Notices by Sara Joy :happy_pepper: (sarajw@front-end.social)

Sara's sugar sagas:

I mean, I try not to eat sugar. Chocolates around Christmas and ice cream in summer are hard to ignore, of course.

After a long OGTT (Oral Glucose Tolerance Test) I was clearly v. hangry and jittery and was heading into hypoglycemia, so I now officially have Postprandial Hypoglycemia (basically a pretty solid regular sugar crash).

I am to go to a nutritionist, there was talk again of the weight loss injections (do not want, they apparently can cause more hypoglycemia)

1/?

and I am apparently only mildly insulin resistant.

The mild insulin resistance means my body doesn't immediately pick up on the blood insulin, and doesn't start processing the sugar out of the blood quickly enough - so another glut of insulin goes into the bloodstream, and then it's all processed all at once and then some - leaving me with not enough sugar left over.

So I am not close enough to diabetes to just be prescribed Metformin but thankfully they let me have it anyway privately,

2/?

off-label I guess. I know it really helped me 20 years ago, and it's taken that long to get back to this situation where I don't feel myself in my body any more and something had to be done.

Now the thing is... I don't think I'm special.

I reckon lots of us who are fat have very similar issues. We have bodies that maybe overshoot the blood sugar storage, leaving us sapped of energy and hangry and all we can do is keep snacking to keep the low blood sugar symptoms away.

3/?

So... In this case it makes sense to eat low or no carb, because that would stop the sugar rising and the need for the insulin and sugar spikes and troughs in the first place.

But these keto diets are hard, and not necessarily completely healthy in themselves, causing other issues. Also it's more expensive when you can't just fill up on carbs.

I don't know. I'm not sure where I'm going - but just know if you're also fat - I see you, I know it's so hard and that you didn't choose it.

4/4

My State of the Browser talk slides are here:

https://slides.sarajoy.dev/whimsica11y-sotb2025/

They may need a little updating from what is local on my computer, so some minor changes may come later 🙂

#SotB2025

@binarydigit oh how exciting! Behind you all the way 💪💜

@aral @SeaFury yes I'd be very happy to help you spread the net!

@helenchong @keenan @binarydigit I'm bsod 🟦

@binarydigit it really is. Basically no one eats their way into high A1Cs or overweightness on purpose.

Either we're all stuck with no time to eat a healthy balanced diet, or all we can access or afford is high carb stuff, or sugar crashes and lows give us the jitters and brain fog and hangriness (it me).

I feel I have no time left to exercise for myself - the exercise I do get is riding kids to school or daycare, running after buses or trains, walking to office - not quite enough probably.

@binarydigit it's so hard. I've always had a body that gets tired fast and ravenously hungry and I only ever gain weight without intervention - even when I'm super active it tends to just slowly gain.

I've reached my limit again and the tiredness is making me a worse mother so I've been bothering the endocrinologist to see whether I can be helped. We're fairly sure I'm somewhat insulin resistant.

Anyway solidarity because it sucks having to monitor intake.

I am trying currently trying very hard not to go around apologising to people at work who I may have annoyed - but I was myself rightfully annoyed and had to make my situation clear.

Is it a female thing? I'm just wanting to go around and make nice again. Sighhhh.

Who is Tom Seidel? Followed me on Bluesky and he has a bunch (like 30k) of followers but I can't figure out who he is.

Says he works for 100100, what is that? I can only find reference to something Russian.

I dunno, I'm just very suspicious.

https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/tomseidel.com

Everything just seems sort of generic but maybe he is real. I'm trying to tune my bullshitometer.

Happy women's day to all women!

I mean ALL, trans, cis, gender-fluid, butch, femme, any other people who identify in any way female for any part of their selves.

You're welcome and safe in my spaces.

Anyone else got a fishy DM from "the Fediverse Chick"?

@jason will I'm probably chilling in here until like 9pm so there could still be time 😅

I should go to bed.

Good night Mastofriends and thank you for being such thoughtful people to discuss stuff with 💜

What I keep thinking is that a lot of these things where I totally agree "we shouldn't have to do X or Y" aren't driven by someone at the top asking for them - or weren't, to begin with.

These actions became expected (cover letters, both parents in a family working) because that's how people got ahead, and if you don't also do that, you fall behind, maybe you can't otherwise get the job or afford everything that your family needs in today's society.

Somehow we have to all agree just to stop.

A thought I keep having...

Yes, capitalism causes a lot of awful.

Say we all magically agreed that humans need more time and headspace, and we all kicked back a bit, in a worldwide mutual understanding of how life is so much better this way. It would be lovely for a while.

But... Someone, somewhere, would put in a little more time, more effort to get ahead. Grab some influence. Get paid a little more.

Someone else would be like, hey I could work a little harder and have a bit more money...

I feel like it really wouldn't take long before we'd be back where we started, competing amongst ourselves.

This thought comes from someone saying job applicants shouldn't have to tailor resumes and write cover letters.

Ideally not. Say we did away with that. Thank goodness.

But, of course people *would* keep tailoring their CVs to have a better chance. Maybe formal cover letters would be gone, but these applicants would write a nice email to go with their applications.