As far as decision making is concerned I've always been able to make it - a decision that is. I don't waver, I don't quit...in short, I don't second guess myself. If I'm not sure, I'll double check the facts, the information, the situation before I make my choice, but once made I don't waffle. If at a later date someone may show me a better way, or convince me that my logic was flawed, then I may change my mind (I am flexible) by as far as making that initial decision I'm good. If wrong, I live with the consequences; if right I live with the rewards.
I am diabetic. I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there that are either diabetic themselves or had a close family member develop diabetes.
I'm pretty convinced my diabetes is a result of a decision I made way back in the early eighties, when I was a fresh, water behind my ears, twenty something, young adult. I was a two years out of college just about to turn 22, living in my own apartment on La Plaisance St. some 1200 miles from home.
That decision all those years ago was a result of a misconception of who I was externally.
When I was in high school. I dated, a lot. When I wasn't in school or working, I was out on the town. I was rarely home. I didn't dwell on my self-image then. I enjoyed a degree of popularity that prevented loneliness but didn't quit give me a swelled head.
When I went off to college to pursue my dream of becoming a teacher, self-doubt crept in along with the dreaded freshman twenty of which I'd been totally unaware. Home for summer, I felt like a horse next to my two best friends, Beth and Kathy, who were dainty and petite.
By the time my career started a part of me was absolutely convinced I was a humongous, overweight- no obese - woman.
When "the diet" became popular in the small Michigan town I lived in I jumped whole-heartedly on the bandwagon.
The diet consisted of B-12 injections, and a total daily calorie intake of no more than 500 calories. I literally starved my body. Starvation mode does some pretty strange things to your physiology.
FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES!
Do you know what that is like? It's a half English muffin with a quarter cup of cottage cheese for breakfast. It's a salad for lunch and a tuna stuffed tomato for dinner.
Oh, the weight, it fell off. Melted off actually, like butter being left out on a hundred degree day. But, I'd shifted my body into another food realm, a realm who's rule was: Once you get to eat real food, in real quantities, I'm going to prep for the next famine.
I kept the weight off a couple of seasons. Living and eating that way, though, is not sustainable, especially when I went back for another year of teaching and eating the very real and homemade yummy lunches our school cooks, Pauline and Mary Lou created every week day.
The food I ate changed. The way my body reacted to food changed. The diet put me in a ketone burning state. I'm absolutely convinced that state made me sensitive to refined carbs.
By the time I became pregnant with our first child, my weight had ballooned to one hundred ninety-five pounds. I was pre-diabetic, having my blood checked every week to see if I'd crossed a magical threshold.
Within three years I had the real deal. Type II diabetes was now my chronic condition. By the time I was pregnant with my third child I was taking FOUR insulin injections a day.
Twenty years later I take approximately 120 units of insulin daily.
All stemming from a misbelief about myself that led to a poor decision that I am still today paying the consequences of.
So, I watch others and if I think a decision they are making will be hurtful I'll try to help. In the end though, each of us live with the rewards and consequences of our choices.
Today, I love me a little more. I'm kinder to myself. I take better care and hope to mitigate some of the misguided decisions of my youth.