Tis the Season

It's cold. It's dark. There is food everywhere, and most of it is full of flour and sugar.

If you are sticking to your diabetes diet, whatever it might be, good for you. If you aren't, well join the crowd.

I've done it both ways. I spent a couple holiday seasons keeping my carbs where they needed to be to keep my blood sugar in a reasonable range. No stuffing. No potatoes. Lots of things made with Splenda and protein powder that looked like the foods they were supposed to replace but tasted like Splenda and protein powder.

But holiday food is a big deal in our family, and invariably after passing on all the traditional foods that had been part of my holidays for the past fifty-some years, I'd end up in tears. Not a happy holiday.

I've done it the other way, too: Declared that food has no carbs on Thanksgiving and Christmas and proceeded to eat accordingly. Back in the days when my doctor wouldn't give me a prescription for insulin, eating like that was a good way to remind myself why it was that I didn't eat carbs. My blood sugars would hover near 300, I'd end up feeling like poison was flowing through my veins and awake with a massive carb hangover and rampant hunger the next day as I fought to get back on track.

At this point you might be thinking? Well, what about moderation? Why not just eat a little bit of carbs? Well, if you can do it, hurrah for you. I can't do it on the big family food holidays.

Now that I use insulin, I can eat the traditional family foods if I use my insulin pen like a pump and inject more insulin every time I eat something with carbs in it. That flattens out the blood sugars very well, so my toes, eyes and kidneys thank me, but boy does it pack on the pounds. Insulin plus carbs and fat is the recipe for weight gain, and even though the blood sugars might be under control, once you start playing "my pen is a pump" it's tough to shut off the overindulgence.

When my blood sugar log isn't full of scary numbers, it's hard to stop eating crap not only on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day but on all the days in between. Since it takes me about a week to gain a pound and a month or more of fasting and repentance (a.k.a. weight loss dieting) to lose that same pound, this is not an ideal solution, either.

So when people ask me what the best way is to handle holiday eating, my answer is, "Beats me!"

But that's largely because I know that holiday eating is one of those areas where the individual differences in our personalities really come to the fore and where there is no "one size fits all" solution, even if we share the same blood sugar issues.

The best way to decide what holiday food approach would be best for you is to take an honest look at your history with food and what you have learned in the past about what it is that you can and cannot handle.

If you have shown in the past that you can take a day or two off of your diet and get back on track, that opens up some possibilities that should not be on the table if you have a history of months-long binges that have erased other months of very hard work.

The trick here is to face facts and not to tell yourself that this year it will be different. It won't. If you binged in the past, you will binge this time too. That is why it is so important to know your own limits.

I know I can diet in January, and in April or September if I have to. Just not in November and December. I knew in the past, before I had insulin, that I could eat a high carb meal and get back on track the next day even though I also knew I would be very hungry. That gave me some options that would not be there for a person who had problems with binging.

Beyond that, I have always had one hard and fast rule: If I go off plan I measure my blood sugar one hour and two hours later.

There is nothing like seeing alarming numbers on your meter to help you get back on track. . That is the main reason that testing is so helpful to anyone who has learned that there is a connection between the amount of carbohydrate they eat and their resulting blood sugar numbers.

And if seeing high numbers for more than a meal here and there doesn't get you back on track and you are spiking over 200 mg/dl meal over meal, it is time for some tough love. If you can't stop eating the high carb stuff that you can't handle, do a Google Search on the words "Diabetic foot."

Then click on the "images" link at the top of the page. What you see there should motivate you to get back in control. Because if you eat like every day is Christmas, what you see in those harrowing pictures is what you will end up with in your stocking.

CODA: If you are seeing numbers over 200 mg/dl meal after meal and it isn't because you are eating a succession of high carb meals, it is time to insist that your doctor help you find a safe drug regimen that will get you back into control--preferably one that uses fast acting insulin--or send you to a specialist who will help you. Most people with Type 2 diabetes caused primarily by insulin resistance can recover very good control by cutting out the carbs. If you are still seeing very high blood sugars after eating lower carb meals, the chances are you are insulin deficient.