Sugar Turned On Me

Dear Me,

There are a number of things I could write to you as you enter your 18th year that would be of great use to you by the time you hit your 37th. I could tell you which stocks to buy and when to sell them, but by doing so you’d likely negate the effect in the highly variable world of finance. I could tell you which relationships not to screw up and which not to get into, but each has taught you/me a lesson, and I wouldn’t be the person I am without it. What I will tell you about is how to avoid something that you’re doing to yourself.

Right now, you’re setting yourself up for Type 2 diabetes. No, you won’t be on insulin. Yes, it will still suck rocks.

If you wish to avoid this, start by drinking water. Straight. Without any caffiene, high fructose corn syrup or caramel coloring. At least one measure for every measure of that fizzy battery acid you push down your gullet. Start now and continue for the rest of your life.

Accept that two large orders of french fries do not constitute a meal. Yes, you can afford it now. No, you can’t afford it later.

For that matter, don’t rely on Burger King or McDonald’s too much for your food. When you get to be me, they will no longer taste good and in truth, probably don’t now.

Drink water. Yes I know I already said this one.

You like walking. Do that more. Everywhere. Never live somewhere you can’t walk to what you need. It will pay off, I promise.

Sleep regularly. Take off your clothes and brush your teeth beforehand.

Have you gotten a glass of water yet?

When you finally get around to taking martial arts, stretch before each session. It will keep you from injuring yourself and dropping the class. This will help you maintain the best health you will be in possibly ever.

Water helps with the stretching.

Do not fear salads. You will like them. Dressing is okay, but don’t overdo it. You will, but try to pull the amount back so that it doesn’t look like flakey soup in ranch broth.

With the salads, have water.

It does not make you more of a man or even more of yourself to kill a 2 Liter of soda in a sitting. Excess is excess, not a reward.

Follow these rules and maybe you won’t have to write this letter, which I realize will cause a time space paradox and such the universe into a singularity, but at least you won’t have diabetes.

So do this for yourself. Do it for your future self. And buy Google when it’s cheap oh god I can’t stop myself….

Sincerely,

Yourself

Some days, I shouldn’t watch TV.

It’s not just that television is the crack cocaine of entertainment. It’s not just that I have other things I’d be better applying my time to. It’s the commercials. Like the one’s for IHOP.

The International House of Pancakes was once a source of comfort and release. After I had to add hyperglycemia into the equation, IHOP became ground zero for carb bombs and territory that I should only enter if I was prepared for a great deal of hearbreak. Their menu has about 3 things on it that I enjoy that won’t spike my blood sugar. I’m not even going to talk about how many of those I like.

It’s not that I don’t know how to eat a restaurants: go for proteins over breads, eat half of my meal and take the other half home, order water and don’t add carbs with sodas or the like. But none of that trumps the tasty images of neverending pancakes or the promise of soft, fluffy crepes.

There are other restaurants that cook nothing but pain and fail. Applebee’s taunts me with their Weight Watchers menu, still in no way built for diabetics. In fact most “brass and fern” style restaurants take some careful navigation through their menus lest I trip on any sugary landmines.

But IHOP is on TV every ten seconds, trying my willpower, offering me another affordable way to damn near kill myself.

Today, I went. I did not have neverending pancakes, though I did have crepes. I haven’t tested my bloodsugar yet and I only feel a little guilty, but at least the service sucked and I’ll have something to bolster my resolve when next I see their ads on TV.

Because I can resist pancakes.

Neverending pancakes? The tool of Satan.

Today, my company took the office out for lunch.  Normally, this would be great news and in the end, it turned out okay. But why do I say “Normally”? Because we were going to Olive Garden.

On the one hand, I really like some of the food at Olive Garden. The issue is that it’s hard to find anything there that doesn’t come with pasta and being diabetic, I can only do so much of that. When the  decision was made, I agreed while inside I smoldered.

I wanted to look at one of my co-workers and ask “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

I might have done it too, but I didn’t want to be That Guy, the one that is now the “least” in “least common denominator”, the limiting factor and the one that stands out in an unpleasantly special way. I probably could have pulled the “I have a disability” card, but then the choice of venue for the meal would be less about celebrating as a team and more about me. In the future, I’d be approached by my co-workers or my boss when similar festivities occurred and asked what my preference might be. And any time I had a donut or something sugary in the office, I’d risk getting ugly glances from my team mates for having the audacity to risk things when it suited me, but not when it benefited them.

