Moments of Wonderful

…rather than a lifetime of nothing special. A blog about diabetes and other moments.

...rather than a lifetime of nothing special. A blog about diabetes and other moments.

Category Archives: food

The labels don’t balance

Eat carbohydrates. Take insulin.

I do a pretty good job of maintaining that balance. But that is not what today is about. Today writing prompt is about sharing an area that could use a little improvement.

I am tempted by the fact that the easiest way to know how much insulin to take is when the amount of carbohydrates and the serving size are printed right on the package. As a result, I do not take the effort to eat enough fruits and vegetables and my pant size is clearly showing the result. It’s not about clothing sizes, it’s about not being happy with the way I look.

At diagnosis, I was given a specific meal plan to balance with my awful insulin regime of NPH and Humalog. I ate the exact same thing every day so I remember it now eight years later.

  • Breakfast: two scrambled eggs with cheese on top, light bread with peanut butter, half a banana
  • Lunch: peanut butter and no-sugar added jelly sandwich, the other half of the banana, a handful of chips, and two no-sugar added cookies.
  • Dinner: baked chicken breast, baked potato, zucchini

It was boring (especially after a few months of the same meals) but it was balanced.

Once I started on my first insulin pump I began to gain what I like to think of as “pump weight” – it’s like baby weight but with no adorable child at the end. A few years ago, members of the diabetes online community organized a weight loss/A1c reduction challenge. Having that accountability and support was the perfect thing for my competitive side, and I was able to get back to a place I felt more comfortable.

Slowly but surely I have put that weight on plus a few more pounds.

For example, just this past weekend I was out of town for a wedding. Instead of doing six hours of driving in one day, I stayed over night in a hotel. I suppose I could have brought some food from home, stopped at a grocery store to pick up some fresh food, or eaten in the hotel restaurant, but the convenience store stop was just so much more convenient.

I need to get back to eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and less processed food so I can feel healthier and enjoy the beautiful south Florida summer that has already begun.

Can you tell with my memes the past two days that I really miss Hyperbole and a Half?

Eat ALL the things!

I am scared to even write about this because of what happened last time I talked about this.

One thing that I am good at is…

Fingers crossed…

… should I say it?

I do a good job of not over-treating low blood sugars.

I like things in life that have definite answers. 1+1 should always equal 2.

I love reading the book Pumping Insulin because there are charts, graphs, and tables that I can use to manage the math of pumping.

Even when I am low, and my words don’t make much sense, my brain still can manage enough math to know how much fast acting sugar I need to get back into range without over-treating. I bet I would be some sort of math genius if my blood glucose was always in range!

At home, I almost always have juice boxes in the fridge. I guess they are made for kids, but they are also the perfect size for treating a low blood sugar without draining a whole large bottle of juice. When I am away from home, I always have at least one tub of glucose tablets on me.

This was the topic of conversation at my first meet-up back in June 2007. I never should have mentioned it because this was the e-mail I was forced to send to Scott Johnson and the rest of the group the next day.

Remember how I said that I didn’t usually over-treat my lows? I had one yesterday afternoon (43), and proceeded to have: one glucose tablet (the last in the container), a snack-size bag of peanut butter ritz sandwiches, a DingDong, and the bag of chips I saved from Panera. 30 minutes later I was at 85, but 2-3 hours later I was at 386 – oops!!

And in classic Scott style, this was the reply -

Did you simply panic because you couldn’t get your second glucose tablet? Or did you say “man, all that stuff that Scott eats when he’s low sounds really good…” and throw A1C control to the wind?

 

So I will publish this post, but if you read about me eating a tray of brownies tomorrow all by myself, you’ll know why.

Zing!

First of all, I hope your weather has been as good as mine this winter. Otherwise, please just enjoy this picture.
d365 - January 21, 2012 - day 21

Secondly, I had the best “dinner” a few nights ago. I was practicing for my award-winning lip sync performance through dinner, so I was desperate for food later that night.

There is a chain called Miller’s Ale House that claims to have world famous zingers. Well, the plate platter below had my zingers on it. I forgot to take the before picture, but I will next time – and there will be a next time.

As you may be able to see from the picture, my Zinger Mountain Melt was a platter of breaded boneless chicken wings, “piled over crispy fries and smothered with melted jack & cheddar cheeses, and bacon bits.” I picked honey mustard flavored chicken wings and asked for a side of honey mustard.

