I suppose I celebrated too soon. On the bright side, after one week on the Voodoo Doll Diet, I didn't have a single elevated blood sugar reading. That meant NO INSULIN! And there was much rejoicing!
But I think it also meant that, in my head, I had myself convinced that I didn't *really* have gestational diabetes. You know, that I shouldn't be trying to drink an ultra-dense, uber-sugary drink that I would never drink INTENTIONALLY anyway just to spike my sugar levels, but if I ate "like a normal person," I would be fine.
I would be wrong.
Two days ago I was helping my husband set up his classroom before the onslaught of munchkins, set to invade this upcoming Tuesday. Channeling the powers of my librarian mother, I took on the task of organizing all the books, separating fiction from non, getting all of the Arthur books together, and testing my memory by getting all the Arch Books in order, from Old Testament to New. (Daniel is before or after Elijah? Some of these I had as a kid, and some may actually be as old as the ones I had growing up. I don't know who gave me these books, but my money is on Uncle Tim & Aunt Sue.) Lifting stacks of books while you are 30 weeks pregnant is less than fun, but getting up and down from the floor is the bigger challenge. I had worked up an appetite! So I set out to grab us lunch.
I'm not terribly familiar with the area of my husband's new school. Enough that I don't get lost most of the time. I know of only one close shopping center where I could find us lunch, and ended up at Quiznos. I knew I could have 2 carbs for lunch, and got a turkey sub--toasted, with pesto and cheese. I even took off the top part of the roll for 1/2 the sub and gave it to my hubby. (He couldn't resist--it was covered in pesto, and pesto is crack cocaine, but without the nasty criminal charges attached.) And I went back to working. No, I wasn't walking around much, but I was up and down, sorting and sifting, lifting and hefting, sweating like a pregnant piggie.
And an hour later, my sugar was 10 over the limit.
Well, thanks a lot, Quiznos. You and your singing hands with faces and googley eyes that creep out everyone except my mom, you can take that singing hand and wave goodbye to Pinky until November.
Lesson learned. Or not.
The rule with The Center/Manticore/Wolfram & Hart is that I need to contact them if I have two irregular readings at the same time of the day. So, the next day for lunch, you better believe I went protein style when we hit In n Out and only poke at a fry or two. Blood sugar: 98. (Acceptable range one hour after lunch: 60-130.) 98 is great!
This morning, I woke up with a grumbly in my tumbly. Eggs? Eh. Toast? Again? I really wanted cereal. But cereal without milk is pointless. Unless...the cereal doesn't need milk! I consult my little guidebook: a ha! Hot cereal serving size = 1/2 cup. And I don't need milk to make Cream of Wheat. So I eat some cottage cheese for my protein servings while my water is nucrowaving for the CoW, and then mixed in a little sugar free jelly in the piping hot goodness that is Cream of Wheat.
And then my blood sugar was THIRTY over the limit.
Did I inadvertantly mix in some Glucola in my Cream of Wheat?
It wasn't just a bit too high. My heart actually started racing--is this going to hurt our little girl? (Probably not.) Will I need insulin? (I better not.) What the HECK did Cream of Wheat do to me?
I tested again 15 minutes later and it had gone down a measly seven points (but at least it was going down).
Well, they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. For those on the Voodoo Doll Diet, it's also the hardest. Fewest carbs allowed (just 1 serving of a starch), no fruit, no milk. We're more likely to have sugar spikes then, too.
So goodbye, Cream of Wheat.
I won't skip breakfast, because it IS important that I keep my sugar levels, well, level. After sleeping and going without food for hours (hence, breaking your fast,) skipping the meal isn't an option, either.
I don't have to call The Center yet because my spikes weren't after the same meals. But still...two strikes against me, as far as I'm concerned. Tomorrow's breakfast has to be mega-protein and carb-light. I might just gnaw on a cow.
I will stick with my eggs, even though I am tired of them--and wondering about my cholesterol and what's up with that egg recall?-- or some peanut butter on toast--and worrying that I am totally overdoing the peanuts, eating peanut butter at least once a day and actual peanuts another time and thinking, will the Niblet come out allergic to peanuts if I can't ease off on the goobers?
Those are questions for another day. (And someone who knows more about allergies than I do.)
Hi- your blog is great.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing happened to me with rice. I said, "AH! A 1 cup serving of rice will fill up my dinner carbs, and I'll be set because I'm having meat with it too," And even after taking a decent walk- I was 21 points over. Not fun!
Anyway, how do you react with potatoes? I've found that they bother my sugar very little, and have been having hash brown patties for breakfast (with turkey bacon or Canadian bacon- I can't stomach eggs more than once a week). They have them in the freezer at the grocery store next to the french fries. They look slightly larger than McDonalds hash browns, and I've found that I can handle 2 in the morning... Nothing like a meat sandwich between 2 potatoes... I started out with just one, then one and a half, and have concluded that 2 fill me up and don't kill my sugar.
Hmm, I will have to try potatoes "more" and see. So far, I have had some hash browns (sharing with my dad for Sunday brunch) and a few skinny half-fries from In N Out, but I haven't had, say, a full on baked potato. It's so weird how different carbs react differently, and I remember from the South Beach Diet that if you mix fat with your carbs, it slows down the glycemic impact, so that the hash browns and the french fries would be better than the baked potato. So I might try that--because today I was back to a sausage and an egg, a cup of V8, and I didn't even have a half slice of toast because I was a-scared! But eggs and sausage and no toast and no potato...it's just wrong, I say, wrong!
ReplyDeleteIt is really wrong. Especially in a culture that raises you on carbs for breakfast. We haven't mastered the meat on a stick for breakfast thing yet (but maybe someone should). One night for dinner I had steak, half a baked potato and an ear of corn. After the fact I was worried, but my 2 hour draw was only 101, so yay for that.
ReplyDeleteI like your V8 thing- I don't eat nearly enough vegetables (and I really can't eat a can of green beans for breakfast as my diabetic counselor suggested), and I think that would work much better than staring at a zucchini and thinking to myself, "No way in hell am I cooking you for breakfast."
Dousing a baked potato with butter and sour cream seemed like a good idea to me too. Come to think of it, the corn also got the butter treatment... that must have helped...
Butter + sour cream = pure heaven! Definitely try the V8, because I actually like it with breakfast and am usually not interested in any other "breakfast veggie," unless I scramble some eggs and throw something in...and then there is cutting and dicing and more effort than I necessarily want! But eating a can of green beans for breakfast? Someone actually suggested this?
ReplyDelete(Oh, and everything is better Onna Stick. So I will go with Meat Onna Stick for breakfast, absolutely.)