Hey Brett,
Please discuss these suggestions with your physician before implementing them. Two years ago I had all the symptoms of DMII - caused by obesity. I hadn't been through the testing yet other than tracking my blood sugar. No glucose tolerance test or anything like that. My doc told me it was probably DMII and called it "metabolic syndrome".
I got it under control and avoided having to take oral meds (I know not nearly as serious as insulin dependant like you have) by eating meats and green vegetables. I avoided sugar and starch. No potatoes, no pasta, no breads, no pizza...Just big salads, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, cabbage, things like that - all I wanted. And whatever meat I wanted (most often red meat). Usually 4 times a day - sometimes 6 times a day in smaller amounts. Soon enough my blood sugar stabilized at a low normal level (for me) from 65-85 all the time. The weight flew off easily. Now I eat what I want - mostly chicken, fish, and very lean beef, brown rice, green veggies, whole wheat bread. My cholesterol, triglycerides, lipids, all my cardiovascular risk factors improved - yes improved even on all the red meat. During this time, I was also doing weight training and
cardiovascular training. Lifting in the AM and walking in the PM.
I have three diabetic friends who use insulin injections. Suggested this to them and said, "discuss it with your physician first". They did. Two did it and watched their blood glucose very closely - adjusting insulin usage appropriately. One now uses no insulin - the other (type I) uses a much lower amount of insulin. The third who's doc said, "no way, just eat normally and take enough insulin to manage it" is still fat and out of shape. It was the fat intake that caused his doc to tell him no.
The key to this is once you get the weight where you want it to be to increase complex carb intake gradually and still watch your blood glucose closely - this may mean a bit more insulin if you end up using less as you lose weight.
If you do an intensive weight training program and cardio program, you are going to have to watch your glucose and adjust insulin anyway because of the calories you will be burning, the muscle you'll be building, and your changing needs.
Now for the back - all I can suggst is to make it stronger. My wife had 22 spinal fractures 5 years ago. She was bed confined for a very long time. She's only recently started getting around much. Here's the workout I recently put her on as soon as she was able to do it. We started with very light weights - the thing about heavy - it's relative to the person. What is light to me was heavy to her. What is heavy to me is very light to someone else.
I started her out doing a weight heavy enough that she could only do 4 reps. If she got them all with decent form we did 5 next week. 6 the following. Sometimes we'd have to repeat from one week to the next. We'd usually repeat the 6 rep week before
increasing weight. Sometimes by the time she got to 6 reps the weight was so easy for her we'd just increase the next time.
We did 3 sets of 4-6 reps. Increasing weight when she could get all reps with good control. One body part per day. Two days off per week. We do 3 days on 1 day off. You may choose to do 5 days on 2 days off. Our way is because of my work schedule (24 hours every 4th day).
She can't squat or deadlift so we do variations of them to accomodate for her weak back muscles. When they improve, we'll have her squatting and deadlifting.
Here is her plan - maybe it will help you.
Whatever part is being worked do warmups with 10 reps at 50% of the working weight, 8 reps at 60%, 3 reps for acclimation at 80%, then 1 rep at 90%.
Legs
Leg extension.........3x4-6
Leg curls.............3x4-6
Calf raises...........3x4-6
Arms
BB Curls..............3x4-6
Skull Crushers........3x4-6
Standing DB curls.....3x4-6
Cable pushdowns.......3x4-6
(DB curls are alternating - left, right, left, right - one in each hand)
Shoulders
Mil Press.............3x4-6
Upright Row...........3x4-6
DB Shoulder Press.....3x4-6
Shrugs................3x4-6
(we are adding low cable rear delt rows later)
Back
Seated low cable lean backs.....3x4-6
(sit at low cable station - lean forward and grasp the handle - leave arms extended and lean back past 90 deg as far as you can keeping the back arched like you are doing a deadlift - this is instead of deadlifting - not nearly as good, but we've got to do what we can instead of sitting on the sofa.)
Bench one arm DB row.....3x4-6
(instead of BB BOR - left hand and left knee on bench, right foot on floor, using dumbell pull the weight straight up to your torso then back down to fully extended - again not as good as the real thing but it works...then swap sides).
Pullups as many as you can with body weight. When you get able - do however many sets it takes to get to 50. If you can't do pullups...
Lat pulldown 3x4-6 (this is what she does)
Chest
Flat Bench Press........3x4-6
Incline Bench Press.....3x4-6
Decline Bench Press.....3x4-6
Abs (also done on chest day)
Crunch.................3x8-10
(done on decline bench with weights on the chest (abs are strict isolation therefore the higher reps)
Kneeling Cable Crunch..3x8-10
Feel free to adopt, adapt, or discard any or all of this. You aren't going to hurt my feelings whatsoever - it's just what has been useful for me and my wife - if it works for you, terriffic. If not, there is something that will, just hang in there till you find it.
And we here at DF will try to help you find it.
Linear Mode
