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Things I know to be true:
- It’s February already.
- Melbourne seems to have misplaced its Summer.
- As much as I loved being in New York and had the best holiday ever, it’s always swell to come home.
- And having Melbourne coffee running through my veins is making me a happy chicken.
- Being at work is not the worst thing, especially when there is a year of really exciting things on the horizon.
- I am confused that my computer does not recognise the word Nutella and wants to correct it to Nigella. Which is equally awesome and sexy.
Also – the internet never disappoints.
Frocking brilliant
Sometimes it’s tough for a dame to find a place for her insulin pump. Bra? Good in theory, but what if you’re not wearing a bra? Or your bra is being uncooperative? Thigh strap? Again, great idea, but not great if the thigh strap comes loose and starts rolling down your leg and you end up in the Ministry of Silly Walks. Also, it can look like you are packing heat. Or you end up using ugly (although effective) Tubigrip. Pocket? Usually produces an unsightly bulge that may have people searching for a matching Adam’s apple.
What’s the solution?
Read here about some clever folk who have come up with a rather dashing frock with a secret little place to hide a pump.
And who doesn’t love a LBD? Can’t wait to get my hands on – and body into – one of them! Available soon – keep an eye out here.
Two spreads in one
There are many tough decisions in life. Lennon or McCartney? Coffee or tea? Jaffas or Malteasers? (Both, obviously.)
And the most difficult: peanut butter or Nutella? Can’t decide? Then have both! In domestic goddess mode on Sunday (full skirt, frilly apron, high heels and tiara) I made these.
And they are were good. And totally bolus worthy!
Here’s the recipe. (And here’s a tip. When freezing the Nutella before making the biscuits, do half on one baking sheet and half on another. Take out one baking sheet, make half the biscuits. THEN take our the second baking sheet and make the second half. Otherwise the Nutella starts to melt and ends up all messy and all over your fingers and you have to lick it off your fingers and then freeze more.)
Oh, and while we’re talking Nutella, let me introduce you to my happy place:
Support DA-Vic and enjoy the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (WIN WIN!!)
This year, Diabetes Australia – Vic (disclaimer: my place of employment, but I am writing about this because I want to, not because I was asked. Also it is about food. And wine. So there’s that too.) is the charity partner for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Some people may think that this is an odd partnership, but actually, the messages of both DA-Vic and MFWF are strongly aligned. It’s all about people taking an active role in managing their health – regardless of if they are living with diabetes or not. And having a good understanding of the food we choose to eat is part of this.
It’s also a great opportunity to raise awareness of diabetes, reaching people we may otherwise not reach.
Now, everyone knows that I am not really an exercise fan. However, I can definitely get on board this. It’s literally a moveable – well moving – feast where participants take a walk around the Tan, stopping at stations for a delicious five course brekkie. And better yet, 5 per cent of ticket/registration fees will be donated to DA-Vic.
Noteworthy connections
Many of you may not know that in a former life I was a classically-trained musician. That ship sailed a long time ago and I no longer play music. However, my husband is a musician and music is a huge part of my family’s life.
I have always been interested in the link between music and health. The Greek God, Apollo, was God of both healing and music, so the connection has been around for a long time!
Music has been used as therapy in a variety of medical conditions from Parkinson’s Disease to recovery from stroke. I am not going to say the healing powers of music can cure diabetes (although I’m pretty sure some fool will tell you that). But, music can be a stress reliever. And for me, reduced stress means less erratic BGLs.
There are also strong links between music having positive effects on mental health as discussed in this information sheet from ReachOut.
I love this so much
I’ve shared this blog before here, but this post from Annabel over at The Understudy Pancreas is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing. Full stop.
I can’t begin to imagine what parenting a child with diabetes would be like, but Annie does such a wonderful job of explaining how her family do it.
The thing that I probably admire most is how Annie never, ever makes her daughter’s (Pumplette) diabetes about herself. She supports her daughter in the best ways possible, encouraging her independence, and being there for her – with what Pumplette needs. Great parenting advice all ‘round, really.
I wish I could reach into my computer and give you a huge hug, Annie. Your darling girl is so great.