The drama I’m describing is probably a couple of orders of magnitude above what woudl actually happen, knowing the people involved, but still I didn’t want to make others uncomfortable by demanding they cater to my metabolism. If it really had been something life or death, something more complicated than where to have lunch, I might have pointed out why the place suited me less than some others, but it didn’t and I didn’t feel I needed to play up my issues.

Lunch was lovely and I can thank Atkins that there were options that I could have without risking totally killing my blood glucose.  I’m glad we went where we went and I’m glad my comrades in commerce enjoyed themselves. There may be some event where I need to be adamant about compensating for my diabetes, but this one wasn’t it.

Here’s hoping that if such an event ever comes, I’ll have the wisdom to know it and the tact to be able to say something without becoming “That Guy”.

A friend of mine is having a birthday today. Aside from an opportunity to wish him well and celebrate another turn for him around the sun, it is an opportunity to celebrate with him in his usual fashion: at a wing buffet.

Buffalo wings are deciptively small, ninjalike delivery systems for cholesterol and fat that have the insidious nerve to be delicious. The aren’t high carb, which is why I find them tempting but that saving grace can be done away with if they are in the right sauce. On top of that, they’re nigh impossible to consume in small quantities… at least if you’re me.

It’s possible to tear the skin off of them and just eat the meat, I suppose, but that defeats much of the purpose as the flavor lies on that same skin. If I were truly desperate, I could tear off the skin, rub the sauce off it onto the meat and then consume but that seems like the behaviour of an addict and I feel it’s more dignified to just accept that I’m going to have to find some reasonable way to work off the extra bad stuff.

I don’t blame my friend for my temptaion, only myself. I could order something else off the menu, a nice salad or something else sane for my metabolism. But I know I’m not.

Even the best of us diabetics have our weaknesses, and I am not one of the best. So if you read this, think of me and say a little prayer that the angel of moderation and common sense finds me and stays my hand from wing number 31, or at least helps me do the math on how many minutes of walking I need to do in the very cold autumn we’re having to compensate.

I thank you in advance.

Last night, my lady and I ordered Chinese food. There’s a couple of places in town that do it decently and its easy to find something on the menu compatible with my diabetes. Usually, I order a meat and veggie dish and get it “sauce on the side” meaning that my foods all naked, but I can more easily control what level of sugar I’m putting into me.

When we checked a menu we’d gotten in the mail from our usual place to make our choices. I saw that they had a short list of health conscious items. All of them were meat or tofu plus a vegetable, steamed, sauce on the side.

I smiled. They took my idea. Sure, they have a gym right next to it and there are probably other people who order it that way, but I feel I can take the credit.

This is most groovy as that means there’s one less restaurant I have to explain myself to when I doctor my dishes to protect my pancreas. Admittedly, at other Chinese restaurants  it’s still pretty easy to order food with sauce on the side or minus some of the more sugary seasonings, but knowing that there are more options out there, even if it’s just at one restaurant, makes me feel better, more normal.

Now if I can get my local vegitarian restaurant to start carrying stevia in their sweetner caddies, I’ll be estatic.

There’s an old maxim, or at least I assume it’s old because it sounds good, that states “Cheap, Easy or Fast; you can have any two out of the three”. Fast food joints are the epitome to this rule. If you’re operating both on a budget and with diet restrictions, it’s usually best to give these places a pass.

But then there comes that day before payday. Your bank account balance looks more like your A1C (1) and the $1.47 you find in the couch cushions suddenly seems like a fortune. You need lunch and have no where to turn to except the dollar menu.

I found myself in this situation today and gave into the call of Wendy’s. But as I walked away with my inexpensive repast, I wondered how do dollar menu items from fast food joints stack up against one another? So turning looking up the nutritional values of their budget items, I found the following (2):

• Wendy’s:  The best choices was the Grilled Chicken Go Wrap at 23g carbs (drop 2 if you leave off the dressing) and 11g of fat. The five piece chicken nugget is also sensible, but it’s not exactly filling on it’s own. The other items were passable, averaging about 15g of fat and having anywhere from 25-34g of carbs. The thing at the top of the carb curve was the Crispy Chicken Sandwich.
• Burger King: Less encouraging, the Creepy King offers us only 3 main dishes on the BK Value meal: The Whopper Jr., The Spicy Chik’n Crisp sandwich and the crown shaped Chicken Tenders. The 5 piece tenders is the best of the bunch at 11g carbs and 14g fat (comparable to Wendy’s 5 piece). The other two are around 25 or 30g of fat with mayo (13 to16g without) and about 30g of carbs. As neither is remarkably filling on it’s own, I’d advise caution here… or a side salad.
• McDonald’s (3): Where the others end, McDonald’s begins. No really, their lowest carb sandwich is around 30g. That’s just the hamburger. Their value menu, like BK is kinda sparse. They have a side salad, and that’s good, but the 23g fat/34g carb double cheeseburger really doesn’t make me want to eat there.

