A mile into my workout at the gym and I start dreaming of cake.
Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting that's chilled but not frozen � cold enough so the cake and frosting are firm and rich and so sweet that you can get lost in the flavor.
And French fries, crinkle-cut and just snatched from the deep fryer, so crispy that they almost snap when you take a bite. With buckets of ketchup on the side and a Blue Moon beer with a slice of orange to wash them down.
I could eat these things.
Then I would die.
Not right away, but sooner than I want to.
Before my children are grown and settled into lives of their own.
Before my grandchildren are born.
Before I have time to enjoy growing old with my beloved.
Eight months ago, a very nice nurse from my doctor's office called with the news that something was wrong with the blood work from a routine physical.
A normal fasting blood sugar level, taken after not eating for eight hours, should be around 80.
My fasting blood sugar was 243, just below the level that requires a trip to the emergency room. My hemoglobin A1C test � which looks at blood sugar over a three-month period � should have been under 7. My score was over 12.
That blood sugar test meant that I � like about 25.3 million other Americans, according to the American Diabetes Association� had diabetes.
Even worse, the high blood sugar had begun affecting my kidneys, putting me at risk for kidney failure in the future.
My body had become a ticking time bomb.
I had known for months that something was wrong. I was ill-tempered and flew off the handle at the slightest frustration. Once, while driving home from the East Coast, I began screaming at my wife in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen after eating a mocha Blizzard. God only knows what my blood sugar was at that point.
My eyes would not focus when I tried to read a book. Sometimes it felt like my blood was literally on fire. Every negative emotion � anger, fear, frustration, anxiety � was amplified.
I was becoming someone that my children were afraid of � someone called Angry Bob, who flew off the handle without any warning.
A complete transformation
A preacher once told me that the New Testament Greek word "metanoia" � which my Bible translates as "repentance" � really refers to a complete transformation or metamorphosis.
He said that it literally means to stop walking in one direction, to turn around, and begin walking the opposite.
Diabetes for me has meant that kind of transformation.
I had lived for years on fast-food cheeseburgers, coffee with extra sugar, fries and pasta � those were my four main food groups, with a side order of garlic bread.
The only exercise I got was walking from my car in the parking lot to my desk at work or from the couch to the fridge.
Today all that has changed.
The fast-food burgers and garlic bread have been banished, replaced by yogurt and bananas, salads made of carrots and baby spinach and romaine lettuce and sometimes goat cheese, fresh asparagus and apples, along with plenty of whole-wheat tuna wraps.
Every day, rain or shine, I walk two or three miles, and at least twice a week I go to the gym and run about a mile and a half.
At the beginning of June, I was down to 212 pounds � 40 less than when I was diagnosed and more than 50 down from my all-time high.
I am becoming, quite literally, a new man. I even started wearing my wedding band on the middle finger of my left hand so it doesn't fall off.
Before that call from the doctor's, I would not have believed that this kind of change was possible.
I felt terrible but was too overwhelmed with the pressures of life � work, raising a family, this never-ending recession � to do anything about it.
Getting diagnosed made the problem simple: Change now or die.
Walking every day
That change started with simple advice from my doctor, who told me to do three things.
Buy some comfortable shoes. Walk 20 minutes, three times a week. Pay attention to what you eat.
Those three small steps took what seemed to be an impossible task and put it into bite-size pieces.
I knew I couldn't change my life overnight. But even I could buy some shoes.
I did deviate a bit from the doctor's plan. Instead of three days a week, I walk every day, usually at lunch.
I mapped out a mile-and-a-half course from my office. Out the front door of The Tennessean, turn left on Broadway, left again on Seventh, up the hill, right on Charlotte, down the hill, left on 12th to the back door of the paper. On ambitious days, I can walk across the Cumberland on the pedestrian bridge and back to the office, for a two-mile route.
Three months in, my wife bought me some new pants and an iPod with a pedometer to keep track of how far I have walked. On June 10, I passed the million-step mark. I hope to log another million by the end of the year.
The hardest change to make was to take medication.
My doctor put me on an oral medication called Metformin. I started at 500 milligrams a day, then went up to 750 for three months. This past month, I went back down to 500 and hope to be medication-free at some point.
For now, if I don't take my medicine, Angry Bob comes back. And I don't want to be that guy anymore.
The great irony is that I feel better knowing I have diabetes than I did before my diagnosis, when I was sick and didn't know how near to death I was.
In the Old Testament book of Numbers, the people of Israel stand outside the Promised Land with their leader Joshua.
He gives them a choice: "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him."
So today I will choose life.
I will not eat cake.
Instead, I will wipe the sweat from my eyes and continue running as fast as I can into the future.
Contact Bob Smietana at 615-259-8228 or bsmietana@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobsmietana.
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