It’s day 2 for me (day 4 for those who started diabetes blogging week when it officially began) and today’s topic is “To carb or not to carb.”
Ever since reading Dr. Richard Bernstein’s book, “Diabetes Solution” more than 10 years ago, I vacuumed white carbs out of my diet and that’s where they remain -- most of the time. I am no angel and I am human.
I often say I follow a low-carb diet, but that really isn’t true: vegetables, beans and my morning oatmeal make my daily food intake plentiful in carbs – just not refined carbs. I actually wrote about this in a Diabetes Health article, “The Debate Goes On: Carbs In or Carbs Out?”
I don’t eat low on the carb totem pole to be a martyr or anyone’s saviour, but for three reasons.
Reason #1) Since I've been eating this way my blood sugar rarely swings between bungee jumping highs and lows from the spike and fall induced by ring-dings, white rice and chips. My breakfast (recipe below) is my high carb meal, my lunch usually a salad with last night's veggies and some feta cheese or turkey, my dinner usually fish or chicken with veggies and beans. Working from home I have the luxury to do this. And just as important, don't have the typical office-meeting-leftover-danish around.
My healthy snacks are slices of turkey, nuts and fruit. I also adore Asian sweet potatoes - especially cold. They're the ones that are red skinned on the outside, more yellow than orange inside and more nutty than sweet. I snack on these too.
My less healthy snack, OK, unhealthy snack, is marble halvah with pistachio nuts. I'm addicted and I live near a great middle eastern market. I also love Lindt chocolate and I'm actually buying that chocolate's anti-oxidants make it a healthy snack. I eat a piece of 85% and 99% together. I know, I know... My sister in law brings me the 99% from Holland. Eaten together they average out at a perfect 93%! Now if only Lindt would make 93% chocolate and save me all this trouble! But I guess going through this exercise makes me very aware I'm eating chocolate and helps me keep my intake to one or two pieces - usually.
Lest you think I'm a paragon of virtue there are those days, and nights, I can eat every darn thing in the house. That seems to follow a tough day or boredom or my husband having just flown off to Holland again.
For a while now I've been looking at what I eat as medicine and when you make that shift it's much easier to put healthy foods in your body more of the time. I've long joked my wine - a glass or two most nights with dinner - is medicine since it lowers my blood sugar. In fact, I often don't need any insulin at all to cover dinner if my dinner is pretty low carb and a nice Rioja accompanies it. When my blood sugar is below 100 mg/dl before I go to sleep, I eat a few bites of an Extend bar to safely keep my blood sugar level throughout the night.
Reason #2 I eat this way) If I ate more carbs, as in the refined stuff – pretzels, sandwich bread, pizza, muffins – I’d have to use more insulin. Having watched a friend once inject 43 units for the same lunch I took 1 unit for, (granted he is a type 2 and insulin-resistant) I will do my utmost to stay insulin-sensitive.
Reason #3) I think it's just been drummed into my head how important blood sugar control is and I find it so much easier to have that control when simple carbs aren't part of my diet, that I've made the sacrifice. Although what was once a sacrifice, doesn't feel like one anymore. I don't miss white bread, rice, potatoes, pasta. While I gave up pasta for almost two decades, I now eat Dreamfields pasta which has only 5 carbs/serving. Sometimes other diabetics look at me like how can I do this? But I've had 38 years with diabetes to change my eating habits.
Also, for me, feeling good about my control is more satisfying than the momentary taste of things I no longer crave. And having A1Cs consistently in the high 5's means a lot to me given the first dozen years I had diabetes there were no meters and when there were, my blood sugars were consistently around 200 mg/dl. I'm sure my cleaner carb scoreboard these days is an effort to make up for those lost initial years.
Last but not least, we can’t escape this truth: routine makes diabetes more manageable. Since I tend to eat similarly most days of the week, I tend to know how much insulin I need to cover what I eat. And that makes my diabetes-life easier.
Just a few weeks ago I finally kicked a habit I've been trying to kick for years. I said "Enough!" to artificial sweeteners. Like someone who's tried to quit smoking and it took five tries, that's me with artificial sweeteners. But I'm clean now and I really know I'm done. After all, how can I do what I do to be healthy and keep putting chemicals in my coffee, tea, hot chocolate etc? So I kicked the sweet n' low, Splenda, Equal cold turkey. Even Truvia is gone. I think the power actually came reading "The End of Overeating" and realizing that if you keep feeding your sweet tooth, even with artificial sweeteners, you keep your tastebuds lurking for sweets.
Tis true, I am very disciplined; it just works for my Virgo self. Just don't listen to my friends who will tell you they have seen me fight over a plate of fried calamari, Maryland crab cakes, peanut butter cookies and the gingerbread my bakery around the corner makes.
Give it a try - my indescribably delicious high-carb breakfast.
Riva’s
Oatmeal: Ingredients & Preparation
Put in the bottom of a cereal bowl:
1 tsp raw sunflower seeds
1 –2 Tbs ground
flaxseeds
1/4 Granny Smith
apple
cut into bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup berries
Add 2/3 cooked
serving of steel-cut oatmeal. Mix all ingredients together
Top with:
1 Tbs non-fat
cottage cheese
1 Tbs Fage (Or
Equivalent Greek) 0% Fat Plain Yogurt
1 level Tbs Creamy
or Crunchy Natural Peanut Butter
1 level Tbs Raw
Natural Almond Butter
Cinnamon optional