Category: Food

What I Eat in A Day for My Diabetes

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I guess I’m hopping on the “what I eat in a day” bandwagon.

This trend has existed long before the TikTok videos and Instagram reels in which vloggers share what they typically eat on any given day of the week – it’s also been something that tons of celebrities have been asked to share in interviews. And while I’m far from a celeb (especially Gwyneth Paltrow, who allegedly is sustained by a cup of coffee, bone broth, and steamed veggies on a day-to-day basis), I do have a certain meal routine that’s centered around my diabetes. Nobody asked me about it, but I figured, why not share it on the blog? After all, so many of the “what I eat in a day” videos and articles I’ve viewed sound a little too perfect. I often wonder how realistic folks are when they’re covering this topic, so I’m going to be pretty matter-of-fact when going through my “meal plan”, and cover how it varies on a weekday versus a weekend. So here we go:

Breakfast on a weekday: I am usually eating breakfast between 7:30 A.M. and 8:30 A.M. I love all breakfast foods, but lately my go-to has been a baked oatmeal. I prep this myself on Sundays and it makes enough servings for 6, so I’m covered for breakfast for the week. I add a couple of scoops of protein powder to it and top it with berries so that I make sure I’m getting a nice balance of carbs, fruits, and protein. One serving is roughly 30-35 grams of carbs, and I’ve found that my blood sugar fares well whenever I eat this meal, maybe spiking a bit in the hour after consuming it but settling back down nicely in no time.

Breakfast on a weekend: Anything goes! My wake-up time could be as early as 8 or as late as 10:30 or even 11 (though I don’t like sleeping my mornings away). Depending on when I wake up, I might want a breakfast sandwich or a protein smoothie, but there are other times that my partner will make me a breakfast consisting of something like hash browns, eggs, bacon, and salsa – no matter what we do, I try to keep breakfast no more than 30-40 carbs because that feels like a sweet spot for my blood sugar levels, whether I’ll be exercising in the hours after eating or even if I’m just lounging around until the afternoon.

Lunch on a weekday: I almost always have a salad or a sandwich. I like to load up my salads with lots of extras – tons of veggies, feta, bacon bits, croutons – and always top them with a protein like hardboiled eggs or chicken. If I’m having a sandwich, I’ll almost always eat it with a side of baby carrots or veggie straws (and if I’m in the office, I might indulge in a buffalo chicken wrap which comes with house-made chips – so yummy but much higher carb compared to what I’d make at home). I will eat an apple or any other fruit I have on hand for something sweet. My blood sugar is usually good after lunch, but if I see it going up too quickly or if it stays higher than I’d like it to for an extended period of time, I’ll combat that with a walk in my neighborhood or around my office suite.

Lunch on a weekend: Admittedly, it’s almost non-existent. If I have leftovers from the night before, I’ll eat that, or maybe my partner and I will split a box of frozen samosas or share a cheese plate so we’re not totally starving by dinnertime. It’s just what works best for me since all of my weekends are totally different in terms of our plans.

Dinner on a weeknight: I like to either meal prep on a Sunday night and have whatever I make carry me through the first few days of the week, or I’ll make something on a Monday evening that will produce my dinners for the next few nights. I’m a semi-lazy cook, so I like tossing veggies, starches, and proteins on a sheet pan and roast everything up (I love recipes from this website). And I have a sweet tooth, so dinner is often followed by a single serving of ice cream or a chocolate-covered frozen banana. My carb intake at dinner hovers around 45-60 grams of carbs, which I find works well because I get busy in the evenings catching up on chores around the house or running errands. The extra carbs help me stay level (and full).

Dinner on a weekend: I enjoy whenever my partner and I have a chance to make food together, because he’s a great cook and very conscientious of my diabetes when making something to eat. He helps me carb count and if we’re going out somewhere to eat/ordering takeout, he’ll offer to split higher-carb dishes with me so I can still have them without totally wrecking my blood sugar. I don’t really place limits on my carb intake for meals out because I love getting sushi, flatbread, and other high-carb menu items – I just try to keep an eye on my blood sugar levels in the hours after a meal out so I can stay on top of highs.

