{"id":50429,"date":"2019-04-30T11:55:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T15:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50429"},"modified":"2019-05-01T07:00:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T11:00:26","slug":"a-type-1-chefs-life-on-a-low-carb-diet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50429","title":{"rendered":"A Type 1 Chef’s Life on a Low Carb Diet"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s it like being a chef with Type 1 diabetes, grappling with a disease whose management is so intimately defined by food choices?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Since my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes, my career has been a mixed blessing. I was diagnosed \u00a0last year, after over a decade in the food industry. While my culinary experience has allowed me to tackle a new diet with delicious aplomb, diabetes has also been the cause of some professional discontent and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

The bulk of my career has been spent in restaurants, and a restaurant kitchen is a particularly challenging environment in which to tightly manage one\u2019s blood sugar. Scratch cooking requires lots of tasting, and a restaurant is a minefield of starchy temptations, unknown carb counts, and wildly inconsistent eating patterns. It is also stressful and hectic, and there can be little opportunity to pre-bolus or take fingersticks, to say nothing of sitting down and calmly waiting for a glucose tab to pull you out of a hypo.<\/p>\n

\"RossBeing a chef is not an impossible career for a person with diabetes by any means; many before me have successfully negotiated these challenges, and far greater ones. But for me they have conspired to make professional cooking a more anxious act than it ever had been before.<\/p>\n

My apprehension has only been heightened by my decision to significantly restrict my carbohydrate consumption<\/a>. It was obvious from the beginning that sweets and starches would be fraught dining choices for the rest of my life. Initially I didn\u2019t realize how far I would go with carb restriction, but within only a month of my diagnosis I embarked on a very low-carb diet, \u00e0 la mode de Bernstein<\/a>. I am fully convinced that is the best chance I now have of living a long, healthy and complication-free life.<\/p>\n

As a result, I\u2019ve largely lost interest in the carby dishes that used to excite me. Pastries and pasta and breads now hold little attraction, and preparing them is a ritual that has lost its magic. As I become more and more comfortable with my new diet, it is increasingly difficult for me to imagine loving a job that would entail preparing a mainstream, high-carb menu. Old dreams – owning a burger shop, a pizzeria, a fried seafood shack \u2013 have dissipated.<\/p>\n

You might think, then, that I\u2019d look back on my diagnosis with resentment. To the contrary, when I reflect on this life-altering twist of fate, I usually find myself beaming with gratitude. Gratitude for the support of my family and friends and for their own good health; for the medical advances that have already saved my life; for the wisdom of the more experienced people with diabetes who have taught me how to thrive with this disease.<\/p>\n

I am also grateful for salami and cheese, old friends that have helped me through this trying year.<\/p>\n

My very first job in the food industry was as an apprentice cheesemaker. I was paid very little but had free access to the bounty of a small organic family farm: a chest freezer full of meat, a vegetable garden, and the cheese cave itself. I had a few cookbooks and tried cooking on my days off, naturally gravitating towards the starchless and sugar-free recipes that best featured the hyperlocal ingredients at hand.<\/p>\n

Next I focused on meat at an Italian restaurant renowned for its whole animal butchery and house-cured salumi. I learned how to cook every part of a cow and pig, how to salt and dry and ferment to preserve meat and enhance its flavor. As I progressed I worked at butcher shops, and ran restaurants with highly meat-centric menus, which became known among paleo and keto diners for our devotion to the centrality of protein on the plate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve realized that I was almost always something of a specialist in low carb foods. Not that I would have ever thought of it that way. I began on this path many years before I ever had a medical inducement to skip carbs. I just happened to think that these were the most delicious foods in the world. And now I find myself with a lifelong disease that appears to reward me for eating my favorite foods.<\/p>\n

Having diabetes means cooking and eating will never be the same as they were in my previous life, and my new diet has entailed many sacrifices, but I feel blessed when I consider that some of the foods that first sparked my passion have now become more important to me than ever. I haven\u2019t quite figured out what my future in the cooking world will look like, but I am excited to see that there is an endless landscape of amazing low carb food, both familiar and new, stretching out in front of me, just waiting to be explored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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