Tag: Food

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.

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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.

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.

My Top 10 Tips for Managing T1D at Family Gatherings

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A version of this blog post originally appeared on Hugging the Cactus on November 23, 2017. I’ve decided to share it again today (with some slight updates) because I felt like I needed a reminder as to what a successful game plan looks like heading into a food-centric holiday! Read on for more…

Holidays that are centered around gratitude and eating…what’s not to love? As much as I enjoy the holidays, though, I can’t quite say that my diabetes feels the same about them. Fortunately, I’ve developed a bit of a game plan as to how to handle diabetes when family feasts come rolling around – here are my top 10 tips for making the most of eating-centric holidays with diabetes!

The only thing missing from this picture is the massive pre-bolus that I’ll likely be taking before sitting down at a major meal.

10) Don’t skip breakfast in the morning. This helps me avoid over-eating when dinner is served later in the day. Breakfast doesn’t have to be a huge thing, maybe just a bowl of oatmeal or a piece of fresh fruit – anything that will sate me for a few hours.

9) Volunteer to prepare a couple of dishes. If I’m going somewhere for the feast, I like to know what my host needs me to bring. If I have creative control over the dish, I prefer to make it something that I know won’t be too hard on my blood sugars, such as a side of veggies or a sugar-free dessert.

8) Familiarize yourself with what’s being served prior to sitting down for the meal. Before my family sits down to eat, I like to know what exactly we’re being served so I can plan accordingly. I can usually get away with strolling around the kitchen to get an idea, but sometimes the chef (my aunts or my mom) kick me out while they finish cooking dinner!

7) Don’t feel pressured to try everything. It all looks and smells so good, but I have to remind myself to use some restraint when piling my plate with food. I’ll add staples like turkey and green beans (both of which are low-carb!) and take smaller portions of the heavy things, such as stuffing and potatoes.

6) If it’s necessary, extend my bolus. This all depends on what my blood sugar is before the meal, but sometimes, I’ll extend it in order to prevent lows or highs post-feast.

5) Check my blood sugar often. I’d rather have an idea of where my blood sugar is headed than leave it to chance and guess incorrectly.

4) Go for a walk or organize another outdoor activity. The weather doesn’t always cooperate with this idea, but I’ve found that dragging my cousins on a 20-minute walk after eating helps my blood sugar and provides us all a chance to hang out while our uncles take control of the TV and our aunts chitchat over cups of coffee.

3) Wait a bit before having seconds or starting on desserts. I try to indulge a bit on the sweets, but I know that it never works out for me if I help myself to desserts too soon after consuming the main course. So I avoid the temptation by staying busy after eating dinner – my mom and aunts always appreciate an extra set of hands to assist with clean up!

2) Look up carb counts if I’m struggling to come up with them on my own. Sometimes, I can’t quite determine how many carbs are in a serving of pumpkin pie – I’ll guess too low and end up high, as a result! But I know that there are tons of carb counting resources at the tip of my fingers, thanks to my smartphone.

1) Remember what the holiday’s all about: being thankful! Enjoy the day and time with loved ones! Whether you’re part of a large family like mine, a small one, or choose to spend the day with friends or a partner, just relish it for what you want it to be.

A Human Garbage Disposal

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Sometimes, I feel like I am a human garbage disposal.

It’s not everyday, but there are occasions in which I want to eat anything and everything within arm’s reach like it’s the last meal or snack that I’ll consume for days. When I’m experiencing a low blood sugar, I’m especially likely to inhale food as if I’m a living Hoover vacuum…or as I’ve come to think of it, a human garbage disposal.

There’s no doubt about it: Diabetes has totally screwed up my relationship with food. I’ve written about this previously. I’m also just as sure of the fact that my relationship with food has gotten worse as I’ve grown older, a phenomenon that I blame on numerous factors such as the natural process of aging, social media, and society’s constant scrutiny of how women’s bodies “should” look. Add my diabetes into this mix and I feel like trash about my body and harvest negative feelings towards food (despite also loving food).

I definitely blame my diabetes for ruining my relationship with food.

So yeah, a human garbage disposal – with diabetes, no less – feels like an accurate way to describe me and my relationship with food.

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a “pity me” post. Not at all. This post is more so me…trying to understand what can be done to repair my relationship with food. Because I think if I can repair it, then I can start seeing positive outcomes on my blood sugar and start to strengthen my own sense of self-love. These are important things, you know, and I’ve hit a point where I’m just tired of feeling so damn negative about my diabetes, food, and my body all the time.