Snacks: I’m a grazer through and through, meaning that it’s hard for me to resist the temptation to snack on foods in my pantry throughout any given day. So I try not to keep bottomless bags of anything in my home, though I do keep things like bags of light kettle corn and single-serving snack bars on hand. But I’m also a sucker for a bowl filled with chocolates like Reese’s or Ghirardelli squares which I will shamelessly help myself to, never having more than a couple in one day because ~*balance*~ matters. Grazing can really screw up my blood sugar, though, so I try to be smart and time it so any snacks coincide with periods of higher activity (such as before I vacuum or head out to run errands).

Drinks: I try to stay hydrated on a daily basis. Besides plain water, I drink Powerade Zero to get in extra electrolytes and I’m an absolute sucker for fizzy and carbonated drinks as long as they are carb-free. I do drink beer/wine/cocktails from time to time that definitely have extra carbs, but I have learned over the years how my blood sugar will respond to a given alcohol and plan accordingly around that.

So, that’s it – an honest explanation of what I eat in a day as a person with diabetes. Some days I am more balanced and “healthy” than others, and some days I just go to town and whatever I like. My relationship with food will never be perfect because my diabetes undoubtedly influenced it, but that’s a post for a different day. For now, I’m off to have a snack to keep my blood sugar (which is 113 mg/dL as I write this) steady throughout my evening workout routine.

Why I Can’t Commit to Keto

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As an ardent lover of all types of carbohydrate-packed foods, I can say with almost 100% certainty that I could never commit to a keto diet.

Before I dare to delve even deeper into that train of thought, let me just say that I know plenty of people with diabetes who do follow a keto diet successfully. It’s what works for them. And that’s wonderful! Truly, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to find a nutrition plan that cooperates with diabetes, and that just because one plan works well for one individual does not mean that it will work the same for others. In a nutshell? You do you, and I support that.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of the way – let’s get to the root of the matter.

It’s not just my utter adoration of carbs that would cause me to struggle on a keto diet. Absolutely not. In my years of relatively light research on the keto diet (which consists of many conversations I’ve had with strict followers of it, as well as my social media lurking on pages plugging keto), I’ve learned that just about all carbs can be replaced by a keto version: You just have to get creative and have keto-friendly ingredients in your kitchen cabinets. So I’d find solace in knowing that I could always bake low-carb muffins, bagels, pizzas, cakes, and the like as long as I had a good recipe and the proper ingredients on hand.

The real reason that I’d totally fail at a keto diet is that I have a hard time with self-control when it comes to 0 or minimal-carb treats. I actually go to town on them. Since I know that I don’t have to bolus for something with low or no carbohydrates, it’s like they become “free” foods to me, meaning that I can eat as much as I want without having to worry about the consequences…which may or may not impact my blood sugar, but which definitely could affect my waistline.

In other words, I have a difficult time remembering that just because something has 0 carbs, it doesn’t mean it has 0 calories.

During the short-lived (think 3 days at a time) keto phases of my life, I found myself eating more and more. Since I was deprived of carbs, I felt entitled to consume more keto foods than I actually needed. My blood sugar may have benefited overall, but it was not at all necessary to be mowing down on all the keto-friendly treats (think keto ice cream, keto cookies, keto bread) that are out there and available to me. I didn’t recognize it right away, but when I did, I realized it came down to my lack of ability to exercise restraint as well as acknowledge the difference between carbs and calories as both a person with diabetes and a person who aims to maintain a particular caloric intake.

So when it comes to keto, it’s a no-go because I finally understand how it impacts my relationship with carbs and calories. I’ll stick to what has generally worked best for me in my 25 years of diabetes, which is a classic: everything in moderation.

Diabetes and Room for Error

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I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I know that perfectionism can be my own worst enemy and hinder me from accomplishing goals, but it’s just the way I am in some situations – particularly, with my own diabetes.