Radio Deluxe
When we were in New York, we spent a very pleasant evening at Birdland listening to John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey perform. It was a gorgeous gig, made even more wonderful when they dedicated a song to the ‘family from Australia’.
Each week, John and Jessica have a syndicated radio show (they claim it is ‘live from high above Lexington Avenue in the Deluxe Living Room’, and while I suspect it is actually recorded in a studio, I like to think of them in their living room at home, gazing out over the New York skyline, casually chatting into a couple of vintage microphones) and it is an absolute treat to listen to.
Check it out here. It makes a great soundtrack to the workday!
What do ‘patients’ really think? (Maybe stop using the word ‘patient’ to begin with…..)
British medical journal The BMJ has started a fascinating new series called Do you know what your patient is thinking? This is part of their patient partnership strategy and will hopefully help HCPs better understand all aspects of life with a chronic health condition – not just what …..
The first in the series, Why there’s no point telling me to lose weight, can be read here. New submissions will be published monthly.
Living Vertical
Steve Richert has lived with diabetes for 17 years. A couple of years ago, Steve wanted to show that diabetes hasn’t stopped him from doing what he wants, so he and his wife, Stefanie, travelled across North America and climbed for 365 consecutive days. Just like with diabetes, there were no days off.
I absolutely love the catalyst for this project. This is what Steve writes on the Glu website:
‘In 2011, I had lived for almost 13 years with type 1 diabetes, and despite the normal ups and downs, seasoned with occasional close calls, it had never stopped me from being me. In fact, it made me who I was. When I was on a trip to visit friends, Stefanie and I drove past a billboard aimed at fundraising for diabetes research. It made my blood boil.
It was a smattering of grim statistics and stock imagery geared to promote the idea that life with diabetes was no life at all—that we are weak and helpless victims of this condition. Before this point it hadn’t ever occurred to me that the message of being empowered had any place in diabetes. I didn’t know anyone else with type 1 diabetes and I assumed everyone just came to terms with it as I did. Seeing this billboard made me aware for the first time of how we are portrayed—and how that can impact someone.’
A film has been made of Steve and Stefanie’s adventure. You can read about and watch Living Vertical: Project 365 here.
Save a child…..
Thinking about Valentine’s Day? Don’t forget to Spare a Rose, Save a Child.
No four words sum up this campaign better than this ‘Flowers die. Children shouldn’t’.
Please donate. Remember the equation: One rose = insulin for one month. Multiply as many times as you can.
That’s all for now, folks. Happy Tuesday.
I love food. Yesterday’s post which outlined all the eating we’ve been enjoying while in New York probably points to that. As would many other posts.
And it is the truth. I love food. I enjoy it. I celebrate it. I cook it. I read about it. I share it.
Food is a joy. When I think about different periods in my life, there is always a soundtrack of the music I was listening to, and the meals I’d cooked with love, or shared with family and friends.
There are meals that I have had that are still spoken about – years later. ‘Hey, remember that first meal we had at that gorgeous little place in Venice? I had incredibly gnocchetti with seafood?‘ I might say, to which Aaron would reply ‘Yes! And I had the four cheese gnocchi. God that was good. So good.’ That meal was consumed in 2001.
And our daughter recalls fondly the taste of the plums that would fall from the tree in the back garden of our old house, and how we would sit out there in summer and gorge on the fruit, the juice dripping down our chins.
This is the language of food.
So when I read this the other day in my Facebook feed, I was just shocked. I read it with complete and utter disbelief.
Why, why, why would anyone deliberately make food taste terrible, bland or boring?
There is nothing – NOTHING – in this piece of so-called advice that is useful. There is nothing that provides smart advice for how to eat healthfully or listen to your body for hunger cues. There is nothing that says food can be a part of life that is enjoyable, fun, non-threatening and delicious.
This advice makes food sound like it is something to be feared. It makes food sound like the enemy. But worse, it does not explain how food can be part of a healthy way of life. It does not talk about portion sizes, or balanced eating, or how to incorporate a little of everything into an eating plan.
It is restrictive. It is scary and it makes me feel so sad.
