How I Eat Holiday Dinners

Holiday Dinners are hard for me. Think about it.

Green bean casserole- carbs. Stuffing - a shit ton of carbs. Sweet Potato casserole - more carbs. Mashed Potatoes - nothing but carbs. Then you have desserts which are nothing but sugar.

Even worse. I want to eat everything in sight. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Every side dish. Every dessert. Every meat on the table. So the question becomes, how much insulin should I take? It's easy to over medicate during this time because people naturally eat with thier eyes. You plan your plate, plan on having seconds, thirds, maybe even fourths of something. When in reality, you're more likely to get full from the first plate if you put a little of everything on it. But then you have to factor in dessert - the cake, the pies, in my case - a tiramisu and an english trifle. So now it becomes easy to under medicate.

Do I sacrifice part of my dinner plate for dessert? Do I concentrate on the foods that I know won't cause a blood sugar spike? Do I even have the willpower to skip dessert and watch everyone around me indulge thier sweet tooth? Do I eat a small amount of everything and hope for the best? These are all questions I have to figure out as I twist the dial to the amount of units I want to inject myself with. At the same time, if you are over at someone's house and haven't prepared the food yourself, you have no clue what they put in the side dishes. Carrots, which are natually a low carb vegetable can become my worst nightmare when honey and butter are added to it. Therefore, foods I would be more inclined to eat could have extra carbs. Some foods that look like they have a lot of carbs, could hae less carbs depending on the ingredients used.

Also, getting the right amount of protein from the turkey or ham is important. Less protein and the sugar from the carbs flood the blood. Too much protein does more harm than good.

Luckily, Mum decided to make this year a little more diabetic friendly. She only made one casserole - green bean. The sweet potatoes were either baked or cooked with the turkey. The mashed potatoes were half potato and half cauliflower using milk and butter instead of mayo cutting the carbs in half. She added onions and mushrooms to the stuffing that she made herself with chicken broth. I skipped the bread and stocked up on carrots. And of course, I couldn't say no to the desserts. A more healthy holiday dinner that tastes just as amazing as what we used to have.

Hopefully next year we will have a house of our own to do christmas dinner. And over the weeks before that dinner, I'll be trying out low carb recipes for traditional sides. This way I can indulge as much as I want without having to worry about how many carbs I'm putting in my body and whether I've over or under medicating. On top of that, I'll know exactly what I'm putting in my body which is always a relief.

This is why monitoring my blood sugar by testing it is essential. If my blood sugar is low, I can eat more with less insulin. If it's high, I can eat less and use my normal dose or add a few extra units.

Unfortunately the amount of insulin I have to take isn't an exact science. I know that if I want to drink coke, I have to add an extra two units to my dose. 6 units seems to work with 35 - 60 grams of carbs, but it also is based on what the number was before I eat. Everything is trial and error. This is why holiday dinners are so frustrating, especially when I can't control what is being put in the food or the menu.