My diabetes perfectionism means that there is very little room for error when it comes to dosing insulin properly for the foods that I eat. Like many people with diabetes, I strive to bolus as accurately as possible to ensure better blood sugar outcomes, but I don’t always succeed at this.

That’s why I try to reduce the amount of possible error by being very specific about the number of carbs I consume at mealtimes. In fact, I have a self-imposed carbohydrate limit of about 60 grams of carbs per meal. I don’t know where this number came from, and I definitely exceed that from time to time, but for some reason I never input a number greater than 60 carbs into my PDM even when I know I’m probably eating more carbohydrates than that.

This is because of my fear of the room for error, and the potential consequence being a severe hypoglycemic event.

Something I learned by writing this post? My inner perfectionist is at war with my comfort with room for error.

In other words, even when I may be exceeding my “comfort carb count”, I know that the room for error grows with the amount of carbs that I consume. More carbohydrates = more insulin = a greater room for error, something that freaks me out and that I attempt to control by only bolusing for what I feel is an agreeable amount. I’ve written about this phenomenon of mine before and my desire to get over it, but as I continue to work through it, I think it can only be done if I change my thinking about the margin of error that I’m willing to tolerate.

This is where it all comes full circle and I begin to understand how perfectionism, the room for error, and my diabetes management all play off one another…which is to say, they don’t fare well together whatsoever. Because my room for error is low, I don’t dose correctly for some meals, which drives my inner perfectionist crazy because it’s at conflict with my inner scaredy-cat who’s afraid to dose the right amount because I don’t want to deal with any negative outcomes. I’m literally in conflict with myself, which is a wild thing to realize as I write this blog post, but it’s the truth and I’m glad I’m uncovering it.

It will absolutely take time, but as I begin to let go of some of my perfectionist tendencies, I’d like to learn how to also usher in a greater comfortability with the room for error. I’m looking forward to exploring this and hope that I can reconcile the two so me and my diabetes can live in better harmony.

Pumpkin Spice: A Very Nice Diabetes Treat

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This post is adapted from something I wrote and published on Hugging the Cactus on October 1, 2018. I decided to revisit it as a reminder of the many ways pumpkin spice can be enjoyed this time of year that won’t wind up making my blood sugar spike!

Since pumpkin spice manifests itself in many carb-laden treats this time of year, you might be wondering exactly how I can get away with enjoying a mass quantity of the stuff. And no, my method doesn’t involve dosing tons of insulin so I can down endless amounts of pumpkin spice M&Ms, ice cream, Oreos, yogurt, muffins, or any other kind of pumpkin-spicy product you can imagine (including the dearly beloved pumpkin spice latte).

I love a pumpkin spice latte, but I don’t love what it does to my blood sugars…so I find a way to enjoy the flavor that’s carb-free.

It’s much simpler than that – all that I do is make it my mission each year, right around mid-August, to find as many carb-free or low-carb pumpkin spice products as possible, buy them, and revel in them for the following three months. I’ve been a bit behind this year, but I’m stoked to stock up on favorites from the last few years which includes… gum, tea, coffee, butter (yes, pumpkin spice BUTTER), peanut butter (with pumpkin spice literally swirled in it), English muffins…the list can go on and on, and it does, considering that the gamut of pumpkin spice offerings only increases year after year.

I’ve hunted down foods that have both pumpkin spice and a lower carb count, like Halo Top Pumpkin Pie ice cream or FiberOne bars (ugh, they’re so good it’s not fair). I’ve even mixed it up by combining pumpkin spice with some more manageable carbs, such as plain oatmeal. I just can’t get enough, especially since this is a seasonal offering that plays pretty nicely with my diabetes.

