I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes on September 29, 2022.
While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome to join me!
FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL POSTS, I’M GOING TO DRAW FROM THIS GUIDE:
https://diabetes.org/health-wellness/weight-management
So, the thing here is HOW DO I LOSE WEIGHT while being Type 2?
PART of the problem, is that I have NEVER been able to lose weight on purpose. I’m pretty sure there’s this psychological trigger that the moment I tell myself I’m not going to overeat, going to eat the “right things”, or that I HAVE to lose weight, the “C’mon! I DARE YOU TO MAKE ME!!!!” reflex kicks in.
What does the RESEARCH say about losing weight when you’re Type 2? I’m going to start at the beginning – NOT FOR YOU, but for me. (You can ride along if you’d like to!)
Get back to basics. The key to weight loss for most people is simply finding the right combination of exercise, healthy foods and portion control. No fad diet required.
While I’m not GREAT yet, I have made a solid start (for the past 3 years) with increasing my exercise. I LOVE biking. That wasn’t hard to start doing more often! However, I learned to LOATHE putting my bike on a stand in the basement or in the “spare room” and pedaling while GOING NOWHERE! I even tried reading while biking, and while I did that for a while, ultimately, I came to hate that as well. So, I’ll bike during the season.
But we live in Minnesota. Weather is entirely…unique. For example, it started snowing a few hours ago. We’ve got about four or five inches. It will CONTINUE all night. It will also continue all day tomorrow. AND, the wind will begin to whip it around at blizzard speeds. Virtually EVERYTHING will be shut down tomorrow until it blows itself out and we dig our various selves out, then continue to snow sporadically until next Friday, encouraging further forays with the shovel and snowblower.
At that point, the daytime temperature will be 60 degrees F.
At that point, I will have walked several MILES while blowing snow (and hauling, digging, throwing, and otherwise abusing snow whilst muttering dark threats to move to Florida or Hawaii. But walking for “exercise”? I hated that. But I created a routine for myself: I walk down the steps with my “step tracker” turned on, walk toward Palmer Lake Park Reserve (a TEENY urban slice of near-inner-city, that was entirely undevelopable because it’s a frequently overflowing SWAMP (also politely called a “marshland” at the end of the street), then along a sidewalk, slightly uphill to the street separating the neighborhood from a cemetery.
I turn around, follow the reverse path home, and when I arrive on my doorstep, I have walked 1.06 mile. On purpose and aiming for every other day when it’s WINTER out – and it’s enough that I willingly go out when it’s sub-zero, and without a care when it’s merely below freezing.
So, I’m exercising. A good friend of mine has suggested methods of dealing with sore hips (I AM almost 69!) that I’ve started doing…
Anyway, that’s it for now! Later.
Source: https://diabetes.org/health-wellness/weight-management
Image: https://diabetes.org/sites/default/files/styles/card_container_3_column_392w_2x/public/2023-09/exercise-type-1-card.jpg.webp?itok=6Autlf4i
For the first time since I started this blog eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes two weeks ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome to join me!
[There’s no evidence for this (yet?), but I have ZERO doubt that the makers of O, M, and all the others are preparing a vigorous smear campaign for studies like these.]
I’m writing to say that my own experience of reducing my Ozempic injections to once every other Sunday (my day for injections) supports the study linked below.
From the study, “In a small new study, most people who switched from weekly to every-other-week GLP-1 dosing maintained their weight loss and metabolic health improvements. [A fraction of the people regained weight and needed to return to weekly injections — suggesting close monitoring is important when reducing dose frequency.] While I have NOT regained weight and have NOT returned to a weekly dose. People who want to reduce their dose or space out GLP-1 injections should always consult their provider first.”
I talked with my doctor before getting off Ozempic on January 24, 2026, he supported my move, and with his concurrence, I stopped taking it every week.
I could share the actual data with you, but what you would see is NOT a miraculous return to the response of a person who is NOT insulin resistant – but you WOULD see someone who works to exercise regularly, watches both WHAT he eats and HOW MUCH he eats.
What you will NOT see is a man who has become acetic – only eating salads, twigs, single bites of fat-free yogurt (I have a cup of fat-free or low-fat yogurt a week and a cup of either fat-free or low-fat cottage cheese a week. These dairy products are mixed with (mostly) whatever fresh fruit is available at the grocery store (like raspberries, blackberries, apples, pears, and strawberries) mixed with a cup of either cottage cheese OR yogurt, and sweetened with Splenda – NOT to “ward off the effects of Ozempic”, but because I need to eat that amount of calcium twice a week so I don’t get cramps in my calves!
I confess that I DO have the occasional Dairy Queen PB Parfait or some scoops of ice cream during the week. I also walk a straight mile (ie – I have a route that I’ve clocked and know exactly how long and how far I go when I walk from our house to a nearby cemetery.); then add in whatever else my cell phone’s step counter has recorded. I’ll confess also that I am NOT religious about how much I walk…
My OTHER faith, “Minnesota Winter Weather Variation” has grounded me more than once. OTOH, I walked once day when the air temperature was -7F and the windchill gave the air a “feels like/ability to freeze skin” temperature of -36F (of course, that’s more to prove that I am still, indeed a Minnesotan)! I also now park as far out as I can in the grocery store or Target or church parking lot and walk into the building – no matter the temperature.
So…I did in fact reduce my use of Ozempic from weekly to bi-weekly. My starting physiological data are as follows:
2/24/2023 BP:155/180 Weight: 253.8 Blood Glucose: 189
9/7/2025 STARTED OZEMPIC BP:122/75 Weight: 241.2 Blood Glucose: 171
2/25/2026 BP: 120/75 Weight: 230.6 Blood Glucose: 145
Data indicates that when I DON’T walk, my BP and Glucose are higher. Weight can’t be measured as a “daily thing”, rather as a range. For example when I was originally diagnosed with Type2, I weighed 260.8 in April of 2023. Exercise and watching what I ate DID have an effect on my health. Ozempic initially help me break a barrier.
Because I’ve lately been drifting into the high 220’s with my Winter regimen, I’m going to work to push it lower when I take to my bike this Summer. We originally bought our house because it was adjacent to a park that is connected to biking/walking trails stretching from northern Minnesota, west to the Great Plains (North and South Dakota), south to Rochester and some go East into Wisconsin. I can literally ride the entire state and slices of three others and with the right permits, north into Canada!
I LOVE biking, and it’s stayed with me since I was a teenager and was biking to get away from my “sports-obsessed-family” – of course three activities I loved (biking, swimming, and camping) weren’t “sports-enough” for them…and, “Yes, you DO sense a bit of bitterness in my tone!” At any rate, I’m looking forward to losing a few more pounds (my recent A1c dropped to 6.2 about a month ago!), and seeing my daily blood sugars more often in the 140s rather than the 150s.
I’ll keep you posted! Have a great week!
Source: https://www.everydayhealth.com/weight-management/can-taking-glp-1-drug-every-other-week-help-you-keep-weight-off/ ; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11885104/ Image: https://aeroflowdiabetes.com/media/wysiwyg/diabetes-guide-booklet-aeroflow-diabetes.jpg