When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I had no idea what it would mean to my diet. Would I suddenly have a list of restricted or banned foods that I could never enjoy again? Would I need to completely change the way I ate? Would food become a source of stress rather joy?
I have learnt that the joy of food is not lessened at all because of diabetes. I still can eat whatever I want. And I do. My diet is healthy, balanced, full of fresh foods, fun, enjoyable and never, ever boring. And there is no such thing as a taboo food.
I am just so glad that the advice I have taken – as a person with diabetes, but even more so, as a person who loves food – is that there is no need to fear food. I am so glad that what I eat – and what my family eats – is based on what we like to eat, what we want to eat and what works for us. It may not work for you, but it works for us. (The kidlet could probably do without Brussels sprouts, but I am convinced that I will win her over on this one!)
This blog is NOT about advice. Nothing that I write should be considered as something to follow or as advice. So I am going to give you some. Don’t take the dietary advice of a celebrity personal trainer. If you need some help working out what to eat that makes you feel happy and content, see an accredited practising dietitian. If you have problems with your relationship with food, speak with your GP, and ask for a referral to a psychologist.
But whatever you do, enjoy what you eat. Life is too short to eat over-cooked chook.
By the way, here is an awesome way to cook Brussels sprouts: finely slice them, then sauté in a fry pan with a little olive oil and garlic. After about 1 minute (absolutely no longer), toss in some toasted pine nuts (or walnuts, almonds, whatever you have handy). To be fancy, add some bacon cut into thin strips. (To be EXTRA fancy, make it candied bacon by crisping up the bacon in a little maple syrup first.)
Breakfast in bed.
Food is one of the most wonderful things in my life. I’ve always felt this way. Julia Child once said ‘People who love to eat are always the best people’, and I think there may be some truth to that! Food is an integral – and central – part of my and my family’s life.
So when we’re away, what and where we eat is of great significance. Before I travel anywhere, I have a list of cafes, restaurants, food trucks, delis etc. to visit. Our days are often planned around where we’ll be eating. (Just the other morning, for example, we started with a visit to a favourite haunt when visiting NYC and the spent the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon wandering around SoHo, stopping in little boutiques and visiting guitar stores before heading back to our neighbourhood late in the day.)
What is different when we travel is that the balanced, home-cooked meals that are the norm at home are replaced with a far more ad hoc, mixed up meal schedule. This doesn’t mean that nutritious food is ignored completely. It’s just that I’m more open to starting the day with doughnuts. In bed.
And that’s just the beginning….
We’ve recharged our batteries with a snack on the run, downing hot dogs from street vendors. (I do keep thinking that I should prepare myself for some sort of horrendous food poisoning, but it’s not happened. Yet.)
You’ll have to take my word for it; it was delicious!
We’ve whiled aways hours and hours on the rooftop of Eataly with friends sharing antipasto platters, the most amazing porcini fritters, and salumi plates while drinking beer brewed on that very rooftop.
Also at Eataly, we’ve munched pastries slathered with Nutella accompanied by steaming Italian espresso to kick off the day.
We’ve eaten pancakes in diners, hamburgers at burger joints, waffles for breakfast and bagels from…well…anywhere.
And soup – warming, sustaining and full of vegetables and restorative chicken broth – has satisfied my ‘mummy moments’ where I’ve thought we needed a hit of something a little healthy.
We’ve taken shelter from cold, wind, rain and snow in coffee shops, hugging bowls of coffee and hot chocolate to warm our frozen fingers.
We’ve eaten at all hours, walking to Shake Shack for dinner one night just before 11pm, or sneaking into a bar after seeing a Broadway show at nearly midnight for fries with our drinks.
Walking out of MoMA yesterday, we made a beeline to the bright red food truck across the road. Ordering lobster rolls for the three of us, I said to the vendor ‘I’m not even hungry – I just love lobster rolls!’
Anytime we’ve been near 23rd Street, we’ve detoured to Doughnut Plant.
Melbourne latte in Midtown.
We located coffee shops run by Melbourne people and sat in the window drinking lattes tasting like they were made by the barista at our local in Brunswick and munching on perfect ANZAC cookies.
