a freshman at Ohio State. I couldn’t stand coffee no matter how much I doctored it up – so Diet Coke was my way of caffeinating myself enough to pull those requisite all-nighters. And I found it very helpful to get through Astronomy class without snoozing as soon as the TA doused the lights in the planetarium.

And, okay, so “requisite” probably isn’t the correct word either. But I have always been a procrastinator. And sometimes I had to stay up all night finishing a project or studying for an exam.

Later, when I started working, I would drink several diet sodas in the morning and then finish the day drinking water. I’d read that 12 ounces of diet soda had about the same amount of caffeine that a half a cup of coffee had. So I figured if I didn’t drink more than, say, four Diet Cokes in a day, I wouldn’t be over-caffeinating myself.

I didn’t really hear too much negativity about soda back then – other than how bad soda with sugar was.  And so, because I only drank the diet soda without sugar, I thought it was okay.

Of course, once we learned more and read about the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners, I stopped drinking it immediately.

Yeah, right.

I continued drinking diet soda, although I did make a valiant effort to cut back.

Sure, there were times I tried not to drink it at all. I’d give it up ever so briefly. Or I’d cut back so I only had a couple cans a week.

And I thought this was progress.

Vince only occasionally drank diet soda – so he didn’t have the same issues I did. He even got me started drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, which eliminated at least one can of diet soda a day.

But I still didn’t really like coffee. And black coffee the way Vince drank it? No way.

No, the only way I could drink it was to add all sorts of frou-frou stuff. Like whipped cream. And vanilla  soy milk. And sugar-free hazelnut syrup.

Eventually, I managed to give up the whipped cream. And I switched the soy milk for almond milk.

Either way, all that frou-frou added up to a lot more calories. And I was still ingesting something with artificial sweeteners in it.

Sigh.

But last February, Vince and I embarked on a “30 Days to Healthy Living” program by Arbonne. Its aim was to get our bodies in an alkaline state for 30 days so we could rid ourselves of the toxins in our bodies.

While I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the program another time, let’s just cut to the chase and I’ll tell you that two of the things we had to eliminate were 1) coffee/caffeine and 2) artificial sweeteners.

Egad, I thought. How are we going to survive without caffeine?

Not only that, I fretted, but how am I going to survive without my diet soda?!

I thought I was destined for failure.

Nevertheless, I agreed to try this program.

And, so, for thirty days, I didn’t drink a single diet soda – nor did I drink a single cup of coffee. We were able to have a little caffeine in the Arbonne Fizz sticks, which are sooo good. They have natural caffeine and vitamins and gave us a gentle boost to caffeinate ourselves. Made it easier to eliminate the soda and the coffee.

I’m not going to lie and say it was completely easy, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I didn’t get any caffeine-withdrawal headaches, which happens sometimes. And, other than a time or two when we went out to lunch or to a movie when I would normally drink a diet soda, I didn’t miss it much.

At the end of the thirty days, we were allowed to add back in some of the things that we had eliminated. Part of the goal is to re-introduce some of those items on the “bad” list and see how your body responds to them.

The only “problem” was – I really didn’t want to re-introduce diet soda.

And so I didn’t. It was a good "problem" to have.

One of the things we were supposed to do in preparing for our 30 day program was to rid our house of all those “don’t” foods. Except that I still had three 12-packs of Diet Dr. Pepper on the shelf in my garage.

But I wasn’t tempted. And after about six months of not drinking any diet soda, I pulled those 12-packs off the shelf and, after seeing that the expiration date had passed and it wouldn’t be good to donate or give to someone who drinks it, I poured all of that soda down the sink.

And I felt a little thrill of victory!

So, see? It IS all about the little victories.

Now, if only I could feel the same way about chocolate cake.

What can I say? I’m still a work in progress.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with more later!