Obese. Diabetic. Vegan. (Eric, diagnosed with diabetes)

Obese. Diabetic. Vegan. 

What's wrong with this picture?

This was the news I got from my health care practitioner during my annual physical on May 23, 2014. Oh, and I was also diagnosed with benign essential hypertension, along with vitamin D and vitamin B12 deficiencies.

Okay, so none of this was especially surprising given my medical history, except for maybe the vitamin deficiencies and the fact that I had gone "mostly vegan" in September of 2013 to lose weight and improve my pending medical issues. About 15 years earlier a doctor told me that I had pre-diabetes and prehypertension and recommended that I lose weight. I have always been a large person, and at the time I was 310 pounds. I lost 50 pounds over the next several months and for the most part have kept 35-45 of those pounds off for 15 years. Along with that weight loss, my blood sugar and blood pressure returned to normal.

Fast forward to September of 2013. Lets face it, I have kept off a lot of weight, but it has always been a struggle. I love food. I love to cook. I love to cook and eat really good food. My weight was creeping back up, so I thought I would join my wife and daughter Callie in going vegetarian, and actually mostly vegan. My rationale was simple. Less meat and dairy, fewer calories, better weight management.

Things went well at first. I was exercising regularly and eating mostly vegan and I started to loose a few pounds. I was probably around 270 when this experiment started. But, my downfall was a common trap. I assumed that eating vegan gave me free license to pretty much eat whatever non meat items I wanted and at unchecked quantities. A quick 8 pound weight loss seemed to support this notion.

In November, I caught a cold and did not exercise for the week that I was sick. After this cold, I was so tired and run down, I simply felt too exhausted to exercise. Then the holidays and a cold DC winter. Then the weight gain, followed by guilt and the promise to do better when I felt better. The new year brought new resolutions: 2014 will be the year that I enjoy the best shape of my life. Only if I weren't so exhausted.

February brought one of the scariest days of my life. My brain started popping on the inside. It literally felt like popcorn popping in the cortex or like someone was placing there fingers inside my skull and gently applying pressure for 3-5 seconds. This repeated for at least 50 episodes over 2 hours and then I was left with transient episodes of vertigo and even greater exhaustion. There were days that all I could do was go to work and then home to the couch. 

This was finally enough to get me to the doctor. I received the diagnoses I mentioned above, and I think I have a pretty good understanding of what actually happened. Going mostly vegan without a solid plan is foolish. I pretty much replaced many of the protein sources in my previous diet with carbohydrates! Sure, I ate a lot of tofu and veggie burgers and fake meats, but I was not paying attention. Second, I was unaware of two potential vitamin deficiencies that vegans should be mindful of: vitamins D and B12. Both were low, my vitamin D levels was dangerously low at 7.63 ng/ml. Normal levels fall between 30.0 and 74.0 ng/mL. This probably contributed to my exhaustion and possibly to my popcorn brain experience.

And then there was the diagnoses of diabetes and benign essential hypertension. Now, I've got to tell, you that when the doctor first told me about these medical conditions, my first thought was: "Here we go again! I know how to make these things disappear! I'll lose some weight and things will normalize". That was pretty easy to do at 35, not so much so at 47. And my first wake up call came when I ate a very healthy low carb day and my blood sugar levels were still high. That was new. That was scary. That gave me an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Maybe this disease had progressed to be beyond my control. Maybe good healthy living would not solve this problem. Those were scary thoughts.

However, I am not yet ready to accept the fact that I am a diabetic. I have been diagnosed with diabetes but I am not ready to throw in the towel. I am taking my medications, following my doctor's advice, and doing everything that I can to get my body in shape to function at its highest and best health. Is it too late to reverse the course of this disease? Time will tell. I will be chronicaling my plight on these pages.

Now, what's interesting, is that when my health care professional advised me to use exchanges, it was a familiar language. As it turns out, my daughter Callie, who is really my stepdaughter but in my heart she is my daughter just with a different last name, has been struggling with anorexia for a few years now and has been using the exchange system to gain weight. I had learned this system and had been using it for years to help her... it just never applied to me. Until now. I have been using the exchange system, still following a mostly vegetarian approach, since my diagnosis and to date, I have lost 18 pounds, have greatly reduced the amount of carbohydrates that I am consuming daily, and am feeling better every day. Moreover, the vitamin supplements I am taking in concert with the lost weight have vastly improved my activity level, and I am exercising every day.

So here is our story. We will both share about our experiences with overcoming our diseases, diseases that are vastly different and yet, somehow intimately connected.