Non-RD Recommends Highly Processed Foods

This is one blog that really fell flat. Written by a non-diabetic person and only an English major for a type 2 diabetes website, it should be a warning to all people what can happen when non-professionals are allowed to write for a diabetes website that do not understand the importance of avoiding highly processed foods. You may read her bio here or click on her name under the title of the article. It is down the page several bios.

When I started reading her blog, I knew something was not right. She loves microwaving food and not cooking any other way. She at least admits she does not cook. Personally, I do use a microwave for warming leftovers from previous meals that my wife or I have cooked and even then, we sometimes reheat the food on the stove.

This writer has not learned how to cook and thinks it is necessary to stand over the stove for hours to have a good home cooked meal. For her it is easier to microwave a frozen meal than spend a few minutes to enjoy healthy food. I definitely do not appreciate her claim of shoving the food in your piehole (meaning your mouth) in five minutes or less. This is a great example of what people with diabetes should not do and as a person with diabetes, I like enjoying my food and eating slowly to avoid creating blood glucose spikes.

What I found funny was her request to “stop judging me.” This is how she tries to justify that packaged foods are usually not healthy, but full of starches, sodium, and preservatives.

Then the following is stated by her, “It’s already hard enough when a person is trying to eat healthier and exercise – so I don’t think that we should have to change our ENTIRE lifestyle and try to fit cooking in as well. So! Here are some tips and tricks for eating healthy AND keeping it easy-peasy-microweezy…

• Low sodium: To keep it simple, I just use the daily-value percentage thing on the package and try not to buy anything that’s too high a percentage per serving. I also drink a lot of water, just to be on the safe side.

• Microwave versions of things you used to have to cook/bake, i.e., sweet potatoes, oatmeal, frozen veggies… the list is endless. If you Google your fave foods + “microwave recipes”, you’ll probably find even more.

• Frozen veggies count! On days that I already ate a microwavable meal and like two hours later I’m hungry, I’ll heat up a BUNCH of frozen veggies and to make them interesting, either sprinkle some parmesan cheese or dressing on them, or make it into soup.

• Leftovers! Don’t forget – if you take home half your meal from a restaurant (go you if you can do this – the struggle is real) that’s an awesome little microwavable meal for the next day!

• Find your happy (microwaveable meal) place: Mine is Trader Joe’s. I love them because they sell a lot of really delicious, inexpensive, microwavable meals that encompass most if not all of these tips.

• More “real” ingredients, less chemicals: if I’m not at Trader Joe’s, I look for meals that have more of the “real food” ingredients that I recognize, like vegetables and proteins, and less things that I can’t pronounce.

I really hope these are helpful. Please let me know YOUR tips in the comments below! And now, the next time someone attacks you for only cooking with a microwave, you can turn your nose up right back at them and give them a little micro-wave goodbye!”

No, I do not agree with her lifestyle and lazy way of eating. Writing this on a website for people with type 2 diabetes is not a way to appeal to people that read her writing. Bad habits are still bad habits and not what a person with type 2 diabetes should be reading.

Lessons for People New to Type 2 Diabetes, Part 14

Think about support for the person with type 2 diabetes. This topic is somewhat difficult for many people with diabetes. Not every family is supportive. Blame this on the invisible nature of diabetes. Often teenagers do not understand that a parent has a disease or the hear amputation stories from their friends and believe that you will soon be having that happen to you. The younger children cannot comprehend because they do not see any visible difference in the parent.

This blog shows what can happen when parents know their children well enough to prevent problems until they were older and then drop the news on them. Yes, every family is different. Thought is needed in the method used to discuss a diagnosis with them. This blog discusses a study and what the people with diabetes feels his or her family thinks about their diabetes. This blog covers some useful tips for the person with diabetes and how to manage some situations.

Fortunately, none of our support group members has had support problems. Several of the members know other persons with diabetes that have had family problems and even two that ended in divorce when the spouse would not believe that the other spouse could manage diabetes. Both members believe that the spouse was looking for a way out of the marriage and the other spouse having diabetes gave them that out by developing diabetes.

