Photo-a-Day: Sweet

Thinking about “sweet” in terms of diabetes reminds me that I’ve actually never had much of a sweet tooth.  I’ve always preferred savory foods and never drank soda or juice, being more of a water, coffee, and wine girl.  Sure, I’ll have an occasional nice dessert or bake cookies once in a while but that’s it; at least that was it until I got diabetes.  In fact, irony abounds as I consume far more sweets and simple sugars with diabetes than I did without it.  Why?  Sigh…to treat lows.

Photo-a-Day_Sweet

When you’re on insulin to survive, blood sugar becomes a constant balancing act.  You can’t ever take insulin or sugar out of your body to balance the scales, so you’re left to find balance by only adding more.  It doesn’t matter if you’re not hungry or just ate a huge meal; if you’re blood sugar is low, you have to eat more.  That means in any given day I tack on calories via consumption of glucose tabs, juice boxes, or candies.  Sometimes, if I’m home I get to treat lows with actual fruit…but it doesn’t travel well and the other options have a smaller footprint for when you’re not actually hungry.  Life with diabetes: how I miss my more “sugar-free” days.


This post is one in a series for the National Diabetes Month of November.  Kerri from sixuntilme.com initiated the Photo-a-Day idea and prompts and lots of other diabetes bloggers have chosen to follow suite.

Photo-a-Day: Play

Photo-a-Day_PlaySo for me when I think of “play” I think of what I like to do in my free time and my husband and I are really into catching movies when possible, especially Sci-fi :)  In general, for most of my adult life, I’ve eaten pretty healthily but movie theater popcorn is definitely my kryptonite!  Not only do I indulge but I eat an entire large container on my own.  How I manage it has been a constant source of mystery to my movie companions.  Anyway, you can imagine that blousing for that many carbs and all that fat and protein is a bit difficult…but I’ve figured out a dual-wave that works for me (most of the time).   My pic is of a successful movie night, however a less successful day in general.

 

 

 


This post is one in a series for the National Diabetes Month of November.  Kerri from sixuntilme.com initiated the Photo-a-Day idea and prompts and lots of other diabetes bloggers have chosen to follow suite.

mySugr Diabetes Logging App: Awesomesauce!

How on earth could a diabetes logging app earn the term “awesomesauce”?  I mean, come on, we all know logging is lame.  Well, read on!  mySugr is easy to use, modern looking (seriously, no medical clunkiness here!), and extremely rewarding.  It’s fun to play, keeps my information stored and accessible in a bunch of useful ways…and it’s pretty too!

When you first create your account with the app, you get to name your “Diabetes Monster.”  This little guy sits on your home screen and chides you with silly faces and “na nanny booboos” until you earn 50 points in a day and then he gets a zipper placed over his mouth (literally) and you’ve “tamed the monster” for the day.  Here, mine is named “Yo Cyborg Yo” and I currently have 38 points, (which is tracked with a blue progress bar in the top portion of the screen).

mySugr home screen

mySugr logbook blank entry

Logging entries is quick and easy.  The time  and location are auto-set.  Most of the fields use your phone number keypad (as opposed to scroll wheels with limited options).  There are three screens of fun little icons for quickly adding information that you’d have to type into a notes field in other apps, like “alcohol” or “menstruation” (don’t worry, there is still a manual-type notes field for when you want it).

mySugr icons

One of my favorite features of this app is the ability to take pictures of what food I’m logging (right from the log entry), because it’s not about the number of carbs but the type of carbs, right?  They really hit the nail on the head here.  No more laborious, typed descriptions of what kind of food I’m eating…just snap-and-go!

There is a colored BG graph at the top of the logbook and as you scroll back through your entries, the graph moves too and shows the BG data occurring in the 24- hour period surrounding the logbook entries currently showing on your screen.  I love how dynamic this is!

mySugr-logbook      mySugr photo entry

You can also look up past entries by searching for any term you typed in (such as descriptions or notes), location name, or chose a picture from the photo library and then see the same 24-hour graph displayed for any search results entry you chose.  Great for checking to see what happened to your BG the last time you tried you a pint of stout from that new place down the street :)

mySugr challengesTo get the Pro version (which includes the keyword search, unlimited photos, and various personalization options), all you have to do is “play” the challenges.  Yes, there are enough challenges to let you win and keep Pro without paying for it…if you keep playing and completing them.  Two of the challenges involve logging a certain number of BG entries and two of them involve logging a certain amount of activity  (bonus: one of these earns community points towards JDRF donations!).  All challenges are available once a week.

Even though there isn’t a corresponding website where you can access your data and reports, your data is stored on a server and you can access it on multiple devices (iPhone and iPad) at the same time after entering your account info into the app.  This is key for me so if my iPhone gets lost/stolen I won’t lose all my past data forever.

In a perfect world, what would I add if I could?

  • I’d love if it had a way to enter information for an extended bolus.  When I eat something that I use a bolus extension for, I like to try to look back at similar entries and see if past extensions worked or need modification.  i.e. Did I extend 50% for 2 hours or 30% for 3?
  • I’d also like to be able to save “activity descriptions” I’ve entered in some kind of dropdown, so I didn’t have to type the same ones over and over.
  • And I’d like to be able to reorganize the order of the tag icons, so I could put the ones I use the most on the first screen and not have to flip through several screens to get to them.

A word on customer service:

I had a syncing error when the app was updated and lost enough data to make me loose a couple of challenges.  Sad face.  I contacted customer support (turned out to be Scott Johnson) and he promptly sent me a coupon code to redeem several days of Pro (plus some for my trouble).  When there was a glitch in the system to cache in those days on my account, I contacted him again.   It took quite a few trial solutions for them to figure out what was going wrong and fix it but they really stuck with it until a solution was reached….for one little piddly customer.  I was impressed.

mySugr Made with loveAs a final note, I really appreciate when I scroll down on the home screen and see a little “Made with love ♥” tag.  My husband, who is a designer, uses this saying a lot.  When we go out to eat he uses it to describe a plate of food that he thinks someone gave a lot of cooking time and attention to, as opposed to slapping it on the plate.  So, if mySugr were a plate of food I ordered in a restaurant, it would certainly earn the term Made with love!

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