I might feel like a human garbage disposal lately, but “human” is at the forefront of that phrase. I’m human, I make mistakes, and my relationships with my diabetes, my food, and my body are bound to ebb and flow over the years.

At the end of the day, I think it’s just a matter of making peace with that.

My Close Encounter with the Keto Diet

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Remember that time that Oprah Winfrey did a Weight Watchers commercial and proclaimed loudly and proudly before the cameras that she loves bread? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the link to the ad with a little doctoring done to it – it is worth a watch.)

Well, I can relate to Ms. Winfrey – except my obsession with carbs extends beyond bread. I love cake, candy, chocolate, pizza, pasta, sushi…and just about every other carbohydrate-laden food that exists. So while I think it’s awesome that many of my peers with T1D choose to follow low or close to no-carb diets, that’s not the kind of thing that works for a girl like me: I’m happy managing my diabetes in tandem with a moderate carb intake. But that’s not to say that I don’t eat lower carb sometimes or that I don’t have an interest in the principles of the keto diet, just because it’s so restrictive.

At least, that’s what I used to think about it.

Would my love of carbs prevent me from trying out aspects of the keto diet?

When my boyfriend decided to go on the keto diet back in May (he’s had experience with it before), I was simultaneously impressed with his dedication to it, but also a little worried. We have dinner together a few times each week and since I wanted to show him that I support him 100%, I knew that I’d have to change up my cooking so it adhered better with the dietary guidelines of keto.

So for the last two months, I’ve had a lot of exposure to the keto diet, and this is what I’ve learned about it:

  • It’s not as restrictive as I thought it would be. I figured that eating strictly keto meant that the only food groups we could eat were meats/proteins, fibrous vegetables, and cheese. That wasn’t 100% true. While we stuck to proteins and vegetables for most dinners, we also had plenty of snacks that kept things fun and interesting. I developed a mild addiction to cheese crisps and chicharrons (otherwise known as pork rinds). I also had a lot of fun trying different keto dessert options out there, including cookies, ice creams, and peanut butter cups (the latter being my absolute favorite).
  • Snacks can get expensive. One of the keto peanut butter cups that we ate cost $10 for a bag of 7. That’s an insane price. When you factor in the cost of other more expensive grocery items, like beef jerky or nuts, things add up quickly, which is definitely a downside to the keto diet.
  • My blood sugars tended to respond well when I ate keto…for the most part, anyways. Eating keto dinners was mostly great for my blood sugar and it stayed relatively steady more often than not. On the occasions it didn’t, it was because I was trying to bolus for the amount of protein or the negligible amount of carbs in the veggies I was consuming at dinner, and I would go low as a result. There’s an art to bolusing on the keto diet, for sure, but since I was half-assing it (really quarter-assing it) and not following it all the time, I never got a grip on how to account for minimal carbs.
  • Keto can inspire creativity in the kitchen. The best thing I made, ate, and loved throughout my experience with the keto diet was cauliflower crust pizza. I found the best recipe for it that was so easy to make and yielded delicious results. I always assumed that cauliflower pizza crust would be too difficult to make or not satisfying in the same way that pizza is, but that isn’t accurate at all. I grew to appreciate the challenge that keto presented me to come up with new things to eat that were tasty and filling, which I didn’t expect but liked.

T1D and “Inspired” Food Choices

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There’s no doubt that T1D directly affects my relationship with food.

Sometimes, I eat whatever I want with zero guilt. Other times, I painstakingly count not just the carbs, but every single macro of any morsel that meets my mouth. And more often than not, I fall somewhere between those two extremes.

But no matter what, my relationship with food is exhausting and probably one of the most inconsistent relationships I’ve ever had in my entire life.

It’s also a relationship that causes me to make what I’m calling “inspired” food choices.

Diabetes certainly impacts my food choices…especially when it comes to blood-sugar spikers like pizza, pasta, waffles, cake, and more.

Choices like eating dessert before dinner because my blood sugar is low.

Choices like only eating low- or no-carb foods because my blood sugar is high.

Choices like timing my meals down to the minute because I know that my body functions best when I eat regularly.

Choices like keeping snacks in my purse, my overnight bags, my car, and miscellaneous other locations because I never know when I might need food on the fly.

Choices like restricting my eating because a low blood sugar made me binge on food one day, and the guilt carried over to the next day.

Maybe “inspired” isn’t the right word to describe my food choices here. There’s so many more that could apply: weird, strategic, healthy, unhealthy…the list is limitless.

