What I Learned on Saturday

The June run streak is over and I did it for the whole month. I felt proud to be doing it to raise suicide awareness and proud of myself for sticking with it even on days when I really didn’t want to. Will I do it again? Yup. I think as long as the mileage isn’t high, I will probably try it again but for now I’m going to change gears and start running to enjoy it and my health. I’m also going to continue with the weight training that I started at the end of May. I feel better already doing the weights.

I have to say that even though I’ve decided to change to running just for enjoyment and my health, that is going to be a challenge for me. I have a training plan or should I say, maintenance plan all set up that I created before I ran Brooklyn that I was going to start a couple weeks after I did the race. I will need to get outside my comfort zone to not use that training plan for awhile, or at all, and just start the marathon training in Sept like I planned. I also like to track my mileage so even though I want to get out there for enjoyment, I would want to track the mileage somehow. I should go out there without wearing my Garmin and track on my iPhone instead. I don’t hold the iPhone in my hand so it’s not like I’ll be able to continuously check it like I do my Garmin.

I’m going to continue my “clean eating” lifestyle and work toward my weight loss goal which is only 26 lbs away. I put clean eating in quotes because it seems like such a fad thing and it really has so many definitions but for me, I like one of the definitions I read that basically said to eat things where you recognize most, if not all of the ingredients. I realize this is going to be a lifetime of change but I’m already in that boat with having the gastric bypass surgery and after this past Saturday, I realize more than ever how important it is that I be smart about what I put in my mouth.

This past Saturday I had a low blood sugar episode. I don’t have Diabetes (I’ve been checked) but I’m very aware of the symptoms since I’ve had them before and my mom passed away from Diabetes complications.

I started Saturday with a 1.5 mi run and then went home, showered, changed and eventually went to breakfast. I had my normal breakfast of 1 poached egg, 2 slices of bacon and 1 slice of toast. But today was a little different. I had a few bites of hubby’s pancake with syrup on it. The combination of the additional carbs, running and not having enough protein was what I’m thinking did me in 2 hours later. I felt shaky, tired, a little out of it and craved sugar. I had some lemonade and a soft pretzel and recovered but I learned a lot that day.

Apparently something called Reactive Hypoglycemia can occur in gastric bypass patients. I won’t go into the details of what this is but basically, it can cause low blood sugar issues/attacks and can be severe. I am now being much more aware of my protein/carb balance.

I will be going to my doctor to confirm my this but in the meantime, I already knew that as a gastric bypass patient that I need a lot of protein and not as much carbs. So, I learned that I need to be careful because just as a side note, now that I’m more active I get even more annoyed when a weekend day has been wrecked which is exactly what happened Saturday because after the blood sugar episode I needed to come home and sleep for hours. Not fun but a learning experience nonetheless.