Celebrating My Lowest A1C in Years!

On Monday of this week, I received exceptionally good news, diabetes-wise, from my primary care provider. We tested my A1C and it was down to 5.9, which is the lowest it’s been in a dozen years, maybe more – AND it lowered WITHOUT the use of medication!?

The credit for this success goes to almost a year of exercise-walking, and the 40 lb weight loss it brought with it.??

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Right at a year ago, this same test – done to produce a score of my average blood sugar level over three months – read 7.3. If you’ve seen any of the current/myriad TV commercials touting diabetic meds, then you know that’s a fairly desirable number these days. For me that 7.3 number was achieved by taking 2,000mg of Metformin daily. I’ve found that drug to be a double-edged sword: yes, it did a reasonably good job of keeping my A1C down, but it also produced noisy, urgent, draining – unpredictable and upsetting – gastric-distress symptoms that, in my book, outweighed the A1C-lowering benefit. (Running to the restroom at 100 mph at the drug’s whim was not my idea of optimum quality of life.)?

I was sick and tired – literally sick and tired – of Metformin and to get away from it, but feared my diabetes would get a lot worse. I was stuck unless I did something about it.?

As soon as the late-winter/early-spring weather warmed enough for it – last March – I began exercise-walking. I started and stayed with it. My weight began dropping immediately and I felt better in just about every way a person could. Walking became addictive and I spent months walking 5 -7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. By late-summer/early-fall last year, my weight loss hit 40 lbs and I’ve kept every single pound off since??

During this process, my A1C dropped from 7.3 to 7.0 to 6.5 and then to 6.3. When I hit 6.3, I told my PCP that my mind was made up and I was finished with taking Metformin. She didn’t argue with me; it was clear that my walking – complemented by the weight loss – was getting the job done more effectively than the prescription med was. I felt freed and my digestive system thanked me very much!

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As of Monday, February 19th, my A1C was 5.9. I honestly never expected to reach that again. Anyone who has ever talked to me longer than a couple of minutes in the past year will tell you that I always get around to talking about my walks every time . . . obviously there's a good reason for that.????