Self-defeating, self-sabotaging behavior must be human nature or it wouldn't happen with such regularity. No, I am not talking about mistakes, errors, or falling off the wagon in diabetes care, but doing things that are self-sabotaging to your diabetes management. Some of the self-sabotage behaviors include procrastination, self-defeating behaviors, fear, and perfectionism. These were in my blog of August13, 2014. After denial, these behaviors do more damage to managing diabetes than any other activity.

Having said that, bad habits can also do a lot of damage to your diabetes management. Some bad habits are worse than others, but are still bad habits to avoid. A listing of these from my blog on April 29, 2014 include:

1. Not tracking your blood glucose
2. Sloppy carb counting or not correctly recording the carbs consumed
3. Binge eating
4. Skipping meals
5. Emotional eating
6. Avoiding fish in favor of red meat

Completing the list from my blog on April 28, 2014 are the following:

1. Not learning from mistakes
2. Saying that the doctor did not say anything about this
3. Over indulging your sweet tooth

Of these, I hear “Saying that the doctor did not say anything about this” probably more that anything. I admit I do not understand why this seems to be a favorite way that people use to avoid doing something they should be doing.

Now that we are in the holiday season, binge eating, and emotional eating come to the front and these bad habits do a lot to upset the good diabetes management we are accustomed to doing. We are already seeing many people writing about this and encouraging people with diabetes to maintain the good habits, especially during the holiday season. I can only say that we should do our best to maintain control of our diabetes management. Otherwise, the holidays may not be as happy as we want them to be.

More Bad Habits When Diagnosed with Diabetes

For those that have not read my blog and the link from yesterday, here is another link that lists many of the diabetes bad habits I have covered, but explains them differently. This brings me to the habits for this blog.

Not tracking your blood glucose If you don't keep track of your sugar levels and report them to your doctor, your doctor may not be able to figure out which diabetes drugs are working best for you. This is because many diabetic medications vary in terms of pharmacodynamics (how a drug influences a diabetic's body) and pharmacokinetics (how your body responds to the drug). If your medication can’t be assessed, you can’t successfully manage your diabetes. Yes, the doctor has your A1c and other tests, but without the daily blood glucose readings, he only has a general knowledge and whether you are doing great or poorly in your management of diabetes.

Sloppy carb counting or not correctly recording the carbs consumed Accurate carb counting is critical to good diabetes management on any level. Sloppy carb counting if you are on insulin can be dangerous. With hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia being the result, guesstimating the number of carbs you will be eating can lead to incorrect injection of insulin.

I will be the first to admit that even reading the labels on food and calculating carbs from ingredients is still a crap shoot because of the errors that are allowed on labels and the USDA database used by many carbohydrate calculators. Now before becoming too discouraged, using labels and information from the USDA database is still preferable to guessing. A digital scale also helps when cooking foods.

Binge eating Many people with diabetes have this bad habit and this promotes other bad habits like overeating snacks and having food quantities that cause blood glucose levels to become too high. I recently watched a person with type 2 diabetes eating almost an entire plate of all white foods – bread, potatoes, and rice. There was not another color as in vegetables on the plate. He was not in insulin and we don't know what medication he was using, as he would not tell us.

Skipping meals Many people with type 2 diabetes do not consider this a bad habit. Yet they take their oral medication. This is dangerous and if a medication causes hypoglycemia, then it is even more dangerous. If you are a person that does this, you should have a talk with your doctor urgently. The doctor should be able to suggest when or when not to take your medication.

Emotional eating Here again people let their emotions take over and seek out foods that they would normally not consume and then proceed to overeat. Yes, they seek out comfort foods and these are often high carbohydrate foods. Emotional eating often occurs with stress, depression, death of a family member, and other emotional happenings. Even positive feelings and happy times can lead to emotional eating, though rarely.

