Today is leg day. For anyone who doesn’t know what that means, it is basically hard gym session training your legs. Pretty simple.
This blog is about what happened on my last leg day which was last Friday. Myself and my housemate Dylan decided to go to the gym around 10pm which is fairly late so I ate and took some insulin and waited about 45 minutes for my food to settle. Just before we left home I checked my blood sugar and it was 9.4mmol/dl or 170mg/dl. I was ready to go.
Upon arrival we started our workout as normal but with the intention of doing a very intense leg workout. We were both pumped. About 15 minutes into our workout my blood started to dip so I drank some Lucozade and took a couple minutes of a break until it stabilized. No more than 10 minutes later I was back on my feet hitting the weights hard and I felt great. We pushed on through the rest of our workout with grueling intensity using various techniques like drop sets, super-sets, and negative reps to push our legs to exhaustion. After a 90 minute workout we shakily shuffled out of the gym and into the car bucketing sweat. It was a great session.The best leg session I had done in a long time.
Upon arriving home I immediately made a massive bowl of porridge with milk and it amounted to 100g of carbohydrates. I took only 2 units of my fast acting insulin for this meal and I also took a reduced amount of my 24-hour insulin at this time because it was late and I was going to bed soon. After I finished my massive bowl of porridge I went to the shop with my friends which was a 10 minute drive. When I got home to my surprise my blood was low and I drank some Lucozade and went to sleep. I then awoke 3 hours later with another very mild low blood sugar and I ate some bread and went back to sleep again. I was very surprised at having two lows. In the morning time my blood sugar was 6.5mmol/dl or 117mg/dl.
This just goes to show the physical demand that weights training has on your body and the effects it can have on your blood sugar. Weight training for me is one of the best things for helping my blood sugar but when training at a high intensity extra caution is needed and quality nutrition is essential. Always look out for hypos after a heavy workout or long session of excercise. This leg day is clearly an example of what can happen if your not careful. For anyone with diabetes new to weight training or anyone who is experienced with weight training and new to diabetes my advice is to practice plenty of trial and error to see what works both diet and exercise. Once you find what works best for you and your diabetes you will find that weight training can be a very useful tool in everyday diabetes.
The Life of Leo 