Wendy’s was already my choice for broke, hungry and won’t kill my sugar. Nice to know my choice wasn’t unjustified.

(1)My A1C, last time I checked, was 5.7 and the highest I’ve heard about recently was 14.4; If you already knew what an A1C should look like, I’m guessing you’re rolling with laughter right now.
(2)I’m not including their fries or sodas which are, by and large, the same as fries and sodas everywhere and something I avoid.
(3)I don’t eat at McDonald’s. It’s not because of Super Size Me!. It’s because their burgers taste like a slice of carpet with pickles.

A question came to me while at lunch yesterday. I was sitting in a mexican restaurant, waiting for my carnitas, when I looked at the nigh empty basket of chips in front of me and wondered how many carbs I’d added to my meal. This expanded to wondering what other “free food” might be something to pay a bit more attention to.

By “free food” I mean the things that come out at some restaurants before the meal, usally before you’ve ordered a drink that they will refill if you ask. Establishments do this first to make you feel welcome and attended to and second to make you feel like you’ve gotten a good value. They tend to be cheap and surprisingly filling, which usually means they’re bad for people with diabetes in the long run.

So after a little Googling, I found out information about the following:

• Olive Garden Salad and Breadsticks -  I checked the Olive Garden website and found nothing on their salad except that it didn’t appear on their “healthy” selections. This may be because they didn’t have it listed as an entree. According to the Daily Plate though, their salad is listed as having 36g of carbs per bowl. By this I’m assuming they mean the one that you could give a baby a bath in, not the serving bowls. As they will bring you this till you cry mercy, it’s not an insignificant amount and that’s before the dressing or the 23g of carbs per breadstick. If you’re exceptionally careful about carbs, you’re probably not going to Olive Garden a lot to begin with, but if you do, be careful.
• Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuts - These aren’t as bad as I thought. Individually, the carb count on them is 17g, about the same as a slice of bread. The downside is that they are pretty high in fat, at about 9g. One is probably not going to kill you, but stick to one biscut. One tasty, buttery, savory biscut.
• Ryan’s Bread Rolls - Bread is by and large not going to be low carb and I don’t expect it to be… but I also don’t expect it to be a meal’s worth of carbs per serving. While I found different numbers on different sites, the yeast rolls are reported to have 50-60g of carbs per roll. Their smaller rolls have around 35g.
• Chips and Salsa - Where as I was mentioning brand names for the other, the food item that inspired this post I’m leaving generic because there’s a lot of variance from restaurant to restaurant. In general, 10 or 15 white tortilla chips are going to run 12-18g of carbs. Salsa will add another 3 carbs to that. It’s not a lot in moderation, but the trick actually moderating yourself.

The thing I have to remember is that all food counts. It’s easy for me to forget that when I’m watching soccer, crunching down chips, trying to figure out how much time I have left on my lunch hour.  Fortunately, with awareness, these are not foods I have to give up so much as keep track of.

Especially the rolls at Ryan’s. Like half of one at most from now on.

Rites of passage exist at all stages of our lives. When you’re a kid, you feel better once the training wheels come off your bike. As a teenager, you sneak out of the house for the first time or just get the keys to the car with no one in the passenger seat. As a adult, you buy your first house or get to take out your parents for a nice meal for the first time. In your job, you reach a point where the boss comes up to ask you something and you know without having to look anything up.

I feel like I passed a rite of passage as a diabetic today. I ordered unsweetened ice tea in a restaurant, intentionally, for the first time. With lemon.

Now I realize this isn’t exactly losing a baby tooth or jumping a fire or anything like that. Some people from father north may ask if tea comes any other way in eateries. Some people farther south may want to know how I could betray my South Carolinian heritage like this. But though it’s probably not big for anyone else, it’s big for me.

I’d gotten used to carrying around packets of stevia. It was no big thing to reach in my pocket, fail to find one and decide I’ll just have water. I was even looking on the bright side, namely that my meal would be two bucks cheaper. But still, it felt a bit lame, like somehow I’d been put into a special corner. “Oh no Stephen, you can’t handle beverages with flavoring in them. We must give you something more gentle.”

