If you have type 2 diabetes, it probably means you did to your body, what I did to mine. I abused it, very very badly. The documentary Super Size Me felt more like a personal memoir than a documentary about some dude who decided to eat McDonalds three times/day to see what the result would be.
I left NYC in 2001, a svelte 185 lbs…
…and returned several years later, a whopping 240 lbs.
Nobody recognized me, not even me.
Doctors told me I was prediabetic, but I ignored that and just kept not caring about myself. Fast forward a few years, and boom! Heart attack! I made it through the ordeal, but also found out I was a full blown diabetic.
Out of control diabetes can do bad things to you in your old age; stuff like blindness, neuropathy, erectile dysfunction, amputation, and an earlier than expected death, are long term side effects. I was taking 2000 mg of metformin/day, which is the maximum allowable before moving onto the really fun stuff, like insulin.
Somehow, some way, like a thunderclap, it all changed in one moment.
I was literally in the McDonald’s drive thru, about to grab a breakfast sammie (which I still occasionally did, even after the heart attack), when my phone started singing The Bee Gee’s, Stayin’ Alive (my ring tone). There I sat, my partner next to me in the car, as my primary care doctor wasted not a breath on bedside manner, instead giving it to me straighter than a glucose spike right after a lolly-pop, right over the speaker phone.
“Your glucose numbers are out of control. Since you’re already on the maximum metformin dosage, we are going to have to think about insulin.”
I don’t like needles. A lot more than the average person I think. The list of aforementioned diseases seemed far away and abstract to me, but a shot in my leg or arm every day? That was the fire I needed lit beneath my ass to get me going. (for anyone wondering, I didn’t realize at the time of that conversation with the doctor; needles are often no longer part of the insulin protocol–but fear of them was excellent motivation).
I should say that the single most important factor in my healing (as that’s the end of this happy story), was the support I got from various people, but especially Sylvie Bertrand, my all time favorite human being, and love of my life.
Through her vast knowledge of food and passion for cooking, she was able to imagine and create the recipes I would eat for the next 6 months (and with any luck, the rest of my life), that would make me feel anything but the usual restricted and deprived food-existence, type 2 diabetics typically experience. However, even with the excellent support system I had and the tons of motivation to avoid the threat of insulin shots, I could not have pulled off the feat I was about to, without the help of a teeny tiny little device, the acronym for which is CGM.
CGMs are a milestone in diabetic care. Those letters stand for Constant Glucose Monitor, and you get the idea right from the name. You put this tiny little thing on your arm, and then for 2 weeks you forget about it. Then you check your mobile phone periodically and find that now your blood sugar levels are available to you whenever you want. No more pricking your finger. No more having this super-annoying task following you around all day. Instead you check your text messages, and while you do, also check your glucose. It becomes part of a painless every day activity, and the best part? The best part is that you can follow your progress as you go, and as needed, change the direction of your food choices.
Thing is, every time you eat a meal, you get to measure the ingredients against your ability to process the carbohydrates you just consumed. Oh, you thought multi-grain bread was okay for you? How about yogurt? Diet sodas? Good news/bad news. On the one hand, you quickly discover what your personal tolerance levels are towards carbohydrates and their tricky friends, “sugar substitutes.” On the other, you are very likely to have to give up some foods you’d previously thought were good for you, but upon noting the massive glucose spike from your CGM, realize have been playing havoc with your body.
It’s a learning process. Several months down the road, I know what to avoid, and what to lean into. I know what types of restaurants are good for me, and what sort are bad. You learn what to ask the waiters to be sure (-ish) that you’re eating healthily.
For me, the Freestyle Libre 3 CGM, was an absolute life changer. It saved me. It, my wonderful partner, and my own determination to live a healthy life.
Good news! Personal milestone.
A short time ago, my doctor told me to try coming completely off the metformin for two weeks, and see how things went.
The two weeks have passed and as of this writing, I’ve said goodbye to those meds, hopefully forever.
Phil has been the host of several radio programs, including Sex and Politics, The Weekly Faceslap, and The Show You’re Listening to Right Now. Phil’s latest content can be found here: The Phil Rosenberg Show, and he is a founding member of the band, Billy Shake and the Speares.
Phil has also been a chess teacher since 1997.
I love food; buying, preparing, and eating it, but best of all, sharing it. It wasn’t always so. The food I ate growing up was neither healthy nor tasty. I come from Montreal, Quebec, and French-Canadian food in the 1970s was a weird combo of three main influences: French (helloooo, country pate!), a bit of British (meat pies, Shepherd’s pies, other kinds of pies, and also pies. Did I mention the Brits like pies? No? Well guess what? Yea, they will kill you for a single delicious pie crust), and a lot of processed American foods (Campbells soup, Wonder Bread, Jello, to name but a few). We were a family of six that lived through some serious financial instability, so the unifying thread was: cheap, boring, and quick to make.
It was only when I began to work in the restaurant industry at the age of nineteen that I discovered what “good food” was. Of course, “good” is subjective and can be defined in many ways. My grandmother’s version of good food, which she served us when we visited during the holidays, consisted of pigs’ feet stew with “grandperes” (homemade dumplings), deep-fried pork slab, cabbage slathered in Miracle Whip, and sugar pie. A diet high in fat, sodium, and cholesterol. Somehow, she still lived until the age of 89, after surviving a few heart attacks. My grandfather, who ate the same food and was very active physically (shoveling snow well into his 90s), died of old age a few months later, at the age of 94.
My own idea of what is good food has changed a lot over the years. I went through many phases and followed many known trends: macrobiotics, pescatarian, vegetarianism, veganism, intermittent fasting, keto. I experimented with friends and learned a lot along the way. When I met Phil, I was following a keto diet five days a week. It helped me shed some of my menopause weight—maybe not as much as I was hoping for, but, more importantly, I felt good.
It just so happens that keto and a diabetes-friendly diet share one important goal: keeping daily carbs as low as possible. Once Phil was aboard after that dreadful and scary call from his doctor, I was ready to make low-carb food that I thought would appeal to him. But in order to do that, we needed to not only count carbs but also know how specific carbs affected his glucose levels. The traditional route to figure out all of that is to meet and consult with a nutritionist, or, if your insurance doesn’t cover that, spend a lot of time googling, which, as you might already know, can give you a whole bunch of different, confusing, and contradictory information.
That’s why Phil’s decision to get the FreeStyle Libre 3 sensor was so important—it was the crucial tool we needed to create a diet and adopt a lifestyle that would work for him, for me, and for us.
Sylvie has worked in the restaurant industry for over 35 years as a server, bartender, manager, wine buyer, and, since 2011, co-owner of a popular neighborhood restaurant in Brooklyn. She is the co-founding editor of the literary magazine, CAGIBI, and teaches memoir writing at the Writers Studio in NYC. You can read some of her writing at svbertrand.com, and in various publications
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