A new blog discovery (for me)

Wow.  Dances with DS -- which I clicked onto from Sharon's blog: at 6 years out from her DS, Jane is a great success story, and posts like the following illustrate why (I've taken the liberty of bolding her main points):

A good set of workable boundaries will automatically act as a ‘damage limitation’ structure. ‘Automatic’ is what we should be heading towards because if we feel we are continuing to make huge efforts longer term , it indicates that we may not have given things enough thought.

Here is my workable set of  boundaries which I still live by today:

• Always eat breakfast.
• At any meal: eat my protein FIRST then my veggies, then if I still wanted a simple carb I’d have it.
• Make my protein as tasty as possible. I started using lot’s of different spices and herbs and sauces to give my protein extra zing factor.
• Find out what head hunger is vs real hunger. ( I starved myself for a day to find out what real hunger felt like and boy is it different from the head stuff!). Once you feel it, you will know the difference.
• No food is utterly taboo, but I can only have sweet simple carbs after 8pm in conjunction with a ‘buffering’ snack such as nuts or a bit of cheese. A buffering snack is a way to evade a direct sugar hit on my insulin. Recently I use cinnamon sometimes, as it has been shown to help slow down release of blood glucose.
• Try to figure out my cravings & start to use less harmful food replacements. Chocolate can be replaced with hot chocolate milk. Processed cereals can be replaced with a muesli made of :organic oats, spelt flakes, rye flakes, seeds and nuts. Bread can be replaced with rye bread, or soya-linseed loaves. Desserts can be replaced with hot fruit & creamy yogurt or low fat(for those who follow low fat) ideal milk concoctions that include sugar free jellies perhaps.
• Taking vitamins and minerals is NOT a choice.  It’s a non negotiable daily fact for me. Point blank.

These are really wonderful "workable boundaries," as Jane calls them, and ones that I put in place for myself as well. I've slipped a bit in recent weeks, however, and so her guidelines are a useful reminder.

They're also an illustration of how livable the DS is.  In most cases there are really very few restrictions -- just more or less productive ways of maximizing the results of the surgery itself.

One more reason to be grateful.

Comments

[kilaani]

Wow, that's a great blog - hadn't seen it before. I agree, it's some super reading and reassuring from someone a few years further out. The DS is so liveable!

[*S*]

I'd add "adequate sleep and rest" to that list of immutables. That is another area where, I believe, we have a much smaller margin of error than non-ops.