Monthly Archives: May 2010

It’s day #4 of Diabetes Blog Week. I have really enjoyed reading so many of the posts. I think I have a greater appreciation for what parents of PWD go through. (Here’s to you, the hard-working and perpetually worrying D-Moms and D-Dads!) And I feel more connected to the community than ever before. Thanks for proposing this, Karen!

Today’s topic is food, specifically “To Carb or Not To Carb?” What we eat and what we avoid. High carb or low carb diets. It’s all on the table — so to speak — today.

Fellow people with diabetes and other readers, I have a confession. I’m not really that into food or eating.

There. I said it.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy eating tasty things, especially when they’re prepared with great care and passion. Some of my favorite things in the world are JP Licks ice cream, truffles from Moonstruck Chocolates, cannoli from Mikes in Boston’s North End, really great cheesecakes, and fresh berries. There’s no more enjoyable way to start the day than with a chocolate croissant, pain au chocolat, or crêpe; and it’s probably good that I’ve given myself a (small) weekly quota. I can still taste the fantastic (and very expensive) steak that I had at Morton’s Steakhouse in San Diego almost ten years ago; and the memory of the stilton on the cheeseburger from Gourmet Burger Kitchen in London still makes me smile. As do the rogan josh from the Lake Palace in Udaipur, the dosa I had in Shimla, and the gulab jamon in Madras. Just about every time that I’m out riding my bike during somebody else’s mealtime, I smell a grill and desire a bratwurst with sauerkraut and all the fixings. About once a month I want to take a trip to Salt Lake City to have the best reuben sandwich I’ve ever tasted; and just as often I want to find that hole-in-the-wall bar-b-que shack in the woods outside Kansas City that the energy traders took me to a few months before I was diagnosed. I’m surprised I haven’t made a road trip with Lisa to Montréal just to go to Le Keg. I like good pizzas and well-made omelets and blueberry waffles. I have a thing for fully stuffed, unhealthy burritos from Qdoba or Chipotle and palak paneer from just about anywhere. And dammit, I’m not even hungry now, but I want a fish taco from Rubio’s.

Having owned up to all that, I can still say that I’m not a foodie. (Though I wouldn’t mind being one.) My approach toward food is (sadly) opportunistic. If the chance to eat great food is present, I will take up the challenge (and probably pick up the check for friends, too). But for the most part, I’m just kinda indifferent. I’m adverse enough to risk that I don’t go out of my way to find great restaurants near where I live. Furthermore, I lack the experience or the passion to be a decent cook/chef/saucier/whatever. Having worked in a deli, I know which meats and cheeses go well together — and cheese is about the best elemental food in existence — but I can’t get the herbs and spices right when I try to put them together in the kitchen. And I’ve been called “methodical and slow” while cooking, so my creations (few as they are) often taste a bit . . . well . . . clinical uninspired.

It’s perhaps a bit ironic that I should be afflicted with something that’s so often thought of as a disease about food. “Cheating?” Not really my thing. It once took me two hours to eat a bag of Reese’s Pieces from the vending machine. Like every American worth his or her extra large portion of salt, I’ve been known to overeat. And it was really quite difficult to cope with the severe “no more than 60g of carbs at any meal” dictum that my former endocrinologist threw down when he started me on NPH in 1999. I ate a lot of sugar-free Jello to keep my stomach from eating the remaining nearby organs that I might need.

Getting on the pump in 2001 was so liberating. I could stop thinking so much about food. Or rather I could think about eating when I wanted to eat and skip snacks when I didn’t want them. Delivered pizza was suddenly back on the menu as a “sometimes food.” So was ice cream, along with those other things that occasionally make eating a transcendent experience. And there’s really no such thing as “cheating” any more, since I can always just bolus tiny amounts for the random snacks that come my way — perhaps because someone put Dunkin Donuts’ munchkins by the printer. Or jelly beans. Or Halloween candy. Or Easter candy. (BTW, this junk food magnet printer is right outside my office. “Oh look, it’s a snack that I don’t really want. Oh, the joy.”)

High carb? Low carb? No carb? I’m really more of a calorie person, myself. I try to keep my meals a reasonable size, and then I count the carbs that are there and bolus insulin accordingly. But the more that I exercise the more that I think about carb timing. Lately, I’ve been trying to eat the right number and kind of carbs in the middle of the day so that I can have a minimal amount of bolused insulin floating around when I head out to ride the bike or go for a run.

And strangely, I’ve been resisting the challenges that this presents, since it feels a bit like the old, austere NPH days. And yet, I want the good things that come with thinking more about food.

That’s diabetes and food in a nutshell, isn’t it?

It’s day #2 of Diabetes Blog Week. Today: making the lows go.

First off, I want to assert that food tastes better when I’m driving the magic bus. Maybe it’s because there’s no less guilt about eating tasty things. Maybe it’s because part of my brain is actually turned off. . . literally. It’s kind of like hearing a favorite song as you drift off to sleep, the equivalent of eating something tasty for the first time. It’s a “new” food experience, and it’s wonderful. And there’s a raw, physical craving for food that I rarely ever experience, too.

But, I hate hypoglycemia. Along with enhancing the flavor of food, it brings other less welcome sensations, such as my brain and eyes trying to trade places and the fear of passing out. So I primarily eat to make the feeling go away.

Add to that the (perhaps incorrect and not altogether bad) feeling that diabetes usually prevents me from eating as much as I want. Back in the bad, pre-pump days of my NPH regimen, it was actually the only excuse to eat more than an exact amount on a rigidly defined schedule.

Combine all of these and it’s not hard to believe that I tend to over-treat my lows. I’m not as bad as I used to be, but it’s still hard to have the hypo feeling and say, “That’s enough. Stop eating tasty, mostly guilt-free food. Diabetes, you win again.” No, I can say that I used to use my lows to stick it to diabetes.

Switching to glucose tablets (and having better influence over my blood sugar) has helped curb the practice. Tabs aren’t that bad — and they’re much easier to eat while exercising, which is why I switched — but they aren’t exciting either. Eating one for the 40th time is no different than eating one for the first time. A bit chalky, a bit melt-awkwardly-in-your-mouth, a bit artificially flavored. Yummy, huh.

Do I miss the days when, sitting up wide awake in the middle of the night, shivering in the middle of the summer because of the cold sweat, I would go down to the kitchen and pour myself some juice and then rummage through the kitchen eating until I got my good sense back? No, not at all.