Routine.

My fairly empty timetable!

It is no secret that, for me, when it comes to diabetes care and eating in general, I need a routine. If I have a routine then everything else just seems to full into place. I've now sorted my timetable and I know when I'm teaching English, so now I have no excuse when it comes to establishing a routine. I've been in Alcalá for almost 4 weeks now, so I think now is a good time to get into one.

First, I need to go to bed at a similar time every night. According to my Think Like A Pancreas book (my bible, as mentioned before) "lack of sleep can cause an increase in stress hormone production and may cause a rise in blood sugar levels. It also tends to increase appetite and can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain, particularly when normal sleep hours are spent in a sedentary state (watching TV, etc)." This is good news, as I love sleep, but I need to start sleeping at normal-person times, not falling asleep in the early hours of the morning and waking after midday!

In keeping with this, I need to get up at a similar time everyday too, more than anything just to have a decent breakfast. If I eat breakfast, I tend not to snack during the day; if I miss breakfast, then it's pretty horrific and I just graze all day, loose count of how much I've eaten, don't inject because I don't know how much insulin to take...it's for the best that I eat breakfast!

Exercise! Okay, here in Alcalá, I walk everywhere: to class, home for lunch, to class again, home for the evening. But I want to do more. It's not like Toulouse here, where I used to run along the canal, and the gym here is so expensive, so I can't afford that. Walking everywhere will do for now. This might change in a months time though. It'll be when I'm back in England that I step up the level of exercise I do, particularly when I'm back at uni where the gym is pay-as-you-go and classes are cheap! 

I also need one day a week "for me". One day a week where I can let the routine 'slip' a little. I already know that this day will be a Sunday. My friend and I meet for breakfast in town, but it's a late breakfast, so I get a bit of a lay-in and I listen to my lovely friend on the Union radio station, Livewire in the afternoon. That's it. So I have the rest of the day to do what I want, whether it be uni work, laundry, tidy my room, watch movies, pick up a book, skype, whatever. But it's a day when I haven't got to be anywhere other than breakfast in the morning.