Sugar Surfing is a step-wise process

Sugar Surfing™ success comes in steps.

As I explain in the book Sugar Surfing, achieving dominance over your blood sugar trendline takes patience, consistency, and resilience. Since 2012, thousands of Sugar Surfers are steering and shaping their glycemic trend lines and patterns better and better each day, week, month and year they apply principles outlined in the book and/or by attending live workshops.

Parents of children and teens of diabetes are seeing comparable results.

Understandably, manipulating the glycemic trends of another person come with additional task of capturing their time and interest to participate with dynamic diabetes management principles and practices. But as many parents can attest, success can be found Sugar Surfing with children of all ages.

Success comes in small steps. Sugar Surfing is not a recipe, it’s a process. It’s a practiced skill which is maintained and developed over time. Therefore, many of you new to Sugar Surfing may ask why others seem to have results which still elude you.

Keep in mind that once you begin to Sugar Surf, positive results usually do happen early. For example, a first glycemic pivot which averts a trending BG towards 300 mg/dL [16 mmol/L] elicits a sudden burst of self-confidence that preventing many glucose extremes is now within reach. Or, when basal insulin doses (or rates) are adjusted to full neutrality, allowing the subtler moves of micro-dosing to be attempted. Pre-empting rapidly rising or falling post-meal blood sugars are for some not unlike someone staring down at the pool when standing on the edge of a 10-foot diving board for the first time. Confidence grows with time.

Many of us have been habitually exposed to the concept and practice of immediate gratification in every aspect of life. Fast food, pre-cooked meals, remote controls, even this very medium you read this post on have in some way shaped the way we think about having to wait for something to happen.

Sugar Surfing is not a dispensed product; it’s a process. It’s a skill.

The language learning system Rosetta Stone® comes to mind as an example of how Sugar Surfing proficiency is acquired. Purchasing that product does nothing to advance your linguistic acumen until you begin to use it with patience and consistency. Resilience is required to handle the situations when you forget what you’ve learned or misspeak your new language during an important encounter. But since we are already immersed in diabetes, the rate at which we can acquire Sugar Surfing skills can happen much faster than foreign language skills.

Ironically, I’ve encountered many people who tell me they have the book Sugar Surfing, but have not read it yet. Their focus might be more on what new insulin, meter, or insulin pump is in development which might immediately somehow make their condition easier or better. On the other hand, most workshop attendees will immediately start applying what they learned, even during a workshop! The book serves as a reference to refresh the memory about specific concepts or practices.

We realize many people will not have time or resources to make it to a face to face workshop, but still begin to master Sugar Surfing from wherever on the planet they reside. Between the book and the website www.sugarsurfing.com it’s all there. You just need to access it and start learning. And the effort involved? I quote my Sugar Surfing co-author Kevin McMahon who says "there is no shame in hard work".

We get some posts from others who say they have managed their diabetes in a dynamic fashion for years; well before the book was written. If Sugar Surfing serves as one more affirmation for you, then Kevin and I are honored to have been the first to codify it.

Over 100 years ago, the conduction system of the human heart was explored and characterized by placing electodes across someone’s chest, then measuring the electrical waveforms generated with each beat. But before we could begin to speak to each other about what these waves meant, or diagnose diseases, we needed a common language to discuss what was being seen. Sugar Surfing is also a system of pattern recognition which is best interpreted by those closest to the action to get maximum benefit. Sugar Surfing empowers the patient. The physician plays a huge supporting role for sure, but the patient reaps all the benefits “in the moment”.

Go to www.sugarsurfing.com/workshops to find a workshop near you. Or get the book. But is you get the book for yourself or another (as a gift), PLEASE READ IT.