Mimosas are the drink of choice at brunch. So there have been mimosas. With brunch.
We ate zipolli at an Italian restaurant on Mulberry Street after being sent there by Rudy’s from Rudy’s Guitars in SoHo after I told him how sorry I was to have missed my mum’s zipolli this Christmas.
And I have poured Half and Half over and in everything and anything that I could!
Changes in diet always pose challenges when it comes to insulin dosing. Just being somewhere different often means that different ingredients are used for dishes that I am pretty good at guesstimating insulin doses for when home. And it also often plays out that the food we’re eating is more carb heavy than usual.
However, despite the oft-carb-laden food, I’ve managed to work out insulin doses. I’ve worked out when to reduce basal doses if it looks like we are going to spend the day on the run, or increase them if the day is looking to be particularly cruise-y and spent indoors doing not much at all.
Quite often the extra carb intake is offset by the extra exercise. We walk a lot when we’re holidaying. New York is a walking city – even in the cold. The other evening, as the temperature sat near freezing, I walked over 40 blocks from where I’d spent the afternoon catching up with my beautiful DOC friend, Alecia, back to our apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. I didn’t do it because I thought I should walk off the food. I just did it because I like walking around here. Plus I was looking for a new pair of boots.
I would be lying if I told you that there have not been some mishaps. Like the night I over-bolused for my burger and had a horrid hypo that saw me wandering into our daughter’s room before Aaron led me back to bed, pouring orange juice down my throat, following it up with toast and jam.
But for the most part, I’ve simply eaten whatever and dealt with it accordingly.
Have I eaten healthfully the whole time? Hell no!
Have I enjoyed food and eating and sharing meals with friends and family? Yes. Absolutely.
Have I felt guilty for any of my food choices? Not. One. Bit.
‘Do you want basal with that pizza?’ We were in Little Italy at a restaurant we’d been sent to by the owner of a local guitar store.
I stared blankly at the waiter. What was he asking me? Of course I’ll need basal with that pizza – it’s freaking pizza. And I’ll need a shed-load of dual wave bolus too. Why were we even having this conversation?
‘Basil’ my husband whispered to me.
‘Oh, BASIL! Basil! Yes. Yes please.’
In Barnes and Noble the other day, loitering in the kids’ section with the kidlet, I saw this book:
The other night, wandering around a holiday market, we warmed our freezing fingers in a chocolate shop and I saw these – the perfect antidote to a syringe of insulin!
As we made our way to a guitar shop in the East Village, we walked by this diner – surely the perfect place to treat a low.
Just a couple of blocks from our apartment is this sculpture. And even though I know it’s not about diabetes, it is to me.
And every time I look up, I see skyscrapers that are shiny and edgy and beautiful. And they remind me of sharp, pointy needles.
Diabetes – if you look, you can find it everywhere…
I was more than a little honoured to see that three Diabetogenic posts from last year had been voted Best of the Betes Blogs. Thanks to Sara from Moments of Wonderful for running this – and acknowledging diabetes blogs and bloggers. And thanks to those who voted for me.
There is much about me that is odd. And much of this oddness can be explained by knowing that I am an Australian-born-and-bred-Italian.
It has taken me some time to understand this, possibly because I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to deny my ‘Italian-ness’, or at least minimise it. Take one look at me, remember that my name is Renza and see me around a plate of spaghetti and you will understand how futile this was.
I am so Italian that there is espresso running through my veins. I talk with my hands and get ridiculously passionate when talking about food. My dream car is a vintage FIAT 500 and I own a Vespa. The ‘Italian-ness’ is somewhat overwhelming.
Italians have a weird way of dealing with physical illness. Actually, before this descends into some sort of cultural stereotyping, I should say the Italians I’ve been around have a weird way of dealing with physical illness.
Often, it is worn as a badge of honour. A conversation between two of ‘my people’ may sound like this:
‘Oh, you have a cold? I have pneumonia.’
‘Oh, you have pneumonia? I have pleurisy and bacterial pneumonia.’
‘Oh, you have pleurisy and bacterial pneumonia? I have Ebola. I am practically dead. Get me a hearse.’
You get the picture.
