I'm a WINNER!!!!!!!!!!

Back on January 20th, Amy of Diabetes Mine posted about a Diabetes Makeover Contest called “NEW YEAR, NEW YOU.” The contest Amy put together in conjunction with Insulite Laboratories offered the winners a 3 month Diabetes Advanced Management program. Insulite Laboratories offers this program as a way to help reduce weight, increase metabolism, reduce fatigue, reverse insulin resistance, an eliminate carbohydrate addiction. All things I need help with especially with the weight I have gained in the past year.

I wrote an essay on why I needed to win and I won. They awarded two type 2’s and one type 1, who would be ME! So. Cool.

This really falls in nicely to my “greatest week ever.” I was shocked when I saw my name on Amy’s post yesterday.

Here is the essay I wrote in its entirety. The more I read it, the more I see why I have been down so much. I see how much I needed this.


“I am fat. I have been overweight as long as I can remember. When I was in grammar school I was the “fat kid.” Sure I had lots of friends because I learned to turn my weight into a comedy routine and made everyone laugh at me. Although I would laugh with them my nights were filled with crying myself to sleep hating what I looked like and how I felt.

For years this went on until I was in high school and I started to lose weight incredibly fast and for no reason. Being in band required marching around for hours each day but I was still eating terribly so that wasn’t why I was losing. I was a teenager who drank soda all day and all night until one day at 160 pounds (down from 265) I almost passed out. My mother took me to the emergency room and I was diagnosed as a type 1 with a 504 blood sugar count.

After my BG got under control my weight came back on and I have been struggling since. A year after I was diagnosed my father died of a heart attack. He was 43. I turned to drugs, alcohol, and smoking to ease my pain and never cared much about my disease.

Years went by and the drugs and drinking stopped but the smoking continued. I eventually got married, had two kids, and still kept smoking and ignoring my diabetes. A few years ago I finally started to pay attention to my type 1 but with a poor education. I quit smoking soon after that and gained even more weight. Last year I lost 42 pounds on Weight Watchers which felt great. And then the economy hit my family hard and we lost our home.

That loss has been a major turning point in my life much like my father’s death and my diagnosis. Since this all happened my A1C has gone up, my weight has increase to what it was before Weight Watchers and at 35 years old, I feel like my time is running out, especially with my family history.

The thought of having a heart attack and leaving my wife to raise our kids by herself absolutely terrifies me. I know how every exciting moment in my life is bitter sweet because my father cannot be here and every difficult one a time I wish I could turn to him. I am determined to not do that to my kids. But I need help.

My sister got married this last weekend and my mother had to give her away. I danced with her in my fathers place and I cried like I did when each of my sisters were married. I want more then anything to be here to walk my daughter down the aisle, to play with my grand kids, and to grow old with my wife.

Help me to not be the fattest Type 1.”