I had a horrible DexCom graph the rest of the night and I woke up ready to drink gallons of water but it was all completely worth it.

d365 - January 22, 2012 - day 22

The facts for a crown

The D-Mom recently posted about her experience dining out at Cracker Barrel and the difficultly she had retrieving nutritional information. It reminded me of a story of something that happened to me at my favorite fast food restaurant shortly after I started using my insulin pump. I actually couldn’t remember if I had blogged about it or not yet, but a search of my archives didn’t turn up anything so here we go!

A bit of a backstory first – When I was released from the hospital a family from my church that had/has a child with diabetes stopped by the house to answer any questions and set our minds somewhat at ease about our new life.

It was a little over a week until my birthday so one of the first questions was whether or not I could still have birthday cake (I could!).

Another important question was whether or not I could have fast food. The mom asked what I typically ordered. When I told her that I ordered the chicken nuggets, she said that was one of the best options because of the balance of protein and carbs. I took that as my go-ahead to continue to enjoy some Burger King.

My first insulin dosing was NPH and Humalog and because of the peaks of NPH I could generally eat most moderate meals without much thought to carb counting. When I started on the pump, I had to get more serious about knowing exactly how much insulin to take.

I was driving home from work (or grad school – you’ll have to forgive me, it was 2004) and stopped at the drive thru of my local Burger King. I ordered the chicken nugget combo for the first time since I had my pump. When I got to the window, I asked for the nutritional information. The employee walked away for a minute and came back to the window with something in his hand. Before I could see what he was holding he said,

I couldn’t find the nutritional information for you, but I did find this…

crown.

At first I was shocked. In what alternate universe is a CROWN comparable to nutritional information. I remember stammering out something about how I needed to know the information because I needed to know how much medication to take.

I think the medication word scared him because he told me that the nutritional information was posted on the wall in the restaurant and that I could come in and look at it. I did end up coming inside and looking at the nutritional information that time. It would be years before I could look up the information on my cell phone. And now I have the carb count of a least one meal memorized at just about every fast food chain for when I am on the go.

****************

A little extra information on nutritional information:

 

  • And a federal law passed in 2010 as part of the health care legislation requiring “restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets to disclose calorie counts on their food items and supply information on how many calories a healthy person should eat in a day.” (source). The article is a great read and the regulations sound like good news. But don’t look for your favorite restaurant to have their nutritional information posted tomorrow, “the effective date could conceivably be years away.“

Holiday food hoarder

If your family is anything like mine, the holiday season means extra cooking and baking. Even before Thanksgiving, I was questioning whether or not I could be healthy during the holidays.

I had a great time with Victoria, another member of the diabetes community, during Thanksgiving. But I had a horrible time with my diabetes management during the long weekend. Despite increased basals, site changes, reservoir changes, and every other change I could make, I could not get my blood glucose to stay in range. I was determined not to have it ruin the holiday, so I did the best I could and enjoyed the time with a good friend.

With the memory of my Thanksgiving troubles, I was pretty worried about my diabetes management for Christmas. Not only are the food choices plentiful and sugarful, but I have to deal with traveling across multiple time zones and spending multiple hours in the car. Other than a troublesome Christmas Eve dinner that involved some ill-timed spikes from a glass of wine and delicious homemade bread, I had probably the most consistently in-range blood glucose results of any holiday season in recent history.

Maybe it was because the in range numbers took the focus was off my graph, but I started thinking more about a different holiday problem I experience, and I am hoping I am not the only one.

I am a holiday food hoarder.

Any time there are sweet treats around the house, I want to save them. I want to save them because I might NEED them. If that doesn’t sound like a hoarder, I don’t know what does.

I love baking and I love sharing the final product with family and friends, but sometimes I worry. Last year, my mom and I made some red velvet whoopie pies and when she wanted to give the last few away, we got in a huge fight. I didn’t want to eat them at the time, but what if I was low later and needed a snack? What if I NEEDED those whoopie pies later?

This year I made cake balls and peanut butter cup cookies and my mom made buckeyes. All three treats were the perfect bite-sized snacks. We loaded them up and took them to my brother’s house.

Every time we enjoyed an afternoon snack or a treat before bed, I found myself counting how many treats were left. Not because I necessarily wanted to eat them at that point, but because I wanted to save them for the future – just in case.

Am I the only food hoarder or do you find yourself keeping an eye on your sweet treat counts as well?