I grew up spending a lot of time with my extended family. My cousins were like close friends. I saw my grandparents pretty much every single week and aunts and uncles were a very present part of my life. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was incredibly lucky to have been exposed to this. I took it for granted – actually, I thought that everyone had this sort of connection with their extended familia.
No one in my family has really had any significant health conditions. Well, my mother has lived with lupus for a long time, but her approach to having a chronic health condition is the same as mine – acknowledge it’s a shit and get on with life. She’s been a spectacular role model, really. But apart from mum and me, the rest of us are relatively unscathed by nasty health conditions.
My grandparents who always seemed old to me – even though they would have been quite young when I was little – were pretty healthy. It really wasn’t until they were elderly – and getting towards the end of their lives – that they were unwell.
But despite this, there was always talk about being sick, because they traded in the currency of illness. They constantly spoke about how unwell people were, and the closer the person to them, the higher the value. They could – and would – trade on close family members being sick. So when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I became a pretty valuable commodity!
‘Oh, your niece has asthma. That’s terrible. My grand-daughter has diabetes – the one where she has to stick needles into her skin. I win. Pass me the grappa.’
I have always been uncomfortable with using illness as a way to get one up on someone, or to use it as an excuse. Equally, I hated the constant talk of people being unwell or in hospital. One night, not long after I was diagnosed, I was at my grandparents’ sitting around a table laden with food, having our weekly family dinner. We were good naturedly laughing at each other and commenting on how much one of my cousins eats. And poking fun of my aunt’s driving abilities. And my sister and I were yelling at anyone making sexists comments.
Typically, the talk eventually turned to a distant cousin/the butcher/next door neighbour/family member in the old country who was unwell.
I’d had enough. I put down my cutlery.
‘I’ve had enough!’ I said (probably waving my hands around). ‘Until I hear of someone actually being close to death – as in actually dead, as announced by a qualified medical practitioner – enough of the sick talk. Enough! I have type 1 diabetes – I win! No one gets to be sicker than me unless they are actually a corpse. Got it?’
I suspect someone translated for my grandmother. Everyone else just looked at me like I was mad.
I reached over and grabbed another cotoletta and kept eating. The subject was changed. We went back to gently joking and laughing at each other – most likely, my sister, cousins and I were making fun of my dad for being short.
The sick talk was a lot less after that. I won. And yet, somehow, I really, really didn’t.
In Roma with my dream car.
I was standing at the counter of a beautiful patisserie. In front of me was a stylish French barista with his attractive French accent wearing his exquisite French clothes. He was trying to upsell me pastries to go with the coffees I’d just ordered.
‘Try the tarte tatin. Or the pain au chocolat. And the éclairs are especially good today.’ His voice sounded a little muffled as if coming through an antique speaker.
I agreed to a couple flaky pastries, one with jewel-like berries, another with apricot jam.
I was about to walk away when he said – ‘this is for you’ and in my hand he placed a log of nougat.
I looked at it and broke a piece off, biting into the soft, gooey, chewy confection. It was sweet. So sweet.
I sat down at a nearby table, waiting for the pastries and coffees to arrive. They were placed in front of us and all I could focus on was eating and tasting the delicious pastry. The jam oozed from one and I scooped it up, licking it from my finger. I greedily picked a strawberry from the other, exposing the frangipane underneath.
I pulled my coffee towards me and added a couple of sugars. Then a couple more. And a couple more. I stirred. And I stirred and I stirred the sugar into the bowl of milky coffee. More sugar. More stirring.
And then.
Then I woke up and realised with great clarity that I was low.
My hypo had infiltrated my dream. I was imagining a feast of carb-laden foods that would, of course, address the low blood sugar muddling my thoughts.
I sat up, adrenaline surging, realising just how low I was and grabbed the jar on my bedside table.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Mmm – just low. I was dreaming about French pasty.’
Diabetes has a way of twisting its way into my subconscious. On nights where my BGL is high and I need to get up overnight to pee, I wake suddenly, remembering dreams of water and pools and swimming in the ocean.
