{"id":15442,"date":"2011-04-14T07:30:45","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T11:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=15442"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:41:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:41:54","slug":"a-carb-or-starve-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=15442","title":{"rendered":"A Carb or Starve Situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If you only have a few minutes to read something about diabetes today, I suggest you skip over my blog and go directly to this article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/17\/magazine\/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">Is Sugar Toxic?<\/a> If you have more than a few minutes, please enjoy reading why sometimes, many times, most of the time, I feel like a giant failure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The thing that takes up most of my time is parenting (100%).\u00a0 And then comes diabetes work\/ASweetLife(80%) and diabetes care (40%).\u00a0 When you throw in pets, errands, and the occasional need to sleep&#8230; you can probably understand why I get overwhelmed, why there&#8217;s a punchy tone in my blog today, and why I&#8217;m overusing commas (the need to pause!).\u00a0 On days like today, I am a mess.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t just mean I&#8217;m a mess because I haven&#8217;t put in my contact lenses for months, or worn any makeup since last summer, or even because little birds are swooping by my head almost mistaking my hair for a nest.\u00a0 I&#8217;m a mess because my toddler has been up every 30 minutes for the last two nights.\u00a0 He&#8217;s congested and coughing.\u00a0 I caught his cold.\u00a0 My husband has hay fever and has been sneezing every 20 seconds.\u00a0 My older sons have vacation from school.\u00a0 The dog has an eye infection.\u00a0 And the refrigerator is totally empty.\u00a0 I was so hungry a little while ago that I felt like I didn&#8217;t have the strength to go grocery shopping without eating something first.\u00a0 And after opening and closing the refrigerator and the pantry a number of times, I came to the conclusion that I was going to eat carbs.\u00a0 There was absolutely nothing else in the house.\u00a0 <em>I had no choice! It was truly a carb-or-starve situation.<\/em> So I ate some granola.\u00a0 Now my blood sugar is high and I feel much worse than I did when I was starving, and as I said before, I feel like a failure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At times like this, I find it consoling to play a game called: At least I didn&#8217;t eat <em>that<\/em>! For example: I ate granola, but at least I didn&#8217;t eat Resse&#8217;s peanut butter cups.\u00a0 Or, I ate a bowl of pasta for dinner, but at least I didn&#8217;t eat ice cream for dessert.\u00a0 Or, at a party last night I ate pretzels, chips, and chocolate covered almonds, but at least I didn&#8217;t wash them down with vodka.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I don&#8217;t find myself in this situation very often.\u00a0 I put a lot of thought into what I eat.\u00a0 And the same goes for the recipes we publish on ASweetLife.\u00a0 Now, I know there are many ways to manage diabetes and not everyone believes in restricting their diet.\u00a0 That said, I firmly believe that dietary restrictions are key to keeping blood sugar levels under control.\u00a0 Anyway&#8230; since it&#8217;s my job to read about diabetes, I&#8217;ve been taking notes recently on &#8220;diabetic-friendly&#8221; recipes I come across on other websites.\u00a0 To say the least, I think there are some really bad recipes\/advice out there.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t mean bad because they taste bad.\u00a0 I mean bad because they aren&#8217;t the kinds of food I think people with diabetes should be encouraged to eat.\u00a0 Since I&#8217;m on this subject, now seems as good a time as any for me to play a game called: At least I didn&#8217;t publish <em>that<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Check this out: The hugely popular food site, The Kitchn posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekitchn.com\/thekitchn\/good-questions\/diabeticfriendly-dishes-for-a-celebration-brunch-good-questions-143212\">a Q and A<\/a> last week.\u00a0 A reader, Carol, requested a suggestion for a preparing a diabetic friendly dish to serve her boyfriend&#8217;s aunt at a celebratory brunch.\u00a0 The editor at The Kitchn recommended<em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekitchn.com\/thekitchn\/breakfast\/brunch-recipe-crispy-turnovers-with-apple-bacon-and-caramelized-onions-128755\">Crispy Turnovers with Apple, Bacon, and Caramelized Onions<\/a><\/em> because, hey, they don&#8217;t have any sugar.\u00a0 But guess what they do have? Two sheets of frozen puff pastry, apple, and onions!\u00a0 Now, if you suspect, as I did, that frozen pastry puff \u00a0has not just flour, but sugar, too, as one of its ingredients, meaning that the turnovers do in fact have sugar, you might start clicking around to confirm your suspicion.\u00a0 And then you might find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekitchn.com\/thekitchn\/baking-products\/pantry-staple-trader-joes-frozen-puff-pastry-130092\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> page on The Kitchn which lists the ingredients of Trader Joe&#8217;s frozen puff pastry: flour, butter, salt, sugar (<em>I knew it!<\/em>), and water.\u00a0 At least it doesn&#8217;t have hydrogenated oil.\u00a0 And really, the main point here should be that this isn&#8217;t a dessert recipe!\u00a0 It would be one thing if this were a low sugar dessert.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s a puff pastry main course for a diabetic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dear Carol, I know you didn&#8217;t ask me, but I suggest this for your brunch: <a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/a-sweet-life-staff\/recipes\/meal-type\/side-dish\/sunday-brunch-asparagus-and-smoked-salmon-frittata\/3063\/\" target=\"_blank\">Asparagus and Smoked Salmon Frittata.<\/a> Or <a href=\"..\/..\/a-sweet-life-staff\/recipes\/meal-type\/breakfast\/baked-eggs\/7462\/\">Baked Eggs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Baked-Eggs-Melissa-Lieser1.jpg\" rel=\"mfp\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15453 lazyload\" title=\"Baked Eggs \" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Baked-Eggs-Melissa-Lieser1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"318\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Baked-Eggs-Melissa-Lieser1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Baked-Eggs-Melissa-Lieser1-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Phew, I&#8217;m slowly beginning to feel better about myself, and my blood sugar is coming down.\u00a0 Apparently ranting burns carbs.\u00a0 \u00a0If you still haven&#8217;t read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/17\/magazine\/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> article, go do it now!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.9 (Yoast SEO v22.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Carb or Starve Situation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s my job to read about diabetes so I take notes on diabetic friendly recipes. 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