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Honey Syphon: Here's what the theory of eating a balanced diet actual means in my case. Remember that every diabetic is different, and their needs and requirements and restrictions will vary, so this is just how it works for me. Frequency I need to eat three meals a day, because I have to take a tablet three times a day after food. I don't have to worry about my blood sugar going too low if I don't eat enough (my tablets don't have that as a side-effect), but I have found that leaving it too long between meals is not a good idea because if I am absolutely ravenous when I sit down at the dinner table I am just tempted to eat too much. Low Fat Cutting down on fat means avoiding things that are heavy on the cream and butter. On bread which is going to have another topping such as cheese or jam, I use a very low-fat spread because the topping disguises the lack of taste of the spread. If there's no additional topping on the bread I use one of the spreads where you aren't supposed to be able to tell that it's not butter. Sometimes I treat myself to real butter, but not too often. I use low-fat creme fraiche as a replacement for cream in things such as mashed potato or sauces. I tried low-fat cheese and it tastes like soap - utterly disgusting. So I just eat real cheese, but less of it. I switched to semi-skimmed milk for my breakfast cereal. I draw the line at skimmed milk; it has no taste and the consistency of water. It's OK for cooking, though. I also tried some of the new low-fat meals that have recently become popular. My local supermarket sells some with a huge label on them saying "95% fat free". They should rename them "95% flavour free" because they are really boring and bland. I checked the nutritional details on the back of the packets and found they don't differ a great deal from the ordinary varieties, except for being more expensive. There's marketing for you. Low-fat crisps are not as nice as ordinary ones, and still very high in calories, so not worth bothering about. Low-fat biscuits, low-fat sweets and low-fat desserts may have a lot less fat but they are usually very high in sugar, so not good at all. Low-fat ice-cream is just not even worth mentioning. In fact, most of these low-fat things are a real con because they certainly won't help anyone lose weight! Pigging out on a whole packet of low-fat biscuits is just as damaging as eating a whole packet of ordinary biscuits. I have found I am better off with the usual brands, I just eat less of them. High Fibre I have a problem with fibrous foods. I find most of them downright nasty. Given the choice between white bread and wholemeal bread, I'll pick white any time. I have dreadful memories of living in a house of vegetarians who made their own wholemeal bread; it had the consistency of a housebrick. So I compromise. I eat wholemeal bread about half the time. Thankfully supermarkets now sell non-brick-like brown bread. Granary bread is kind of halfway between wholemeal and white in terms of fibrousness, and it makes good sandwiches, so that's another option. Those same people turned me off lentils and other pulses for life. The thought of their five-bean stew is enough to make me shudder even after all these years. I just can't bring myself to eat things with beans in them, despite the trendiness of cannellini beans and flageolet beans these days. I challenge anyone to say in all honesty they prefer brown rice to white; as for wholemeal pasta, it shouldn't be allowed! And don't get me started on branflakes... Low Sugar Note that I said low sugar, not no sugar. Thankfully, I don't have to cut out sugar completely. That's just as well, because when you start examining the ingredients lists on foods you would be amazed how many things contain sugar! The good news is that I have no problem with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. It's available in powdered form so I sprinkle it on my cereal in the morning and it tastes just like sugar. I can also put it on fruit such as strawberries, or stir it into things after they are cooked, like stewed apples. But it turns bitter when heated so it can't be used as a sugar replacement in cooking. There are a few desserts made with artificial sweeteners, such as jellies and mousses, but they aren't very exciting. There's a range of sugar-free jams available which are lovely. They really do taste just as nice as traditional jams. The only snag is that without sugar (which acts as a preservative) they don't keep for long; until I figured out that they have to be kept in the fridge, I constantly had to throw away half-full jars because they started growing mould. I also allow myself the occasional thin spreading of chocolate spread, honey or golden syrup on bread or toast. I have one or two small chocolates after my main evening meal, as an alternative to dessert, or a very small spoonful of ice cream - usually Ben and Jerries. Alcohol I have never been much of a drinker. My mother was an alcoholic and she eventually died as a consequence. Watching her slow and painful decline was a horrible experience. I never want to end up like that, so apart from youthful drunken party experiences, I have never abused alcohol. Besides, I tend to drive everywhere and I have very strong feelings about not drinking and driving. As a diabetic, I don't have to give up alcohol completely, but like all things I should do it in moderation. No more than two glasses of wine with a meal, that kind of thing. As someone trying to lose weight, I should avoid alcohol because it is high in calories. I do sometimes have a glass of wine with a meal, but not very often. Given the choice between "spending" my calorie intake on food or alcohol, I generally choose food. Put bluntly: I prefer chocolate to booze. Other Drinks I have always drunk diet drinks, and I can continue to drink as much diet coke as I like. I have given up drinking orange juice and other fruit juices. That's because fruit contains fructose, fruit sugar, which is just as bad for me as any other kind of sugar. When contained in an orange, the fructose is mixed in with the fibre of the fruit, which slows down the conversion to glucose. Therefore I can eat oranges and apples with no problem. But squeeze the juice out of an orange and there's no fibre, not even in the kind of juice with bits in it, and anything other than a very small glass sends my blood sugar too high. Special Treats No, I don't stick to my rules all of the time. I'd go mad if I did. I allow myself treats occasionally. I eat out a lot and usually the meals are things like Indian or Chinese, and nobody has a dessert afterwards. But sometimes my friends and I go to a French or Italian restaurant, where they eat desserts. I made up my mind right at the start that I would not sit and watch them eat sometime yummy while I felt miserable. So I use one of three different strategies:
If it's someone's birthday and there's a cake being offered around, I have a small piece. It's only polite. Sometimes I really, really, really want a piece of chocolate cake, or a jam donut. So I buy them for a dessert, eat them, enjoy them and don't feel guilty. On really special occasions, celebratory meals, I throw caution to the winds and eat exactly what I like - fatty, sugary, whatever! So long as the special treats don't happen too often it's perfectly alright. The temptation is to have them more and more often until they are the norm rather than something special; I have to watch out for that. So far, so good. The Result Good news, folks. What I am doing is working. In combination with exercise (which I'll write about soon), what I eat is making me lose weight slowly but steadily. My blood sugar levels occasionally go too high when I have a treat, but overall they are acceptable. The important thing is that I can live with this regime. It's not too strict. It allows me treats. I don't feel hungry, deprived or miserable. I don't have to eat unlimited lettuce or cottage cheese. I can envision spending the rest of my life eating like this. Of course I wish I didn't have to. I wish I could forget about all this and go back to eating something just because I feel like it, with no worries about the consequences. But that ain't going to happen. |
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