There are <\/strong><\/em>a lot of sports out there to chose from.\u00a0 Why did you choose powerlifting? How did you get started?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve always loved the idea of physical strength and physical power.\u00a0 Even as a little girl, I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger (I grew up in a house of boys). I dabbled in a lot of sports when I was younger. One summer during college, I was sick of feeling unhealthy, so I joined a new gym and started weightlifting with the basics I\u2019d learned from my brothers over the years. I also started going to Ashtanga yoga classes (power yoga) three days a week.<\/p>\n I just fell in love with weightlifting and yoga. By the end of the summer, I\u2019d lost 10 pounds and gained a noticeable amount of definition in my legs and shoulder muscles. When I got back to school my senior year of college, I knew I might need help keeping exercise a priority when things got busy, so I hired a personal trainer.<\/p>\n With my trainer Andrew Berry, I got stronger and stronger and was training seriously 4 days a week. A year later, I\u2019d at least doubled my strength. Someone saw us bench-pressing and said, \u201cYou should get that girl in a competition!\u201d So we began to learn the rules and lifting techniques for competitive weightlifting. The training for powerlifting is much, much different than simply going into the gym to workout. You have to train your body to lift something as heavy as possible only once, rather than doing multiple repetitions. Form, technique and practice are crucial.<\/p>\n (I also started my yoga instructor certification training that fall, too!)<\/p>\n Sadly, he just rolled his eyes at me and dismissed the entire thing! I was really hurt and angry because I was hoping this doctor would say, \u201cAll right! That\u2019s exciting and ambitious, how can I support you?\u201d<\/p>\n I never went back to that doctor. I didn\u2019t have health insurance at the time so that really marked the point where I began studying human physiology more in order to understand (without the help of doctors) how powerlifting and nutrition truly impacts every part of my body.<\/p>\n Nutrition is a key factor for all sports. How has powerlifting affected your eating?\u00a0 Do you need to eat more than before? Do you need more insulin?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Powerlifting and being in the weightlifting\/fitness community in general has taught me so much about nutrition. The emphasis on \u201cclean foods\u201d and eating smaller meals more often is a huge part of training well. I really studied my eating habits and closely watched my macronutrient intake (carbs, fats, protein) for the first year so I could learn and make changes. It is a never ending learning process. I\u2019ve changed the foods in my diet many times throughout the past two years, trying to see what makes my body feel the most energized and strong. In the end, it comes down to good, clean food that hasn\u2019t been processed.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve pretty much removed all artificial sweeteners and caffeine from my diet, and I try to avoid eating meat that isn\u2019t organic.\u00a0 I’ve come to a point where I really value what I put in my body.<\/p>\n When I\u2019m training in powerlifting, I absolutely need more calories and especially more carbohydrates. That\u2019s probably the hardest part for me, eating enough when I need to eat it, because you can\u2019t just sit down and eat all those calories at once.\u00a0 While powerlifting does lead me to put on a little more body fat, my insulin sensitivity and insulin needs are lower during training because my body is working so hard to recover from the training.<\/p>\n In the beginning of January, I found out the pain in my hip I’ve felt for the past year is actually the result of a herniated disc.\u00a0 I tore L5, so I\u2019m off the iron for a bit to heal. Lots of cardio for me instead. I\u2019ve taken up jumping rope. It\u2019s killer!<\/p>\n How has your blood sugar control been since you started to powerlift? Is your HbA1c better?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n My A1c during college before powerlifting had crept its way up to 8.3% when I was being lazy and eating junky food. It\u2019s been between 6.5% to 7.3% for the past three years since making exercise and clean-eating a bigger part of my life.<\/p>\n The other thing is that before I was lifting weights and doing yoga, my Lantus insulin dose was 35 units a day, and after only four or five months, I had reduced it\u00a0 to 25 units. During intense training, I\u2019ve even lowered it to 21 units. That is true evidence how quickly exercise impacts our insulin sensitivity.<\/p>\n When I talk to other runners (especially during events) I often feel handicapped when they talk about their pre-race eating (pasta dinners, etc). Do you have similar feelings?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s trickier with diabetes, for sure.\u00a0 That’s why I studied the physiology behind what was happening in my body so intensely, and wound up learning much more than I\u2019d ever learned in the doctor\u2019s office. Trying to balance my blood sugar on an actual competition day is the hardest part because the adrenaline makes my blood sugar go sky-high, and my insulin sensitivity is so blunted that no amount of short-acting insulin will make it budge. Instead, I learned to increase my long-acting insulin dose. It\u2019s all about trial and error. Getting information and trying again.<\/p>\n But even in the every day training, it\u2019s really important to have stable blood sugars because:<\/p>\n 1. You need to have the energy to endure the training. <\/span><\/p>\n 2. Your body can\u2019t heal and recover as well if your blood sugar is high. <\/span><\/p>\n 3. You\u2019re asking your body to do a lot of work and repair from all that lifting, so you\u2019ve gotta treat it well.<\/span><\/p>\n What difficulties do you face that non-diabetic powerlifters don’t deal with?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n An odd challenge is making your weight-class and completely dehydrating your body the few days before you weigh-in. Doing this as a diabetic taught me so much about insulin dosing and titration. When I\u2019m preparing my body for a weigh-in, I have to adjust my insulin doses quickly for a very short period of time in order to be as safe as possible. My blood sugars have to be pretty much perfect to make that process of dehydration happen smoothly and safely.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Ginger-laughing1-200x300.jpg\" "\\"Ginger-laughing1\\"")
<\/a>My doctor thinks I’m totally out of my mind for running marathons.\u00a0 What did your doctor say when you chose your sport?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n