When I am low, I dream of gingerbread houses, fluffy marshmallow clouds and giant bowls of Skittles. Once, I dreamt that I was being chased by a huge jelly snake. Another time, the chair I was sitting on became a cupcake. I woke in the middle of one night confused and disoriented after dreaming I was in Enid Blyton’s Land of Goodies at the top of the Faraway Tree. (Obviously all that climbing had sent my BGLs plummeting!)
Alarms on my pump blend their way into dreams so that suddenly I hear doorbells ring, or metronomes ding. Once, my dream turned frightening – I was running (ha – as if!), running, running during an earthquake. The ‘shaking’ ground was actually my pump vibrating.
The other night, after I ate my jelly beans and felt the adrenaline rush subside, I lay back down and started to fall asleep, willing myself back to the patisserie. And thinking about how when it was morning, heading to a local French bakery for breakfast sounded like a perfect start to the day. It seems that I like to spend my time dreaming just how I like to spend my time awake. Food and coffee. Coffee and food.
Dear almost everyone I know, and many people I’ve not actually met,
Yes, I am aware of the possibility of the worldwide Nutella shortage. Thanks to about a million copies of various links from online publications having been emailed, text messaged, tweeted, Facebooked and snail-mailed to me, I am mindful that due to poor weather in Turkey, there is a hazelnut scarcity and, as a result, I may not be able to replenish my stocks of this life-saving treatment condiment.
Please note that I have made provisions to ensure that I am not disadvantaged during this most difficult period. There is still half a 5kg jar in our kitchen at home to be consumed. I may or may not have just cleared the local Woolies of their supply. And Coles. And IGA. And Mediterranean Wholesalers. And Lygon Street, Carlton.
I have also let myself into my parents’ house and pilfered their supply.
I have put into action a clear directive in my home that the current stockpile is to be used for medicinal purposes only and may not be consumed by anyone unless their BGL is below 3.5mmol/l (as confirmed by a finger-prick check, so none of this ‘I feel hypo’ crap that seems to come out of the mouths of those I live with when they feel like one of my jelly snake hypo stash).
I also have investigated alternative sources of nut-based chocolaty goodness in case I need to substitute the hazelnut delectability of Nutella with an alternative spread. I hope that it does not get to this stage, however I am willing to make sacrifices to ensure I continue to enjoy chocolate-nutty-yumminess on my sourdough.
I thank you all for your concern. This is a period of incredible distress for me, but I hope that with your support and the measures I’ve put in place, I will not have to do without.
Best wishes to you all,
Renza
Friday playlist. Rufus Wainwright (who I adore, but my favourite Wainwright is his dad….more from him in coming weeks).
The day after I was diagnosed with diabetes, I was sent to see a dietitian. It was over 16 years ago and yet I can still remember so much in such clear detail. ‘You need to eat this amount of carbs,’ she told me, throwing down a rubber food model of what was meant to represent mashed potato, but really looked like a fake vomit toy that you might find in a novelty show bag. ‘In a year?’ I asked her incredulously, calculating that there would have been the equivalent of at least four huge potatoes in the model. ‘No. Each meal.’ She said.
This was pre-DAFNE, pre-Lantus and, for me, pre-pump. But despite understanding that I was going to need to make some changes to the way that I was eating, I was also sensible enough to know that there was no way that I could eat that quantity of anything in one sitting.
‘Well, you have to!’ She said. As you can imagine, I really wasn’t enjoying where this consultation was going. ‘You’re taking insulin and you need to eat that much carbohydrate.’
‘Okay. Perhaps I could take less insulin then so I wouldn’t have to eat as much?’ I asked. She looked at me as though I was stupid.
After three years of living with diabetes – trying to manage force-feeding myself enough carbs to not hypo – I started using a pump. There were many reasons behind this and one of them was that I craved the spontaneity and flexibility that I seemed to have lost since being diagnosed. I was sick of having to eat what seemed the equivalent of a loaf of bread every time I sat down to eat. I was sick of having to eat snacks of carbs in between each meal of carbs. And I was sick of drinking corn-flour milk before bed to avoid a crashing hypo, or waking ridiculously high, which was pretty much all that Protophane could manage.
