Tag: birthday

Cooking, For Diabetics, For Family & Friends, Type 1 Diabetes, Uncategorized

Birthday & Celebration Foods: Part 2 of 3

acolemacx

Megan here with some great ideas for birthday and celebration food ideas.

Last time, I wrote about the questions I ask myself before participating in celebration activities. If you missed it, check out that post here.

This post is specifically centered around the food itself and how to celebrate without falling off the diabetes diet wagon. (Which, consequently, is a terrible wagon where at least one functional part doesn’t work, but I digress.)

So, some great ideas for diabetes friendly celebration sweets:

kraft foods watermelon cake
Excellent picture of the festive, watermelon cake idea! Thank you to Kraft Heinz Foods for posting this gorgeous photo! 
  • Watermelon with sugar free cool whip and berries, which can be arranged to look like a cake if you’re feeling especially festive (see picture above and here for the article and image credits!).
  • Strawberry shortcake with Bisquick biscuits (don’t add sugar!) and Splenda instead of sugar for the strawberries. Serve with no-sugar added vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt.
  • Chocolate pudding pie made with sugar free pudding and sugar free Cool Whip. You can swap sugar for Splenda or sweetener on the graham cracker crust. Use a pre-made pie crust if you like, just pay attention to the sugars/carbs in there!
  • Sugar free chocolate syrup with strawberries and pretzels for dipping (salty AND sweet!)
  • Frozen yogurt with berries and roasted nuts.
  • Sugar free Jello in the flavor of your choice, with sugar free Cool Whip and crushed pretzels and/or fresh fruit on top.

If you’re like me and enjoy making some easy changes to available things, I recommend some of the following swaps in dessert ordering, making:

  • Fruit sauces on the side when ordering dessert out somewhere (these are usually PACKED with sugar and carbs). I also ask about the whipped cream and whether it’s from a can, Cool Whip, or something similar, or if it’s made in house.  Generally they have to check, but it’s worth the question.
  • Dark chocolate instead of Milk Chocolate, and I use semi-sweet chocolate chips in my cookies/brownies instead of milk chocolate.
  • Swap no-sugar added applesauce in for sugar/sweetener and/or oils in your recipes (see links for advice and details).
  • SHARE.  Sharing is caring folks! If you can share with a friend or family member (or even new person at your table who’s willing to get their own small plate for their portion), DO IT.  It will save you calories, carbs, and too many chances for serious overindulgence.
Autumn cupcake photos
My mom’s hard work at last year’s birthday celebration. Dark chocolate and peanut butter is my favorite!

So there again, just a few ideas for everyone and some suggestions for participating and staying on this pain-in-the-neck wagon.  For more great recipes and ideas, I recommend checking out this great post from the Martha Stewart website and from Taste of Home. Seriously-check these out. There’s over one hundred different recipes here!

I’d LOVE it if you’d like to share some of your recipes and suggestions here too-we can ALL, ALWAYS use ideas for making this life easier and just a little sweeter (sorry-couldn’t resist!). 

Love and Light,

 

Megan C.

 

 

 

For Diabetics, For Family & Friends, For Medical Professionals, Type 1 Diabetes, Uncategorized

Birthday & Celebration Foods: Part 1 of 3

acolemacx

Having recently celebrated a big birthday myself, as well as the birthdays of many people close to me and having recently attended several bridal events and a wedding, I feel qualified to say the food in our culture is vast and abundant.  While this is an exciting thing, it’s also a major challenge for those of us living with sub-par pancreases.

That said, there is no reason to fret! We just have to find ways to participate that aren’t damaging and make decisions about the types and amounts of risk or hurt we’re willing to take.

I recently had a great conversation about this with my soon-to-be-aunt, Melissa,  at a birthday celebration for my soon-to-be-grandmother-in-law (all those hyphens!). We were talking with Melissa’s mom (not the soon to be GMIL), who is a type 2 diabetic and does pretty well overall with managing her diet and medications.

Melissa had some great concerns and questions about how I decide what to do in special occasions where there are things like birthday cake.   Melissa, her mom, and I had a very honest conversation about the challenges surrounding food choices, and how important it is to be able to participate and “live” rather than just “survive”.

(Melissa also asked me when I was posting here again.  I’m thinking once a week, or an every other week schedule for posts moving forward.  Either way, thank you for the question and affirmation someone’s reading Melissa!)

So, how do we decide what’s important enough to risk the cake?

I ask myself a few questions as I’m making these decisions, and I like to think they are good ones:

  1. What’s the event?  
    1. Making it 7 days without cake is probably not a good reason to eat some.  That said, sometimes I just want cake. It’s about the balance factor for me really, and I try not to double down on desserts in a day or weekend if I can help it.  Generally, birthdays, weddings, retirement parties, etc. (you know, major life things), are celebratory times where I’ll strongly consider participating in dessert.
  2. What else did I eat today? 
    1. She who ate an ice cream cone 2 hours ago shall not eat birthday cake now, unless she A) WENT RUNNING OR GOT OTHER STRENUOUS EXERCISE or B) IT IS HER BIRTHDAY or C) SHE’S JUST DOING THE “WRONG” THING, DAMMIT.  In all seriousness though, I treat my days and weeks as a sliding scale. If I did a dessert earlier, there is a strong possibility of me not doing anything like that now without an A, B, or C factor at play.
  3. How do I feel now? How do I predict I’ll feel later?
    1. This question is a good one for checking in with the total picture of health. Am I overly full? Am I eating this because I want to, or because I feel a social obligation? What kind of dessert is this? What do I know about my reactions to this from previous experiences?  How bad will I regret this later, one way or another? Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is real, and diabetes is extremely good at providing FOMO, so I include that in my prediction questions?
  4. What is my blood sugar like right now?
    1. This one feels a little self explanatory, but it really does make a difference. I don’t like to eat some desserts when my blood sugar is low, for instance, because I know I’ll be inclined to over eat.   I generally don’t participate if my blood sugar is actually high (versus “just after dinner” high, which is in the 200s for me).
  5. Do I know what’s in this dessert? Are there options to lessen the damage? 
    1. SO IMPORTANT.  Ask the question, “What’s in this?”  You may be surprised.  This is important to know for bolusing/injections and answering many of the other questions here.  Also, if you’re like me and the people in your life know you’re diabetic, they may be doing swaps (Splenda instead of sugar, applesauce, etc.) to be helpful and that can seriously impact the carb-count.
  6. What are the social/emotional/mental factors here?
    1. Let’s be blunt: #diabetesisaprick and there are days where the dessert sounds good, or the guilt feels bad, for the wrong I try to check in with these factors to make sure I’m eating things I truly enjoy and doing it for the right reasons.  Binge-eating cake because we’ve had a bad day is NOT enjoying a social gathering with family to celebrate someone you love. It just isn’t. Sorry.

