Holiday Eating

I spent this past weekend in Northern California with my family celebrating the holidays. Of course with every holiday season, comes the copious amount of food options that don't normally sneak into my every day life, including potatoes, breads, carb-rich appetizers, and of course dessert! It's as if the cookies and candies just materialize out of nowhere and especially with my mom's family, you can't walk anywhere in the kitchen without finding something to snack on while waiting for the enormous dinner that awaits us to finish cooking.

With all these food choices comes the task of managing blood sugars. It all seems so simple: count how many carbs + give insulin = controlled blood sugars. Well ... I wish it were that easy. Not having a nutrition label to know how many carbs are in each food option is difficult, especially when the amount of insulin I give myself is dependent on carb counting. Then, there is the issue with "grazing." With the type of insulin I use, there is about a 20 minute window between injecting and when I need to start and finish eating. This doesn't work so well at a holiday party when finger foods are layed out and eaten over a 1-2 hour period.

Last night at dinner I did a fairly good job of sticking with meats, veggies, and salads at my family's holiday gathering. In fact I did too good of a job and ended up with low blood sugars all night long and well into the morning. 8 sugar pills and 2 cups of chocolate milk later, I am finally heading back into normal range. After a night of my glucose monitor beeping at me every 30 minutes, getting up to double check my blood sugars with a finger stick, and waking up with the horrible after taste of sugar tablets I am exhausted.

While I appreciate the flexibility I do have to eat whatever I want, sometimes the repercussions of veering off course with certain food choices just tend to be tiring and frustrating. It's pretty annoying to have to take 1/2 a day to get back to "normal" and I also just feel bad for my poor husband who not only worries, but also had to deal with the glucose monitor going off at all hours of the night as well. He's off to an interview now ... and I'm resting in bed, looking forward to something healthy for lunch ...