Welcome to our newest diabetes educator, Lucia Feito Allonca! Lucy is a lawyer in Health Law, Bioethics & Patient Rights, and is holds a Diabetes Educator Certificate through IDF. She’s also lived with type 1 diabetes for more than 30 years. Lucy is providing type 1 diabetes education for optimal blood sugar management in Spanish.
For several years (during both of my pregnancies and the time in between) I maintained A1c levels of 5.8% to 6.3% (this falls within the ADA's recommendations of "Tight Control") and my doctors were thrilled. BUT these levels were due to dramatic daily highs and lows, which lead to a lot of danger, uncertainty and stress. I often had no idea what was causing high blood glucose levels and would blame my pump, or my calculations, or myself.
I ask my girls to use their words frequently. They might be having trouble expressing their emotions, or telling a story, or trying to figure out what to say to friends in certain situations. Together, we talk about how to talk about things.
Then about a week ago, I read this beautiful post from Momastery.com about how to help your kids choose the right words to avoid peer pressure. Because, as she writes, when we're put on the spot, we panic.
This applies to our low-carb lifestyle, too. As people who eat very differently from the general population, we face pressure every day and need to have responses ready those times we feel pressure.
Eating nuts can be a challenge for many people because it's so easy to overeat. I struggle with this on a regular basis, as written in the previous post, Perfection is A Myth.
We justify it by saying, "I'm just going to grab a handful," but then we don't stop at just one. Well, what actually is a handful of nuts? How much does it weigh? How many carbs and how should we better control this seemingly uncontrollable habit?
If your single goal is perfection, you're going to stumble, not live up to your own expectations and/or drive yourself crazy trying. This is nowhere more apparent than with Type 1 Diabetes.
I do my best every day, I read as much as possible, I write, I post. Diabetes is on my mind 24/7 but I'm not perfect.
Lows are to be respected, not feared.
A great benefit of low-carb eating is that a diabetic will no longer experience crashing lows like they did when they were eating large amounts of carbohydrates and using large amounts of insulin. When eating low-carb, lows tend to be very gradual, and since you are following the Law of Small Numbers, your body only requires a very small correction to get to the ideal blood glucose level of 83 mg/dL.
The primary Diabetes management concept Dr. Bernstein recommends to achieve normal blood glucose numbers is "The Law of Small Numbers." Dr. B explains it like this:
"Big inputs make big mistakes; small inputs make small mistakes.” Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution (p. 108)
So, what does this mean for your everyday eating plan and blood glucose control? What should you do?