Just like the number of “inspired” food choices that my diabetes triggers.

Good, bad, and everything in between, though, the first step in making changes to my relationship with food is acknowledging the flaws in it. While I admit that I’m not sure what the next step is, I do know that I’m feeling determined to finally establish a guilt-free relationship with food.

Diabetes already takes too much from me…I refuse to let it continue to make my relationship with food negative.

When Carbs Collide with a Bent Cannula, Chaos Ensues

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Sushi. Wine. Not one, but two slices (I swear they were slivers, honest) of cake. A pod with a cannula that got bent out of shape accidentally due to clumsiness.

The above sounds like some sort of weird laundry list, but it’s really just all the factors that contributed to a night of high blood sugars and relative sleeplessness.

Let me explain what happened: The night started out fabulously! I got sushi for dinner from a local spot that I was trying for the first time. I was excited about it because sushi is a rare treat for me, and I figured the occasion warranted some wine – my first glass(es) that I’ve had in about 2 months (I gave it up for Lent).

Those two things right there are definitely a “dangerous” duo that can cause carbohydrate calculation errors or prolonged blood sugars, but I tucked that in the back of my mind because I wasn’t done with indulgences for the evening.

I want to say I regret nothing about this carb-o-licious evening, but…

That’s right, I kept up with the carb-loading by enjoying some cake (white chocolate blueberry cake that I made myself that is just as decadent as it sounds) soon after dinner was done. My problem is that I thought I’d curbed the impact of the carbs by setting a temporary basal increase and stacking a small amount of my insulin, but no such luck. I’d destroyed my second piece (it was just a tiny sliver, people) and noticed that I was creeping up. I took more insulin and soon forgot about my high blood sugar as I immersed myself in episode after episode of Impractical Jokers, which, side note: It’s a series I just discovered and it’s hilarious cringe comedy that is the perfect thing to watch after a long day.

A handful of episodes later, it was time for bed. Or so I thought…because soon after I was settled in bed, I twisted around in just the right – or in this case, wrong – manner that was rough enough to loosen my pod from its allegedly secure location on my back. The smell of insulin was pungent and indicated to me immediately that the pod would have to be ripped off completely and replaced. And the sooner, the better, because my blood sugar was getting closer and closer to 300…definitely not a level I want to see before I go to sleep.

By 12:30 A.M., the new pod was on my arm and a temp basal increase was running to combat my lingering high blood sugar. I also gave myself yet another bolus and crossed my fingers, hoping that the combination would be enough to bring my levels down overnight.

At around 2 A.M., my PDM started beeping to let me know that it’d been about 90 minutes since the new pod was activated, so in response I woke up to silence it and glance at my CGM. My blood sugar barely budged! Frustrated, I gave myself more insulin and fell back into a restless sleep.

Several hours later, my alarm was blaring, far sooner than I wanted it to. I hit the snooze button, also taking care to check out my CGM yet again before I made an attempt at 15 more minutes of sleep. And guess what – I was still high. Quite high. Not 300, but in the mid-200s.

It was official: My blood sugar was punishing me for my night of careless carb consumption and reckless pod-handling. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the resulting chaos, but at least I was able to restore peace again the next morning…eventually.

4 Tips on How to Handle T1D, Treats, and Temptation

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If you regularly read this blog, then you know that I’m not a strict person with diabetes, in the sense that I don’t really restrict the foods that I include in my diet.

I’ve always been of the mindset that my diabetes can’t dictate what I choose to consume, though it might limit the actual quantity of a given food type that I eat.

So while my fridge and freezer is almost always stocked with fresh and frozen fruits/veggies/proteins, my pantry often stores more shelf-stable (and usually less healthy) things like crackers, cookies, and even candy. In fact, a full week post-Easter, my cabinets contain 3 bags of jellybeans, a chocolate bunny, and several Reese’s eggs. And it’s very tempting to reach into the cupboards and help myself to as much sugary sweetness as I can stomach in one sitting – screw my diabetes/blood sugar, I’ve got delectable confections to consume!

