4. Giving Up the Guilt

You are not a bad person because you developed diabetes. It is not your fault. You are not “bad” because you didn’t exercise today or because you ate more than you intended last night. Nobody can manage diabetes perfectly. Guilt is common when you are living with diabetes, and it is hardly ever useful.

Because of guilt, people often establish tough, sometimes impossible rules about how to manage diabetes (”I must NEVER eat even a bite of junk food ever again.”) Since you can never be perfect, rules like these can make you feel like you are failing and can promote depression. Enough already!

• Remember that you didn’t give yourself diabetes. As people around the world grow heavier and heavier, it almost seems like everyone is trying hard to develop type 2 diabetes. Yet most “fail” to do so. Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are contributors to type 2 diabetes, but if you don’t have the genes for it, you can’t develop it. For type 1 diabetes, your own actions played no role at all. It wasn’t all those sweets you ate as a child, or anything else you did.

• With your doctor’s help, make sure your diabetes expectations are achievable. Stop beating yourself up when you eat more than you planned, forget to exercise or skip a blood glucose test. You don’t have to be perfect to reach the level of control that can keep you healthy. Develop a reasonable behavioral plan that can help you achieve those goals, then relax!

• Get perspective. Instead of criticizing yourself for the occasional lapse, give yourself credit for all of your positive efforts to manage diabetes. Everyone needs a pat on the back, and you probably deserve one.

Go Dr. P! These are the words that everyone with diabetes needs to hear. We waste so much of our lives feeling guilty about so many things, and having diabetes can be a big contributor to those guilty feelings.

When I was first diagnosed with gestational diabetes I felt soooo guilty. I was sure that gestational diabetes was my “punishment” for having an unhealthy lifestyle. One of the very first things the diabetes nurse said to me was “it is not your fault.” A huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders with those 5 words. Instead of wasting energy on my guilt, I was able to move forward and put that energy into eating well and exercising often.

I also find that guilt is often a mask for underlying emotions. Try changing the word “guilty” to a feeling word instead, like angry, sad, scared, or anxious. I once wrote a list of all the things I felt guilty about (it was a pretty long list!) I then forced myself to change the word guilty in every sentence to another feeling word. It was a real eye-opener as to what my true feelings were - and how I was trying to hide them under the guise of guilt. Peeling away the layers helped me to learn a lot more about myself.

It’s hard to believe, but Wednesday June 20, 2007 marks my first anniversary of blogging.

To celebrate the 90 some-odd posts on my life (in general and specific), my family, my friends, my diabetes, my obsession with food and all things tasty, and my overall conviction to have some laughs while still upright, I’d like to invite you all, dear readers, to post some comments.

I know, I know, you don’t really want to post anything because you’re enjoying your anonymity while being a voyeur into my life. But what about if I promise you a chance for some nifty prizes? Or at least an opportunity to be read by tens of people (who can resist that?) Or you could see it as a chance to use up that vast resource of puns you have at your ready disposal. Or just an avenue for congratulating me on sticking to something for a whole year (did I mention I get bored easily?)

The reasons are countless and my gratitude would be fathomless. So please, take a moment to post a nifty little comment. I so want to hear from you.

I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Because my chocolate consumption is limited due to the carb factor, I often resort to eating the no sugar added (nsa) chocolate. Unfortunately, the nsa chocolate is sweetened with maltitol. Maltitol is a sugar alcohol (polyol) and it doesn’t like me, nor does it like my guts.

Maltitol-sweetened foods (usually nsa candies and chocolate) do come with a warning that they make cause a laxative effect (or gastric distress, bloating, etc.) if consumed in large quantities. For me, the quantity does not have to be large and in fact, I can suffer after eating quite a small amount of maltitol on an empty stomach.

Without going into the gory details, let’s just say it’s not pretty (definitely not something to share on a first date).

I’ve tried all the major chocolate retailers and producers including Purdy’s, Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, Roger’s, Rocky Mountain Chocolate, Hershey’s, Cadbury, Daniel, and Bernard Callebaut. Every one of them uses maltitol as their sweetener of choice. Apparently, this is due to the fact that maltitol is fairly cheap, it acts similarly to sugar (except for the browning effect), and has been used as the “diabetic” sweetener of choice for years.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is adversely affected by maltitol and would appreciate having some choices of sweetener in my nsa chocolates and candies. I would love to see one of the major chocolate producers take the lead here and produce and market an alternatively-sweetened chocolate. I’ll be first in line to buy it.

Ah, the good old days … when we could go out as a family and order two adult meals and two kids’ meals. No longer. A kid’s meal just won’t do for my older daughter anymore.

Now, her meals are more expensive than mine.

It reminds me of when, as a kid, we’d go out for dinner for my dad’s birthday. We’d always go to the “fanciest” place in town. And that’s where I would always order the most expensive meal in town - the steak and lobster. My parents would always try to talk me out of it, but I would stick to my guns because that’s what I really wanted to eat.

I guess what goes around comes around.

I got some disturbing news the other day.

I’m an inch shorter than I thought I am. I won’t tell you what that magic number is, but let’s just say I don’t have a lot of excess height to play with.

That makes my BMI today 25.3 (officially overweight) as opposed to yesterday (when I thought I was taller) and my BMI was 24.5 (officially a normal weight).

Makes me want to go eat a donut.

Never eat more than you can lift.

- Miss Piggy

You know why fish are so thin? They eat fish.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I know I’m supposed to eat more fish but sometimes I just can’t do it. That piece of salmon stares up at me from the plate but I just don’t feel like eating it. What is it? Is it the bones, or the texture or the oiliness? I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s because fish just goes so well with rice, and rice really isn’t in the edible radar for me these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I do sometimes eat restaurant sushi, but for me, home-cooked fish means big bowls of rice, salty pickles and green tea. Somehow, removing the rice from the equation means I’d just rather not eat fish at all.

So I think I’ll just have a sandwich. Tuna, anyone?

This past weekend my family and I were “tourists in our own town.”

It has become our annual ritual - we stay at a downtown hotel and do all the tourist-y stuff we wouldn’t do otherwise.

This year we took a horse-drawn carriage tour, went to the art gallery, shopped, swam, and ate a ton of food.

I confided in my husband that what I’d really like to do one day is to map out a tour of eating at all our best local restaurants. There are so many places I’ve heard about but have yet to try.

It would end up costing as much as a “real” trip but would be so much more tasty and convenient!

I keep harping on the fact that I’m high maintenance, but the truth is, I’m pretty darn expensive too.

For instance, I’ll pass on the mashed potatoes, but have a lobster tail with my dinner instead.

I had a girlfriend at university who said that if she wasn’t sure what to have when she went out to a restaurant, she’d just pick the most expensive thing on the menu.

It works for me.

I recently went with a friend to Rangoli in Vancouver.

Ever since, I swear I have been fantasizing about the incredible meal I ate there.

It was this unbelievably rich and delicious curry - portobello mushrooms, sweet red peppers and paneer (the Indian cheese).

Heaven on a plate.