No Sugar Free Ice Cream for Me

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I have strong opinions about ice cream. Potentially controversial ones:

  • Chocolate ice cream is the weakest flavor out there.
  • My ratio of ice cream to mix-ins is…gimme ALL the mix-ins. The more chopped-up chunks of goodness, whether it be cookie dough or candy, the better.
  • Ice cream tastes best when it’s a little softened – like, almost to the point of being soft-serve consistency. I used to microwave my ice cream for about 20 seconds when I was a kid before eating it and loved every drop of my ice cream “soup”.

See? I warned you. Those are some triggering statements I just made about my personal ice cream preferences. But one not on that list, that I think most people would happen to agree with me on, is that sugar-free ice cream just ain’t it.

Even my parents’ dog, Clarence, can’t resist a delicious serving of ice cream (of course, he gets the special doggie kind, saving the good stuff for us humans).

“Oooh, Molly, look! They have sugar-free ice cream on the menu, are you going to get some?” One of my truly well-meaning girlfriends asked me this, ever-so innocently, on a recent ice cream outing.

I remember raising my eyebrows incredulously as my eyes scanned the regular list of ice cream compared to the sugar-free options. There were dozens of delectable-sounding regular ice cream flavors: all the traditional ones, plus more exotic ones like cotton candy, blueberry pie, s’mores, German chocolate cake, coffee kahlua cream…and then in direct opposition to that were TWO, yes TWO meagerly sugar-free choices: black raspberry and coffee.

I turned to my friend and, as non-condescendingly as I possibly could say it, told her that those “choices” had to be a joke and that furthermore, sugar-free ice cream just ain’t it for me. If I’m going to eat ice cream (and I’ve consumed LOTS of it this summer, let alone throughout my lifetime), then I’m going for the real stuff – no question about it. So with the air cleared on that particular matter, we both got matching ice creams (the blueberry pie flavor with blueberry and graham cracker swirled in a vanilla cream base) and enjoyed the heck out of them.

Worth every drop of insulin.

A Weekend of Bagels, Pizza, Ice Cream, and…Good Blood Sugar?

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Would you believe me if I told you that last weekend, I ate mostly carbs for 36 hours straight and totally avoided high blood sugars the whole time?

I looooove carbs. Almost as much as Oprah Winfrey loves bread.

It sounds wild, but it’s the truth! I went on my annual weekend getaway with my college besties and it was the loveliest time filled with sunshine, conversation, and tons of delicious food. I can’t remember the last time I ate that much in such a short window of time, but it was all worth it, especially because my blood sugars didn’t pay the price for it for once.

Here’s the breakdown of what I ate:

  • Friday:
    • 2 slices of Mediterranean-style pizza and 3 chicken tenders for dinner, the first official meal of the weekend trip
    • 2 glasses of wine
    • Handfuls of crackers and cheese because who doesn’t love that with wine
  • Saturday
    • 1 blueberry bagel accompanied by 1 fried egg for breakfast
    • Salad and heaping scoop of ice cream for lunch
    • Pita chips for a snack
    • Panko-crusted haddock with jasmine rice and veggies for dinner
    • 2 cans of cider (and maybeeeee a glass or two of bubbly)
  • Sunday
    • 1 everything bagel slathered in goat cheese plus 1 fried egg for breakfast
    • 2 slices of leftover pizza for lunch, which is also when I arrived home from the trip

It definitely wasn’t my healthiest, most balanced weekend of eating, but I’m more than okay with that because it was about enjoying my time with my friends and indulging a little rather than stressing the whole time about bolusing and blood sugars. And you know what, I think that my laidback, let’s-just-savor-this approach is partially the reason why I had such stellar weekend blood sugar levels. That, coupled with extended boluses for most of my meals (you know that pizza and bagels contain alllll the slow-acting carbohydrates), really helped me achieve the relaxing weekend that I wanted.

Now if only I could get away with this on a regular basis – as I write this, my blood sugar is coasting from a peak of 248 back into the low 190s after I dared to consume a bagel at lunch in the middle of my busy workweek. But it’s all good, and maybe just evidence that I should try to remember to live in the moment on weekends of fun like this one and prevent diabetes/blood sugar from taking center stage. Perhaps that’s the key to more stable numbers.