A week or so into using my pump, I remember feeling slightly weird. ‘What’s that feeling? I must be low.’ Nope – BGL check was fine. I couldn’t work out what it was.
And then I realised. It was hunger. I’d not felt hungry for three years because I had been eating to the clock. My body never had time to actually feel like I wanted or needed to eat.
Today, I eat as many or as few carbs as I want. There are days where barely a carb would pass my lips. And then there are days that end with a late night piece of cheesecake and Italian hot chocolate. I simply bolus (or don’t) as required for whatever I feel like eating.
Many people within the diabetes community are huge advocates for low carb eating believing that such diets provide more stable BGLs. I concur with that – the days that I eat sashimi for lunch and a low carb meal for dinner generally result in a level graph on my CGM with few spikes – and fewer dips too. But I am not committed enough to dedicate myself to a purely low carb existence.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t want to simply replace the inflexibility of needing to eat carbs with the inflexibility of never eating carbs. I love food too much to subscribe to any plan that does not allow me to eat whatever I want. Such as doughnuts! Nutella doughnuts need to feature whenever I feel like it. Buon appetite!
‘You do eat, don’t you mum?’ My nine year old had wrapped her arms around my waist this morning as I was fastening a clip in her hair. She squeezed tight.
I kissed her head and stepped back. She looked so concerned.
A couple of years ago, a friend of the kidlet’s had developed some disordered eating behaviours. Using age-appropriate explanations, we discussed what this meant for her friend, what we had to do when we were spending time with this friend and what was being done to help her friend ‘feel better.’ More broadly, I briefly explained that some people do have ongoing issues with how they think their body looks and tried to describe how this wasn’t necessarily about the food that they were eating, but had to do with their feelings and how they felt they looked. Trying to give the ‘eating disorders 101’ talk to a then-six-year-old possibly made my head explode with sadness.
This was a difficult conversation to have because I’ve always been concerned about how we discuss food and weight and body image. When I think about it, this was probably the first time that we’d ever had a discussion about food as being anything other than ‘Gee – that’s yum!’
The relationship between food and diabetes is mentioned occasionally – but again, usually because I’m low and need something to help get my BGL up.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve lost a bit of weight in recent times. This was not part of a weight-loss strategy. I wasn’t eating differently, or cooking different foods. I am a hobby baker and throughout this time, our bench top housed Tupperware containers full of cakes and cookies and slices. And I talk a lot about Nutella. Food is something that is celebrated in our house. Nothing is forbidden. We just eat a lot of fresh, healthy stuff with a decent splattering of (mostly home-cooked) treats.
We eat out regularly, but never at fast food restaurants. Our local café (a two minute walk away) is an extension of our kitchen; their coffee machine is our coffee machine!
But it seems that even though I’ve not discussed my weight loss with our daughter, she has noticed. Perhaps she hasn’t noticed that I look different, but, when she hugs me, I certainly feel different; when she wraps her arms around my waist, she knows that they go a lot further than they used to.
Should I be concerned at her concern? Does she equate weight loss with there being a problem? Is she worried that I have developed some of the eating problems her little friend had?
I dealt with this morning’s question by reminding her that we eat together at least one meal each day – more on weekends and holidays. I reminded her of the other night when we were toasting marshmallows by the fire as we watched a movie together. I pointed to a recent trip to the country where we ate pizza and shared doughnuts. We talked about the pasta dish I’d made the night before and how we sat at the dinner table eating it.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You just feel skinny when I hug you, that’s all.’ And then she changed the subject. I cringed at the word ‘skinny’ just as I would have if she’d used the word ‘fat’.
But perhaps I was making too much of it. Perhaps she was just stating a fact. Maybe using the word skinny was just an adjective that seemed appropriate, just as fat would have been in a different case. Maybe there was no judgement call attached. Maybe. Or maybe not.
It’s Autumn!
A perfect time to find a quiet place under a tree with a good book.
Cockatoos are everywhere, screeching noisily.
Angels hide around corners.
Trees stand tall, with leaves that are golden and red and glowingly magical.
You never know who (or what) you may find.
And bolus-worthy desserts are crowned with Persian fairy floss.
Diabetogenic 