Body, why do you do this?

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Look at that picture. All of those glorious carbs topped with yet more glorious carbs. And such a nice person offering them with such an inviting smile. It's pure torture right now. The only thing worse would be if it were chocolate at the moment.

I have type 2 diabetes. It's stupid. I hate it and I wish it would just magically go away like it magically showed up one day. Unfortunately, diabetes doesn't work like that at all. (I had been borderline diabetic for years but no one told me. Then last year, it hit me like a freight train.)

Now, normal non-diabetic people don't feel hungry when their blood sugar is high. I don't know how it works for other people with type 2 diabetes. I don't know if this is normal or if this is just that my body is weird in yet more ways. But, my blood sugar goes over 200 mg/dl and I get ravenously hungry. I've been told by some well-wishers that I should eat when I'm hungry and that will cure my diabetes. As if I am a person who will eat because they are bored or something.

I can't trust feeling hungry. If my blood sugar is high, I feel like I'm starving. If my blood sugar is low, I feel like I'm starving. There's a sweet spot in the middle where I'm pretty meh about food in general. The worst part about all of this is realizing that I can't have any of my comfort foods because they're all too high in carbs. I'm not talking about having a liter of Mt. Dew as comfort food but a small bowl of macaroni and cheese. A single serving of pasta has too many carbs for me to eat with out my blood sugar spiking.

I've had to give up normal bread. I know the reason why my blood sugar is spiking right now (I don't even have to test it I just know it's high because I ate two hours ago) is because I had my hamburger on bread. It wasn't some fancy dense artisian bread. It was actually a relatively low carb whole wheat bread that clocks in at 13 carbs per slice instead of 15 like white bread. (Potato bread, one of my loves clocks in at almost 20 carbs per slice. I've had to give it up completely.) So, I usually eat diet bread that is 9 carbs per slice. My blood sugar still goes up but not quite as much because it is half the amount of carbs in a normal slice of bread, approximately.

I can't eat rice. Cauliflower has become my life now. Riced cauliflower is not half as satisfying as fried rice. It doesn't cook up as well in fried rice either, to be honest. I just throw more veggies at it to make it look a little closer to fried rice when I make it. Beloved fortunately is willing to eat it. The kids, not so much.

I am getting frustrated with all of this. I started out with this whole diabetes stuff and I said I'm going to eat 30 carbs per meal and 10 - 15 carbs as a snack. Between that and my medication, my A1C dropped from around 13 down to 6.3. I lost a lot of weight. I thought, ok, I'm at a weight that I feel pretty comfortable with. I'm still exercising. I should start eating more carbs. The care coordinator who helped me figure out diet stuff told me I could eat up to 45 carbs per meal. So I started eating 40 carbs per meal.

Guess whose A1C has started creeping back up. I see my doctor in about two weeks. I know that a rise of two tenths of a point is not a big deal for most people. I'm trying to keep my A1C low and I'm trying to get my daily numbers within the ADA guidelines. I can't quite seem to manage it on my own. Because if I'm not vigilant about monitoring when and how I eat, I can eat too many carbs because I feel hungry when my carbs are high.

I was told that was going to go away. I was told the hunger pains that I was dealing with at 30 carbs per meal was going to go away.

It's not going away. I'm kinda mad about that. And we won't get into the psychological effects of the lower carb diet. I'll just say that they weren't pretty. Not because I was hangry all the time but I have a lot of PTSD stuff surrounding food.