If nothing else, this serves as a reminder to me that even with diabetes, I can still enjoy a sh*t ton of carbs every now and then.

My “New” Low Blood Sugar Treatment of Choice

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The concept of a “low blood sugar treatment” makes me giggle, because it implies that the glucose (sugar) needed to bring levels back within range is basically medicinal. Sugar? As medicine??? Kind of, sort of, pretty much when it comes to fixing a low.

Over the years, my preferred low treatment has taken many forms. In the early days of my diabetes, it was usually glucose tablets or orange juice. In most of my youth, juice boxes were number one, but as I got older I felt ridiculous carrying those around, so I switched to fruit snacks and kept glucose tablets around as an old reliable. In college, I loved mini boxes of yogurt-covered raisins (they were great for less urgent lows, with roughly 10 grams of carbs in one teensy little portable package). And in my adulthood, I’ve rotated through a mix of all the aforementioned items, but with a brand-new one entering the forefront for me as of late.

And that new one is…Smarties!

One of the many Smarties stashes I’ve got scattered around my home.

Yup, Smarties, the classic candy that just might be the most ideal low blood sugar treatment I’ve used in recent years. There’s solid grounding behind that logic: For starters, Smarties come bundled up in tiny rolls that are easy to slip just about anywhere – a pocket, a glovebox, a nightstand, and the list goes on. Smarties don’t melt and withstand just about any weather condition. They’re also perfectly portioned, with one roll containing 6 grams of carbs so it’s convenient to eat just one for a slightly low blood sugar or 2-3 for more stubborn lows. There are even giant Smarties rolls that are great for when I need a quick blood sugar boost before a workout – I just eat one or two individual giant-size Smarties and I’m good to go. And despite being reminiscent of chalky glucose tabs, they do taste significantly better and I swear they dissolve faster compared to their drugstore counterpart.

All those pros and nary a con for me to nitpick…I think I’ve finally found the best low blood sugar treatment for myself – for now, anyways.

Yes, I Can Eat Cheesecake and Pizza.

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Yes, I have diabetes.

Yes, I can eat cheesecake and pizza.

Yes, I can actually eat whatever I want – I just have to know the carbohydrate content of whatever I’m consuming (and being mindful of portion size doesn’t hurt either).

Yes, I’m telling you this because at the time of this writing, that’s actually what I had for lunch this afternoon: homemade pizza and cheesecake. The pizza crust was store-bought, but everything else – from the sauce to the cheesecake crust to the strawberry topping – was made by me and it was damn good.

Funny story: I sent a picture of my cheesecake (shown above) to my coworkers and because I have terrible lighting/I’m not a food blogger, someone thought it was a photo of baked beans and I couldn’t stop laughing.

I guess I’m just taking a moment to 1) congratulate myself on semi-mastering the home-cooked versions of these two foods, but also to 2) reflect on how there’s so much stigma, STILL, on what people with diabetes can/can’t or should/shouldn’t eat. It’s wild to me that there are countless people in our world who misunderstand that a diabetes diagnosis automatically eliminates certain food groups from an individual’s diet.

Let me say it louder for those in the back who can’t hear: People with diabetes can eat whatever they want. Diabetes varies from person to person, and so do dietary preferences – so just because one person with diabetes might follow a strict keto diet, it doesn’t mean that ALL people with diabetes do. It doesn’t make it right or wrong for a person with diabetes to choose or not choose to eat certain things – period, bottom line, end of the story.

And by the way – I took a big old bolus of insulin for aforementioned pizza and insulin and my blood sugar didn’t spike past 188 mg/dL several hours later – score! So I’m also using this blog post to remind myself that it’s okay to eat “treat” foods like this from time to time, and that does not make me a bad diabetic.

When Diabetes Disrupts Dinnertime

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I collapsed onto my dining room chair, grappling with a dinnertime dilemma as my hands shook from a swiftly dropping blood sugar:

Do I correct the low now with something sweet, and wait to eat my dinner awhile, or do I wolf down my meal and stay seated until my blood sugar stabilizes?

