I don’t know if my experience was just drastically different from others because I had other food issues and issues in general (severe food allergy and visual impairment) that made me “different” from everyone else. But I really don’t remember having an issue not eating cake or ice cream or whatever it was when I was younger. I had one time shortly after diagnosis where I complained bitterly about the fact that I couldn’t eat sugared cereal while my brothers could. One morning my mom got fed up and told me she didn’t care what I ate for breakfast. Of course I picked the cereal. At lunch that day I tested at 30.5 mmol/L. Teachers freaked out and called my mom, who freaked out and called my doctor… I don’t remember the ultimate outcome, but after that I just accepted that I couldn’t eat things with a lot of starch or sugar. But maybe that’s because I never remember being able to just eat what others ate, having lived with a severe food allergy since preschool.
Kudos to all the parents out there trying to do the right thing by their diabetic children. I’m an adult onset Type 1 and found it difficult enough to find best practice when I only had myself to control. My diet matches my goal of eating a variety of nutritious whole foods while keeping my blood sugar under reasonable control. I found this works best when I keep my carbs between 100-150g a day. When I was in dietary ketosis I became insulin resistant. A couple of days with 200g of carbs and my I:C ratio will require tweaking for more insulin. Again, resistance. But within this 100-150 zone I’m golden (A1c 5.9-6.1). I limit excursions but don’t beat myself up if I go off the map from time to time. My advice to anyone attempting to find their best WOE is to try different techniques, journal, evaluate your data, and be kind to yourself as it’s a process. Very few great scientists got it right without some trial and error.
As a kid on the exchange system, I remember hoarding and hiding candy. And my A1C definitely suffered when I went to college and learned to eat what I wanted and suffer the consequences (not quite as bad as some of the other posters above). But I had A1Cs in the 8-9s for years until more recently when I stopped to focus on it. It was “good enough” and let me not have to be so vigilant.
The other big impact of the diet as a kid was that I grew up with a paranoia about food. I have trouble sharing food as an adult because I still have that exchange mentality in my head. I remember in high school a classmate taking one of my lunch components and I panicked because I knew my day was planned around me eating that exact, full, lunch. So now, I always have snacks on me and do not pass them around the table the way other people may do, because I don’t know if I may need them later (even though I’m on the pump, have a CGM, plus access to money and vending machines).
These days, however, as an adult with a Dexcom, I’ve certainly figured out which foods are more problematic than others and have made decisions. Prior to going low carb and getting pregnant, my two foods that I wouldn’t give up was Friday pizza and ice cream. So, I did troubleshooting after troubleshooting until I figured out how to minimize the spike. I’ve long since forgotten the formula, so I’ll have to figure that out again if I choose to reintroduce those after the baby comes, but it involved pre-blousing, multiple staggered boluses, and a temp basal for a set amount of time. Still a lot of planning and sticking to a consistent amount of those foods, but it allowed me to enjoy the foods that I liked the most.
I saw this article and thought it might be relevant to this discussion. When I was a kid, my mom often made sugar-free treats I could eat in place of the sugary foods other kids got. As an adult, I have much fonder memories of those special, homemade treats than I do of any birthday cake or doughnuts I may have missed out on.
@Leelaa - So agreed that we don’t often have “sugar cereal” either (of which I am sure volumes could be written on many aspects but I think I know what you mean). I did get a box of a particular “sugar cereal” cause I believe in balance and sometimes it seems a good idea. Anyway point being, this morning we were coming off a rough previous night but the numbers finally came in range just before breakfast. (It was a loooong night.) A pre-bolus was done about 30 or 40 minutes before starting to eat. The peak of the breakfast high was only 164 which then dropped down and ended up leveling out around 105. For a breakfast like that, I was pretty impressed.
Are we going to eat this every day? No. But sometimes if we want - then we can pre-bolus for it. So this can fall into the category of what do we consider good nutrition rather than something we simply can not handle.
I like balance and I like choices.
Breakfast Pre-Bolus was at 8:04 AM
Don’t eat anything which I don’t like really. I just try for the foods which I like most. 