Avoiding fish in favor of red meat Now this may not be a bad thing, but many doctors consider this a bad habit, as do most registered dietitians nutritionists (RDNs). This is because they follow the high carbohydrate/low fat food plan. While we should eat more fish for the nutrients, many people never do and are living well despite what doctors and RDNs like to believe and promote. The saturated fat in red meat does not give us cause for concern any longer.

To avoid the bad habits of diabetes, develop a positive attitude, and a routine that you can follow and make a habit. Good habits that become ingrained and almost automatic can help you when burnout happens and even during minor depression. They can also help in avoiding most of the other bad habits. I can not guarantee this, but this had helped me.

Stopping Bad Habits When Diagnosed with Diabetes

I don't think it matters whether you have diabetes or not, there are some habits that apply to both situations and you need to face up to these bad habits. I have blogged about the bad habits to avoid for people with diabetes. They haven't changed much since then. Some have become more important while others are receiving less attention.

What I have found discouraging is the links to great material become broken over time and the sites change to reflect new topics and often delete valuable information. This is off topic, but I find this one bad habit that websites have.

Diabetes is not a stroll in the park or an easy task to manage. It takes a positive “I can do this” attitude and finding good habits that become second nature to you. Yes, mistakes or falls can happen, but much depends on how quickly you correct your mistake or get up, dust yourself off, and get back on the right path. Learning from mistakes is very important and if you don't learn, these will be the mistakes you repeat in the future.

Not learning from mistakes This is a bad habit for many people with type 2 diabetes.

Saying that the doctor did not say anything about this This is another bad habit for many people and their way of avoiding doing things they should do. I have encountered this in working with other people with type 2 diabetes again and again. I am not talking about the people in our diabetes support group because they know that just because the doctor did not mention something is no excuse. When it is brought up to them, they are interested and start asking questions. They know that most of us do research and often have a good basis for saying something. They listen and if they have doubts, they make them known. They know to ask for URLs to take them to the articles and then they adapt to the information and often comment to us later about how helpful we were.

Over indulging your sweet tooth Many people over do this to the extreme. Why? Because they hear many of us with type 2 diabetes talking about having a treat. What they don't hear is the fact that we cut out carbohydrates to be able to have a treat once in a while. I am not talking on a daily basis, but maybe once a week or twice a month at the most. They have tuned out the last statements and figure if we can have treats, why shouldn't they have treats. Then they don't limit the quantity as we do and don't realize that we test to make sure that the treat does not drive our blood glucose up more than the limit we have set. Eating these foods regularly or in large portions defeats the whole purpose of treating your diabetes. Plus the concept of glycemic index is not part of their vocabulary or treatment plans.

It is too easy to develop bad habits. Many people are still working and on the go all the time. They eat foods that they should not, vegetate instead of exercising, and are so tired at the end of day that they want to sleep, but they have more to do and sleep takes a back seat to their work.

If you have not read my blog, linked to above, please consider reading it. I will not try to duplicate other bad habits from it, but will go into other bad habits in the next blog.

Diabetes Has Its Bad Habits to Avoid

No, diabetes is not a cakewalk. It has its own set of problems and they can sneak in when least expected. They can wreck havoc with blood glucose levels and destroy will power when you need it most. Some use the following terms - traps, pitfalls, weaknesses, and lack of discipline. I don't care what you use for your favorite term, but these bad habits can really make of mess of good blood glucose management.

In good blood glucose management some things should become habits or for those that do not like habits at least daily tasks. These should become part of your routine just like brushing your teeth. Why is it then that people have such problems with this list (sorry, the link is broken now)? There may be others, but I have seen this list several times in the last few years, so there must be something to it. I can only find the one now on the internet and my second source is a clipping my daughter sent me about seven years ago – sorry no source information came with the clipping. It lists two additional items beyond the link above.

The items listed in lists of bad habits are:

1. Not testing blood glucose.

2. Not taking diabetic medications at the right time.

3. Skipping meals.

4. Emotional eating.

5. Binge eating.

6. Drinking too much sugar.

7. Skipping veggies.

8. Avoiding fish in favor of red meat.

9. Not losing at least 10 percent of body weight (if needed).

10. Skipping exercise – stop being a couch potato

11. Getting too little sleep

For many of us, number nine above could be an excellent idea, but some people do not need to lose weight so I leave this in only for those of us that need this reminder.

