A mile into my workout at the gym and I start dreaming of cake. Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting that’s chilled but not frozen — cold enough so the cake and frosting are firm and rich and so sweet that you can get lost in the flavor. And French fries, crinkle-cut and just snatched from the deep fryer, so crispy that they almost snap when you take a bite. With buckets of ketchup on the side and a Blue Moon beer with a slice of orange to wash them down.

I could eat these things.

Then I would die.

Not right away, but sooner than I want to.

Before my children are grown and settled into lives of their own.

Before my grandchildren are born.

Before I have time to enjoy growing old with my beloved.

Eight months ago, a very nice nurse from my doctor’s office called with the news that something was wrong with the blood work from a routine physical.

A normal fasting blood sugar level, taken after not eating for eight hours, should be around 80.

My fasting blood sugar was 243, just below the level that requires a trip to the emergency room. My hemoglobin A1C test — which looks at blood sugar over a three-month period — should have been under 7. My score was over 12.

That blood sugar test meant that I — like about 25.3 million other Americans, according to the American Diabetes Association — had diabetes.

Even worse, the high blood sugar had begun affecting my kidneys, putting me at risk for kidney failure in the future.

My body had become a ticking time bomb.

I had known for months that something was wrong. I was ill-tempered and flew off the handle at the slightest frustration. Once, while driving home from the East Coast, I began screaming at my wife in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen after eating a mocha Blizzard. God only knows what my blood sugar was at that point.

My eyes would not focus when I tried to read a book. Sometimes it felt like my blood was literally on fire. Every negative emotion — anger, fear, frustration, anxiety — was amplified.

I was becoming someone that my children were afraid of — someone called Angry Bob, who flew off the handle without any warning.

A complete transformation

A preacher once told me that the New Testament Greek word “metanoia” — which my Bible translates as “repentance” — really refers to a complete transformation or metamorphosis.

He said that it literally means to stop walking in one direction, to turn around, and begin walking the opposite.

Diabetes for me has meant that kind of transformation.

I had lived for years on fast-food cheeseburgers, coffee with extra sugar, fries and pasta — those were my four main food groups, with a side order of garlic bread.

The only exercise I got was walking from my car in the parking lot to my desk at work or from the couch to the fridge.

Today all that has changed.

The fast-food burgers and garlic bread have been banished, replaced by yogurt and bananas, salads made of carrots and baby spinach and romaine lettuce and sometimes goat cheese, fresh asparagus and apples, along with plenty of whole-wheat tuna wraps.

Every day, rain or shine, I walk two or three miles, and at least twice a week I go to the gym and run about a mile and a half.

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