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Honey Syphon: As a diabetic I have become obsessed with food. I have had to. I can no longer just eat what I feel like, when I feel like it; I have to be aware of everything that goes into my mouth (no sniggering at the back, please!) and the effect it might have on my body. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I am very overweight. Leaving aside the general health reasons why being obese isn't a good idea (risk of heart attack, stroke, shortness of breath, inability to do stuff), if I lose weight my diabetes will be easier to control. What small amount of insulin my body is still managing to produce will be more effective, and I may be able to reduce the dosage of my medication or even stop taking it altogether, controlling the diabetes with diet alone. The other reason is that every mouthful I eat affects my blood sugar level, so I have to make sure that the food I eat - what, how much, and how often - doesn't send my blood sugar too high. When I was first diagnosed, my doctor gave me just one instruction: no sugar. So I immediately went into mourning for all my favorite things - chocolate, golden syrup, gooey cakes, jammy donuts, sweets and candies, most of the things (aside from sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll) that make life pleasurable. I bought a couple of diabetic cookbooks and looked at the recipes, and felt more and more miserable as I read all the joyless, cheerless, boring things that were considered suitable for diabetics, and the complex methods used to keep track of just what was going into my system. The last straw was a book which listed all the things I was not allowed to eat, and then finished up - in all seriousness - by saying "The good news is, you can eat as much lettuce as you like." I threw the book at the wall. Visiting the Nutritionist I made an appointment with the nutritionist at my local diabetic clinic, and fully expected to meet a health fascist who would tell me that I could never have anything I liked, ever again - with no sympathy as to why a diet of lettuce didn't fill me with enthusiasm. The good news turned out to be not the unlimited lettuce, but that things weren't nearly so bad as I was expecting. My nutritionist was friendly and sympathetic, and I discovered that a lot of the things I had been reading were out of date. Nutrition theory in the UK had recently undergone a change of direction and had rooted itself in the real world. Someone sensible realised that there is no point having rules and restrictions that people cannot live with; that just makes it certain they will fail, which is no use to anyone. Complex ways of dividing food into groups and calculating values for various things were also junked as being unworkable by the ordinary person. So now the aim is to find a regime that suits the individual, and that they can live with on an ongoing basis. It turns out that a sensible, healthy diet for diabetics is more or less the same as a sensible, healthy diet for anyone. But before I talk about what that actually means in terms of what I'm allowed to eat, a bit of theory. Here comes the science bit! What Happens to Food Everything that you eat is converted into glucose which is transferred to the blood stream, then carried around the body to the cells where it's needed. What isn't needed by the cells gets converted to body fat and saved for a rainy day. Some foods convert into more glucose than others, and some convert faster than others. For instance, starchy carbohydrate foods like potatos, rice and pasta convert to glucose slowly. Sugar (which is also a form of carbohydrate) converts fast. That's why eating something sugary like chocolate or drinking a glucose drink gives you an immediate sugar high, boosting your energy in the fastest possible way. Fibre is the slowest of all in converting to glucose, in fact it's so slow that the body tends to eliminate the bulk before it's been converted. That's why it's good for the bowels. The trick for a diabetic is to make sure that what we eat does not get converted to glucose so fast that it sends the blood sugar level high. The Implications So in practice, that means balanced meals containing fibre and starchy stuff; portions shouldn't be too large; and meals should be at fairly regular times. Three good meals a day, rather than one huge meal or the other extreme of constant grazing and picking. Add in the need to lose weight and more general health concerns, and I also have to reduce my fat intake and eat lots of fruit and vegetables. To my surprise, I don't have to count calories, or fat units, or exchange units, or use any other method to calculate what I am eating. The nutritionist asked me what I generally ate, gave me suggestions for alternatives which are healthier, an idea of sensible portion sizes, and left it at that. I am happy to report that this works far better than all the really strict diets I have tried in the past. The really good news is that I can eat chocolate! A small amount of sugary stuff is OK, in moderation. One chocolate after a meal is fine - pigging out on a whole box of chocolates is not. |
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