Our relationship with food.....

P

pjgtech

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
My current situation (T2D) has forced me to think about my relationship with food.
I have always eaten a lot, when I was younger I could simply eat what I liked and I would burn it off, as I had such an active lifestyle.
As I got older, my lifestyle got less active, but my food habits remained, eg: eating lots!
Result? slow weight gain over many years.

When I say I love food, it is not an over exaggeration, as I don't have any other vices, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I have no real obsessions about anything or addictions to anything. I do consider myself to be a "Foodie", in as much as I am interested in food, recipes, ingredients, preparation, visiting food markets, restaurants, etc, trying new foods all the time, visiting places just to try their food, etc, etc. I am luck enough to have eaten in some very nice places with some fantastic chefs.

Although I can appreciate fine food, I do (or rather did) sometimes also indulge in the not quite so fine foods, eg: I am not averse to a Maccy D's breakfast, or the occasional KFC or a full English every now and again. But over the years I have tried to reduce those, and where I have had takeaways, I have tried to go for a more healthy option, eg: kebabs (grilled meat with salad) and even McDonalds/KFC salads, (yes, they do exist).

My Wife and I also cook more now. When we were younger (we have been together for 40+ years) we both had busy jobs and would often be too tired to cook, so there were quite a few years where we pretty much lived on takeaways or eating out.
When we cook now we try to incorporate healthy foods, lots of vegs and lots of fruit. But, looking back, even recently, we had too much fruit (sugars) as we would always have grapes, bananas, apples, easy peelers, strawberries, etc in the house, and we would just snack on them all day! And we had far, far, FAR too many carbs.
We were not eating healthily even though we sort of thought we were. I always started my day with Toast, only a couple of years ago I would have 4 slices every morning! In recent years its been two slices. But every meal would have mountains of carbs, eg: Potato, Rice, Pasta, Bread, Pastry, etc, etc. For a few years we enjoyed Cruising, now anyone who's been on a Cruise will tell you what the food is like, (eg: Great!) So I would always come back from a Cruise a few pounds heavier!

But now, my relationship with food has to change.
Clearly even though I was trying to eat more healthily, I have failed, and I think I fell into that mindset that thought, fruit = good, when in fact it is not always good. Likewise I thought veg = good, (including carbs) and clearly that is not always good either.
I would eat lots of low fat rubbish, yoghurts, energy bars, etc.
Now I am realising that what you put in your body has a real affect on its general wellbeing and health (or not).

So, I have lots to think about and luckily have some time to think while I'm on this current shake based diet (another 11 weeks!)
Still reading lots and I have the Diabetes UK Carb book to go through (hopefully arriving today).
I think I'm starting to feel that a low carb diet and/or Mediterranean diet is the way to go, but I will try it and see how it affects me.

Food for thought (pun intended)....
 
Yep @pjgtech ie Peter, it does for sure make you think and my relationship with food has changed dramatically in the past 10 weeks as the current Mrs Alan of 25 years can vouch for, I will get to the first Mrs Alan later.

Having left home at the tender age of 16 to train as an engineer in Cardiff I had my own flat, well a bedsit really and cooking wasn't really my thing, so pub grub was the order of the day or if I ventured into the realms of cooking in my marginally better than a slum bedsit, it would be vesta beef curry or Brains faggots, fortunately, I too, played a lot of sport and burnt most of it off I guess.

Moving on 10 years I married the first Mrs Alan, who couldn't cook, fortunately my job took me all around the country so little chefs, Pizza hut and McD became my staple diet and yes I would kill for one now.

My weight was still kept in check with sport and the fact we had two children.

Moving on probably 15 years I was lucky enough to meet my next wife and still the current one, now she can cook, oh boy can she cook, every thing is home made and cooked from fresh, so much so that my son said it was like eating in a restaurant every night.

Meal times were and still are the highlight of the day, but with a difference, we now have to discuss what I should eat and how to make it interesting, gone are the days of home made pizza's and shepherds pie topped with cheese, well for the time being.

Meals are now planned with less carbs and more green stuff

I have my next (2nd) blood test since being diagnosed, in about 3 weeks time so hoping for a good result, according to my finger prick tests I have gone back to non or pre diabetic and having lost near 1 and a half stone I would hope so.


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Sounds good mate, keep at the diet and healthy food, I firmly intend to from now on.
Luckily for me theres not many foods that I don't like, so I can pretty much eat anything.
Obviously in the past for me, its been lots of carbs and fatty, salty, sugary things, but I love veg, salads, fish, beans, etc, so I will be embracing the new foodie World with gusto... 😎
 
I thought your name was pigtech! I thought that would be a good name for me. 🙂 I'm the ultimate pig, I ate an entire cauliflower for dinner with a quarter bag of cheese sprinkled on top. Who does that? Why can't I just have half the cauli? I will never be normal around food. Good luck with your healthy eating and your current diet.
~
That made me laugh... 'current wife' like in The Detectorists ... "What, like a raisin?" :rofl:
 
Although we are blamed for developing diabetes, I strongly suspect that it is something which would never happen if the push to eat carbs was sharply curbed back.
I spent decades following GP printout diet sheets which all started the day with cereal or wholemeal bread - and no matter how I tried to explain that it made me feel ill I was ignored. All my mother's family were also in the same situation - though they were shamed in the same way and were unwilling to let anyone know about their 'condition'.
After diagnosis I just tossed the advice aside - well actually I used the paper for lighting the barbecue, and after decades of high glucose levels alternating with periods of being berated about low carbing, I went low carb for good and in 6 months was no longer even prediabetic.
For me it was all too simple, I can't cope with carbs so why was I being abused for not eating them?
 
I totally agree with you statements regarding food Peter(@pigtech).Like you I could eat and eat and eat when I was younger and I couldn't put on an ounce of weight because of it.But now I have T1D my feelings about food has changed considerably...these days,like all diabetics,I'm a lot more careful about how much I eat.
 
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