I am grateful the help you all have given me. Please keep in touch and help me get through this. For example, what do you all eat for breakfast? Please advise on this too. And snacks, what do you eat?
Please take care of yourselves.
Thank you for reaching out to us.
For first breakfast I have a whey protein shake
Second breakfast, 2-3 egg cheese omelette, 2 sausage patties and either a “light” Thomas’s english muffin (24 g carbs, 8 g fiber) or a half cup of steel cut oatmeal.
Some of my favorite snacks are nuts, cottage cheese, deli meat wrapped around cheese, pickles, olives.
I also like weird stuff like like sardines and mackeral, but please don’t tell people about that, they already question my taste.
breakfast is either a active light yogurt or a berry protien smoothie
snacks are either peanuts/almonds or beef jerky and the occasional herr’s spicy cheese puffs (for whatever reason i don’t get a bad spike w/ these) and occassional Reese’s PB cup (they also work for me maybe it’s PB)
LOL ! some of the foods mentioned I do like. Especially sardines and mackeral…LOL! I do love grits with canned salmon. Is this permissable? I actually can eat breakfast foods at any time of the day, it’s my fav.
I eat eggs for breakfast, usually scrambled with chilis, tomatoes and onions (called huevos mexicana) and a cappuchino. I don’t eat snacks at all, just three meals.
You ask if grits with canned salmon is “permissable” and I wanted to comment on that. It’s better not to think of foods as either permitted or forbidden for a couple reasons. Human nature is such that sometimes when we think of something as forbidden we tend to want it all the more and it also sets up something outside ourselves as the determinant of our behavior.
Secondly we are all different. When we have these descriptions of what we eat I will look at some people’s list and know that if I ate what they did my blood sugar would be through the roof; other times I feel like I eat a lot compared to their sparse menus. What is important is not to develop some inflexible list of "do’s and don’t eats"but to determine what works for you which may be entirely different than what works for the next diabetic. And the way to do that is test. Grits is probably fairly high carb as are other starches like potatoes, rice, bread, etc. But try it! Make yourself a serving of your grits and salmon and then test two hours after eating. We all have different target numbers. I aim to be under 140 post prandial (after meals). Some people want to stay under 120. It is also about portion. Some things I can successfully eat only a very small amount of. If I go out to my favorite good pizza place (I wouldn’t waste pizza carbs on chain restaurants!) I can eat 1 slice of thin crust pizza and a salad. Sometimes the amount of serving I can eat isn’t worth it (like 1/2 cup of pasta) because it isn’t enough for me. So experiment with things. Get a carb counting book or website (calorieking.com is good), measure or weigh a serving, then test to see how you do. I give a food (and amount) two chances before I determine I can’t eat it…ok, three if I really like the thing!
My Breakfast:
1 egg ( I like it fried…some though likes it boiled/poached)
1 Cinnamon toast (mix grain or whole wheat)
1 sausage patty (replaceable with slice of ham or 3 slices of bacon or 1 serving of turkey bacon
or
Omelet with left over chicken, mushroom, onions, bell pepper
or
Bran muffins with berries
or
whole wheat pita bread with 1 ounce lean ham and a flavored mustard. Pair it with fresh fruit and a small wedge of low fat cheese.
Snacks: nuts (almond and cashews are my favorite), baby carrots with light Ranch dressing, grahams with light peanut butter, 1 small apple, 1 cup nonfat fruit-flavored yogurt
Wish you the best =)
Oh, I forgot to say I eat one slice of good bread toasted with my breakfast. I keep low carb bread in the freezer and eat it occasionally but I love good bread, and I am able to eat the one slice without raising my blood sugar to high.
The whole grits thing can be kind of confusing. Instant grits, like instant oatmeal highly processed and is higher carb and whole form and tends to act more like a simple carb (just like instant oatmeal). Instant grits according to fitday.com has about 35g for a cup serving while regular grits (long cooking) is about 23g per cup. But interestingly, grits are made from hominy a form of corn that is treated with lime. I can pick up a can of Juanita’s brand hominy in the stores near me that is actually very low carb. It has 20g of carbs per cup, with 12g of fiber, for a whopping 8 net grams of carbs. Not too shabby.
Sadly, I have learned that Juanita's has been mislabeled all this time. Thanks to Judy Barnes Baker over at CarbWars for this. The Juanta's brand actually contains 38 grams of carbs per cup and 6g fiber, for a "whopping" 32 g of net carbs per cup. Thus hominy contains just as many carbs as instant or regular grits and my whole mexican hominy cheese low carb casserole turns out to be a carb fest. I revise my "not too shabby" evaluation.
My doctor thinks I should eat whatever I want and to adjust my insulin accordingly. So, for breakfast, I have Cheerios with fresh fruit and black coffee. If I want an ice cream for dessert, I have it.
For snacks, I also have nuts, cottage cheese, pickles, olives, pickled herring and smoked kippered herring (I also have what some folks say is weird taste)
Your doctor is giving the ADA party line which is you can eat whatever you want. To me this is just a catering to our self-indulgent natures and basically it has lots of flaws. I would love to eat cereal and fresh fruit for breakfast, but whenever I have my blood sugar is in the high 200s. If you get good post prandials when you eat this than you are lucky. But then, technically if we took enough insulin we could probably all eat everything. So why not? A few reasons: What Dr. Bernstein calls "the law of small numbers". The more insulin the more chances for big big mistakes leading to highs, lows or roller coasters. Second of all in the long run "eating whatever you want and taking insulin to cover it" can lead to two things that most of us want to avoid: Insulin Resistance and weight gain.
Cheerios + fruit does not raise my BG.Neither does Chinese food (I skip the rice), but sushi was a disaster. Everybody's body is different, I guess. Someday, I will get brave and try 4oz of orange or apple juice. I don't worry about weight gain---I am underweight.
i always have 30 grams of carbs for brekkie, which is for me one unit of insulin. i have an egg, a slice of pretty low carb toast, 2 biscuits, a full fat greek yogurt and some fruit and coffee with milk. its usually the biggest carb meal i have. for lots of people mornings are hardest control wise, but i really want the carbs in the morning.
snacks are squares of low carb dark chocolate, nuts, cheese, broth-no carb, wa-hey, proscuitto ham.
Unfortunately, you may find these things change as you come out of your honeymoon. Dumb question: This might have been discussed elsewhere but have you been tested to make sure you are not in fact Type 1?