So, these are some baseline questions to use when making food choices.  But at the end of the day, I’ll share here what I shared with Melissa and her (absolutely wonderful and very-on-top-of things) mom.

“We do the best we can with what we have, because it is all we can do.” 

That’s it. There’s not another secret recipe or motto that has served me more in these situations, or in moments where I’m making self care decisions.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post, where I’ll share recipes and alternative food ideas for when we want to celebrate “on the wagon” instead of getting off and trying to get back on post-celebration.

Sending Love and Light,

 

Megan

 

P.S. Do you have something great you want to share with the online diabetes community? Have a story or idea you think could be helpful? Send them over! These communities work best when they are interactive communities, and there are people everywhere that can benefit from your story, whether you’re a diabetic, a care provider, a member of the medical community, or a family member or friend.  Send them to us at megan@thefriendlyneighborhooddiabetic.com (Justin can look at that one too!).

Depression, For Diabetics, For Family & Friends, For Medical Professionals, Type 1 Diabetes, Uncategorized

I’m Free! Start and End Dates Part 2.

acolemacx

I’M FREE.

Guys, it’s been two, TWO, whole days since my thirtieth birthday and I’m still here.

WE MADE IT!

I’m so excited to be starting this new chapter of my life; this chapter without a set end date. I’m free from those prognoses dates and I truly feel different as I go into my thirtieth year.

As part of my diabetes treatment plan, I work with a therapist who helps me keep my mental health in check so I can keep my physical health in check. I’m a firm believer that we have to care about our mental well being just like we have to care about our physical health.  There will be several posts about this in the near future.

When I walked in yesterday for my appointment, she said, “Hey! You don’t look dead to me. Congrats!” (She’s awesome and that sense of humor is one of the several things we have in common.)

She’s very right. I’m very much alive.

Riding that high, I took some time Thursday through today to really reflect on my life and how fortunate I am. I did some tough reflecting on how it all has gone and what I’m doing with the next many years of my life. I took a moment of silence and prayer for the people I lost along the way, as there have been several and each birthday and diabetes diagnosis anniversary reminds me that others weren’t so fortunate.

I don’t know what would have been easier. My future mother-in-law passed away in December from complications from Type 1 Diabetes. She was diagnosed in her early thirties after she’d had her two boys and had been living her life eating and doing what she wanted.  When she passed, her and I had had diabetes for about the same amount of time.  It’s hard for me to imagine being diagnosed as an adult and having to adjust an entire life around something that I didn’t know anything about until I had it. I know people do it, but in some ways, I do feel my situation was more fortunate.

That said, I don’t remember life before this disease, but I know from reflecting and living it and working through some of it with my therapist that growing up with it had its own challenges. I know that my physical development was impacted by diabetes and that my psychological and emotional development was hammered on by type 1 diabetes.

I know that by the time I was graduated high school, I had lost several close friends from the thing I was constantly being told would ultimately kill me. I remember waking up at age 9 after a very serious low blood sugar in the back of my parent’s mini van at an amusement park where I had crashed.  I know that I experienced survivor’s guilt for the first time when I was 11, and I’d experience it many more times in my life.  I remember being 14 on a school chorus field trip and we went to sing to the patients in the dialysis lab; I came back to my mom’s office after school and sobbed into her arms because I felt so afraid.  I know that at 29 I watched the man I love struggle with the loss of his mother from the same disease his future wife has.

I don’t mention all of these things in what is ultimately supposed to be an upbeat post because I’m garnering your sympathy. Instead, I list these things out to try to reflect on the things I lived through in this first thirty years of my life. I’m considering these experiences building blocks for whatever is coming. If you believe in the butterfly effect, I had to be a diabetic in order to live this life, and I had to have everyone of these losses and scares to be here now, writing to all of you.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; I’m so fortunate. My diabetes gave me a purpose and a platform and a complex and a lot of good things and a lot of not as great things.  My diabetes made me the person I am, and at thirty I’m really starting to like me.  When I talk about being grateful for this life, I truly don’t know how or why I was born this lucky. But I believe my diabetes, the people I’ve met, helped, known, loved, and the things I’ve experienced, are absolutely a part of the reason I’m here. On Earth, still existing despite being told how extremely unlikely it was that I wouldn’t.

I’m still finding my purpose, but I’m excited to live life without an end date.  I’m going to take this next year and rock it.

If you’re interested in sharing what you’re going to do with this next year, we’re all ears here. Send me an email, share a comment on the post, or message or post to us on Facebook. This life is most fun with all of us in it. 

With Love and Light,

-Megan C.