Keeping Track.

TGI Fridays, Madrid.

Time to get back into the routine of keeping sugar logs. I used to have log books, but they never served me well, so I'm thinking computer logs are the way to go. I've dug out templates that my friend Lizzie sent me when I first left for my year abroad. I'm not the most computer literate person, so using her template is definitely easier. That, and she also has a column to log what food she eats, something that I also feel would be useful in order for me to get my eating back under control again too. I'm also hoping it's going to eventually help me get back into carb counting. 

In keeping with this, I've also been thinking about targets; what levels I should be aiming for. For a non-diabetic, levels pre-meal are usually between 3.5 - 5.5 mmol/l and less than 8 mmol/l two hours after meals. Targets for people with diabetes are very similar. According to NICE (2004), people with type 1 should be aiming for a pre-meal level between 4 - 7 mmol/l and a post-meal level of less than 9 mmol/l (Information taken from the Diabetes UK website). However, given how...lapsed...my diabetes care has been, I think achieving these desired levels will be too difficult. 

The NICE targets are future targets, for sure, but not ones I want to be aiming for right now. Right now, I just need "average" control back, then we can work on well controlled! Having emailed my DSN, we've decided that my pre-meal targets can be between 4 - 10 mmol/l and I need to be aiming for post-meal targets of less than 11 mmol/l. Seems fair to me. It will also allow my body some time to adjust to running "normal" levels again before we get to tightly controlled, which is where I want to be at the end of this. But after almost three years of being tightly controlled and then 'burning out', I feel that this time round I need to take smaller steps; get the fundamentals in place and hopefully see more long-term effects. That's the plan, anyway! Let's see how long it lasts for!