Carbaholic

So I'm joining in this Diabetes Blog Week thing - almost at the end of the week. Karen, I promise to check out your site regularly, after this!

So, my take on carbs: I love 'em. Always have. I loved chocolate as a kid. When I was in the hospital, just diagnosed, at age 13, some jerk visiting my roommate said (when he found out what I was "in for"), that I must have caused my diabetes because I ate too much candy. I totally believed him, for about an hour.

Anyway, as a teen, I followed the guidance of the time and avoided "sweets" - but way overdid it on "regular" carbs. Bread and cereal were (and are) my comfort food. I figured out, before being told, that that was a bad idea. But it took a long time for me to change, in part because no one told me I had to. (An A1c of 8 was "good"!)

It took something drastic for me to change, in fact. I started getting migraines late in college, and figured out that wheat was one of my triggers. Boy, did I have the DTs weaning myself off wheat! But after a month, I started to adjust.

Long story short, bread is now a smaller part of my diet - but it's still there, in the form of wheat-free breads and pastas, and granola (my favorite!). Another long story short, during pregnancy my big craving was Greek yogurt - which is really high in protein, and low carb. At the time, you couldn't get it in the grocery store, so I got it from our local Greek restaurant. Somehow, that habit has stuck. I eat it most days for breakfast - sometimes with honey, if I think I can get away with it; sometimes with Splenda, and always with a little wheat-free granola. This really helps even things out. And now I've got my mornings figured out (usually), the rest of the day goes better, and I have more leeway.

I'm not at all on the low-carb bandwagon, though. Running around after a two-year-old, I need that quick boost all the time. I've just figured out (more or less) how to accommodate the carbs - usually by including protein with it, and just not eating too much at once. Yes, somehow I've actually managed portion control! Don't ask me how - maybe it was the period when I couldn't eat anything at all, and then slowly added back one food at a time. Also, I just don't crave those wheat alternatives the same way. I swear they put something extra in wheat to make us crave it!

One carb that I'm really careful with - beside real sweets - is fruit. I usually don't do it in the morning, when I tend to have insulin resistance (I heard coffee contributes to insulin resistance, but I'm never giving that up!). Later in the day, though, fruit is my friend.

And at night, I confess to an ice cream craving. I usually (okay, often?) eat a low-fat, low-carb ice cream - a compromise between regular ice cream and sugar-free. I can handle that with my pump, easy. When I do eat regular ice cream, I've worked hard to get my dual-wave bolus right on my pump. Depending on how much fat is in the ice cream (some have so much it'd scare the pants off people who don't know a glucose from a sucrose), I spread out the square wave over one to three hours. And the initial bolus depends on how much carb. It's a dance with the devil, but it actually keeps me motivated to keep trying! Better than a carrot, right?