So today I said screw it and tried some. For the first time, I enjoyed the taste. A little sweetener wouldn’t have been superfluous but it also wasn’t required. I even got refills.

I could go all Polly Anna and say that this was a wonderful experience, an unexpected expansion of horizons and an unexpected yet simple joy. There’s an element of that, but in truth I just feel a little more like an adult again.

Finding out I was diabetic cut a lot of things out of my diet that I’d considered intrinsic to my happiness: unrestricted quantities of Oreos, french fries and most importantly sweet, sweet soft drinks. I’d resigned myself to a life as a caffeine addict, taking equal pleasure in soda and tea. I’d drink hot tea without adulteration, but cold tea came with enough sugar in it to stand up a spoon or it wasn’t worth the effort.

And now, it’s not. I have an additional choice when I go out. I have a sippable caffine source again. I’m a little more me.

And any day I can say that is a good one.

Moderation is one of the big principles upon which I manage my diabetes. Sometimes, though, I feel the need to be moderate about moderation and hit the buffet. The plethora of choices and the lure of unlimited quantities is many times the cure for me having no idea what I want for dinner and being completely unable to muster the desire to cook.

Most commercial buffets are not built for diabetics. What’s true for most convenience foods is doubly true for buffets: it’s made to be cheap and tasty, which usually means high sugar and lots of fats. I think that doesn’t preclude a diabetic like myself from going to one, it just means being careful with your choices.

The first thing I like to do at a buffet is get the “lay of the land”. I walk around the steam trays and check out what they have available that day. I look for vegetables, preferably without sauces and what unadulterated proteins they have. Once I know, then I go to the salad bar. (If you want to know what I think about salads, go check out my earlier post on the subject.)

Once I’m going to the steam trays, I like to get samples of thing. The trick to not overdoing it at a buffet is to go for variety, not having too much of any one thing. That way, you get the variety and still feel satisfied. If I do a second trip to the buffet, then I only get a little of the things I liked most.

I still go to the dessert bar, though I try just to get a cookie or some Jello, maybe with a smidge of topping. I try to keep in mind what I’ve had and not overdo my carbs. I also try to eat slowly, so I have time to feel the effects of the food, my body letting me know when it has had what it needs.

I don’t pretend to be a nutritionist or a food guru, but I think there’s a way to approach most culinary experiences with diabetes the same as without. The occasional buffet, be it American classics or Chinese lunch or what have you can be a good, healthy event. I just try to approach it informed and aware.

And hungry. Oh yes, very hungry.

NOTE: I’m out of town for the next week, so I won’t be posting to my blog. The next  exciting update to Sugar Turned On Me will be on Wednesday, Sept. 3rd.

Experience, they say, is what you get when you don’t get what you want. While I don’t claim to be an expert on living as a diabetic, just someone who is learning as he goes along, there are one or two things I’ve noticed. Here are five of them:

1.  A slice of bread is a unit of measurement - When I looked in my little book that came with my monitor about living with diabetes, it pointed out that a slice of bread is usually around 10-15g of carbs. My target number is 45-60 for most meals, so that means I can have three slices of bread. I started seeing other foods as bread equivalent. When I look at a bag of chips that reads 30 carbs, in my head I immediately translate that as two slices of bread.
2. Most restaurant meals are really two meals - Quantity equals prosperity in the American mindset. As a result, restaurants try to make sure they provide generous helpings to make it look like you’re getting a lot of value. The problem is that most places up the things that have the most sugar, usually your drink and potato based side. This is especially apparent if you go to a fast food place and ask for another side besides fries. It usually confuses the cashier and the first time I tried it, I got fries given to me anyway.
3. Having a stash is not just for compulsive eaters - If you have dietary restrictions, it’s never a bad idea to keep a stash of food with you. It doesn’t have to be huge, but just enough to get you through if you end up hungry and there’s no good spots to acquire  lo/no sugar food. I personally keep stevia packets on me.
4. Nobody expect you to order anything besides Coke - Vending machines are prejudiced. Water or syrup, that’s your choice.
5. Sugar is everywhere - Ketchup. Hot dog buns. Hot dogs. Spaghetti sauce. Added to juice. Used to pack fruit. Some brands of toothpaste. Avoiding added, unnecessary sugar is a little like trying to avoid sunlight in the desert.

Anything interesting you’ve learned by being diabetic? Comment below.

See you next week