Since the link has a video and explanation with of the eleven bad habits, I will let you read them there.

The two additional items from the clipping are avoiding most alcohol and not seeing your doctor when scheduled. Alcohol does strange things to blood glucose and may mask BG readings. Many people continue to have more alcohol than they should, but small quantities occasionally may still be okay for some individuals. Others should stop consuming all forms of alcohol with diabetes.

Not keeping a doctors appointment when scheduled seems to be more common than I would have thought. Unfortunately, there are more reasonable and practical excuses, but still excuses for missing an appointment. Meet the doctor that uses fear to make patients follow instructions and I will show you patients that will consistently miss appointments. Also, doctors that ignore your questions and talk at instead of with you and you will find patients missing appointments. Not every patient misses appointments, but there are too many patients missing appointments.

There are other bad habits that I occasionally see listed and they are health centered and need to be added to any list.

Not paying attention to your nutrition. This is becoming more difficult because of the on going actions of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) and their takeover of the activities of nutritionists. We may now have to learn nutrition on our own to circumvent the dogmas and mantras of whole grains and low fat. Obtaining unbiased and balanced nutritional information may become a thing of the past.

Not inspecting your feet daily. As a person with diabetes, I know the importance of doing this daily. Daily inspection of your feet becomes important because of peripheral neuropathy. One statement I will make is something a cardiologist made to me in the day following my diagnosis. He said always wear shoes or thick sole slippers around the house. This has stayed with me and has proven very good advice, as I know that more than once it has saved me from inflicting myself by stepping on broken glass shards. Yes, accidents do happen and dishes and containers happen to slip out of our hands and break on the floor. You may think you have cleaned all of it up, but you can always miss something. I know because I have found pieces in the bottom of my shoes and slippers on more than one occasion.

Have not stopped smoking. Even I did not stop smoking for some time after my diagnosis. It took several doctors asking me appointment after appointment to get me to stop finally. Add to this my wife politely asking and then begging me. I will admit I enjoyed smoking and had not wanted to quit, but when confronted with this again and again, I finally gave it up. After the fact, yes, I wish I had stopped sooner.

Stop yo-yo dieting. Since I do not believe in dieting, I have no problems with this. Yes, I need to lose some more weight; however, with the changes I have made now, I am starting to shed some of it. I have seen many people that go from diet to diet, find that they lose some weight, and as soon as they stop, gain it all back. This is actually harder on your health than maintaining weight and then slowly changing what you consume healthfully to reduce your weight.

Stop Self-Diagnosing and let your doctor(s) do their job. This does not mean that you should stop keeping daily records such as blood glucose readings, a food log, and records of your lab test results. For the right doctor, this may give him/her the answers as to why things are heading in the direction they are. Always keep a written sheet of questions to ask your doctor. Your doctor does not live with you 24/7/365 and you must learn how to manage your diabetes in the interim, but self-diagnosing is taking matters into your own hands and often conflicts with your doctor's efforts to keep you well. If you believe your doctor isn't up to par, or if his diabetes treatment methods aren't working for you, find another diabetes specialist.

Lack of self-discipline. This is often the one that gets more people in trouble with their diabetes. Call it lack of will power, or a bad habit of self-indulgence, but this spells real trouble for people with diabetes. This also contributes to higher A1c's and earlier onset of diabetes complications. A positive attitude of “I can do this” can help this in many ways.

The last item I want to discuss is one I hear from type 2 people more often that I care to – My doctor did not say anything about this. This is the excuse they use for not wanting to do something that they should. I know that some doctors do not cover everything, but the problem is often with the patient when they do not listen to their doctor when he is talking. My term for this is “selective hearing.” Many patients do this when they hear certain words from their doctor. This often happens and is as bad as the doctors that go on “autopilot” and ramble on.

If you feel something else needs to be added, please leave a comment.