Both options come with their own set of pros and cons. In the first scenario, I’d be eating dessert before dinner – nothing totally groundbreaking, but not overly appealing and requiring me to account for the sweet’s extra carbs in my dinnertime bolus. But at least I wouldn’t deal with low symptoms all throughout my meal. In the second scenario, I wouldn’t be enjoying my food at all; instead, I’d hoover it down like a human vacuum and keep all my fingers and toes crossed that the complex carbohydrates would kick in as quickly as possible. On the bright side, I also wouldn’t have to eat or bolus for any extra/unwanted sweets if I went with the inhale-all-the-food choice.

But what both options have in common is that they also completely ruin the dinner experience for me by either delaying the timing of my meal or rushing me through it, neither of which is desirable.

Hey, diabetes…you weren’t invited to the dinner table.

That’s just life with diabetes, though – dealing with a series of undesirable scenarios. In this particular situation, I ended up eating my dinner as quickly as I could and my blood sugar came back up about 20 minutes after I was done with it. I was simultaneously annoyed and relieved. Sure, I didn’t get to enjoy dinner at the pace I wanted, but at least my blood sugar was back to normal. And I suppose it just makes me appreciate all the other meals that I get to eat that aren’t disrupted by diabetes, and those totally exceed the ones that do (thank goodness).

The Daily Drink that My Diabetes Dislikes

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I remember my first-ever cup of coffee. I was around 10 years old. I had it at my grandparents’ house, where much of my family was gathered for some sort of holiday or other occasion. Coffee was being served with dessert, and I asked my mother if I could try some – I wanted to know why all the adults in the room were so enamored with the seemingly innocuous brown beverage.

I’d like to say it was love at first sip, but I think it was only after I poured in a hearty amount of cream and 2 or 3 Splenda packets that I felt any affection for coffee. But once I did that? I was a goner. Coffee became a staple for me. I’d get it from Dunkin’ Donuts at the mall whenever I went shopping with friends, pour a cup on the weekends to have at breakfast, and when I was feeling fancy, I’d go to Starbucks and get a couple of pumps of sugar-free syrup to jazz up an otherwise ordinary order.

But whenever I try to add anything like milk, real sugar, syrups, or whipped cream…coffee gets real dicey for me and my diabetes.

Coffee can get real confusing for a person with diabetes.

In other words? I’m at a loss as to how to bolus for things like lattes, mochas, or cappuccinos – let alone any of the crazy, carb-loaded concoctions that you can get at cafes or Starbucks.

As a result of my confusion around coffee drinks and, let’s be real here, my laziness (because I could look up carb counts, but the sugary spike that my blood sugar could experience after having one of these drinks make it not even worth it for me to do research), I tend to drink coffee black. And luckily, I like it that way. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not tempted from time to time – like when the local coffee shop that’s just a half-mile away from my home introduced a winter drink menu with things like an Irish cream latte, eggnog latte, and gingerbread latte on it. I seldom give into the impulse to try those kinds of drinks, but they sounded too good to skip out on.

So rather than have all 3 at once – because I’m not totally reckless like that – I did give the seemingly-lower-carb option a try (the Irish cream latte), while my boyfriend got the eggnog latte. I figured it was the best of both worlds because I could have a fancy drink to myself while also getting to try one of the more sugary options.

And guess what? My blood sugar didn’t spike after I drank it, not even a little bit. I think the secret to my success was being super active all morning long after I got the latte (I was busy running errands and tidying up my home for guests that were coming over later in the day). My insulin intake for the latte, coupled with lots of movement, seemed to prevent any disastrous blood sugars – and I think it also helped that I ordered almond milk in lieu of regular milk to go in the latte. Whatever the actual cause(s), I was just thrilled to learn from this little experiment that I can enjoy specialty coffee drinks after all – probably not all the time, but definitely as an occasional treat, which makes me a happy and well- caffeinated T1D.