I don’t even like jelly beans very much, but that doesn’t mean that I doubt my ability to crush this bag in one sitting…

But of course, I know that indulging my cravings will only wreak havoc on my blood sugar levels, so I’ve found a few ways to curb temptation but still keep tasty treats in my home. Here’s 4 things that have worked for me:

  1. Only eat these treats when my blood sugar is low. I call this “medically necessary” candy consumption, and let me tell you, it makes low blood sugars a whole lot more tolerable when they’re treated with something that’s more fun and yummier than chalky glucose tablets or juice boxes.
  2. Keep them out of sight. I do my best to shove bags of treats in the very back of my top cabinets. That way, if I’m tempted to dig into them, I remember that I won’t be able to reach them unless I get a chair and rummage through the contents of the top shelves…and usually, that’s enough to take away my desire to snack on something sugary. I’m not saying it always happens, but laziness will typically beat my sweet tooth.
  3. Pre-portion single servings of treats. I have a real problem with snacks that come in bottomless bags – it’s hard to know when to stop and my blood sugar always suffers the consequences. So I like to study the serving size on bags and use it as a guide to portion out single servings of treats. It’s much easier to bolus for whatever it may be (or treat a low blood sugar as described in tip #1) when I know the exact carbohydrate count; after all, a few handfuls of an unknown number of Skittles have far more carbs than a single serving of 15 Skittles.
  4. Be picky about the types of treats kept in the house. My kryptonite is most definitely Reese’s cups…I love the salty/sweet combination of peanut butter and chocolate almost as much as I love my dog. So I recognized that a bad habit was forming when I kept a little bowl out in my living room filled to the brim with mini cups. I was breaking every single one of the above rules with this practice! After I realized this, I put the bowl away and stopped buying Reese’s every time I went to the grocery store. I still have other things around the house that will satisfy my sweet tooth (before Easter, I bought a package of dark chocolate Oreos that I’ve easily kept around for the last 6 weeks because they don’t tempt me in the same way that Reese’s cups do), so I’m really not depriving myself at all.

Temptation can be tricky to navigate when you have T1Ds and love sugary treats as much as I do…but as long as you can come up with ways to cope with temptation like I did, then you don’t have to feel guilty for giving in to your cravings every now and then. I sure don’t!

Luck O’ the Irish Diabetic

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Last week, it occurred to me that in more than 3 years of running this blog, I’ve never written anything about St. Paddy’s Day here…so I sought out to rectify that immediately; hence, today’s blog post.

I love St. Patrick’s Day. Always have, always will. I celebrate it each year decking myself out in head-to-toe green. I eat a traditional Irish dinner – always prepared by my mother, until this year when I will attempt to cook the meal myself – that consists of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and Irish soda bread. We eat it while listening to Irish music and more often than not, we’ll have a Guinness or an Irish coffee along with the meal. My family’s attended St. Patrick’s Day parades in various locations in years past, though obviously, we didn’t go to any last year and we won’t this year, either. But we’re still proud of our Irish heritage and we made the most of it in 2020, as I know we’ll do today.

My parents’ dog, Clarence, and I certainly made the most of the day last year. I was dressed up like this for all of my work video conference calls, which made my colleagues laugh at a time when we all needed one.

So you know my plans for St. Patrick’s Day, but what does this have to do with my blog that’s about diabetes?

Let me explain.

The common denominator between this holidays, all the others, and my diabetes is…food.

Foods consumed on holidays are often special and laden with carbohydrates. Rather than deprive myself, I like to indulge on holidays, and worry a little less about my topsy-turvy blood sugar levels.

You might be thinking, “But the food you described isn’t even that carb-heavy!” and you’d be right, for the most part. Corned beef, cabbage, carrots…those are all easy to bolus for seeing as the carbohydrate content is negligible.

It’s the combo of potatoes – which normally, I can bolus for without any troubles – and Irish soda bread – hellooooo, carbs – that really screws me up.

You see, the problem is that Irish soda bread is too delicious. It’s a quick bread that has a buttery exterior and a tender, mouthwatering interior that’s densely packed with raisins. It doesn’t sound like much, but my mother’s recipe is sheer perfection and I can’t resist helping myself to a big ol’ slice (and a couple of mini, just-one-more-taste slices) of the stuff every year.

So more often than not, my St. Patrick’s Days end with high blood sugars (which I suppose is better than ending with a trip to the toilet due to excessive…ahem, celebrating).

The Irish soda bread is worth the high blood sugar alone, but this year, I’m hoping for a little luck when I tuck into this festive feast. I’m tired of simultaneously welcoming holidays and high blood sugars…it’s about time that I make more of an effort to have better levels when I’m eating special meals. I know the extra work will make the day and the food that much more enjoyable and special.

With a little luck o’ the Irish (and some aggressive bolusing), this diabetic will finally have a St. Patrick’s Day filled with lots o’ green, Guinness, and great blood sugar levels.