You have Type 1 Diabetes, but don’t worry. Your life doesn’t have to change. You can still eat whatever you want. You just have to take insulin for it.
I just have one thing to say and it’s a little bit of a long one, but pls let me know if i’m insensitive or if maybe you also can relate ! 😗
I genuinely hate hearing this. It’s something I heard when I was diagnosed, something doctors say, and something I constantly see in diabetes ads and on social media. And while technically, yes, I can eat whatever I want, I wish people would stop pretending it’s that simple. Because my life DID change. Before diabetes, I ate without thinking twice. I didn’t have to stare at a plate and calculate how many carbs were in it. I didn’t have to think about how much insulin I needed, when I should take it, whether I was going to spike two hours later, or whether that same insulin was going to send me crashing afterward.
Food was just food.
Now sometimes eating something I want means watching my blood sugar shoot up, giving a correction, watching it refuse to come down, giving more insulin, and then suddenly fighting a low because now there’s too much insulin in my body.
And somehow we reduce all of that to “just take insulin.”
My blood sugars were all over the place until I completely changed the way I ate. At this point, I eat probably 80% less than I used to. Less food. Less carbs. Less sugar. Less of basically everything that makes managing my blood sugar harder. Could I eat those things? Yes. Do I sometimes choose not to because I don’t want to spend the next several hours fighting my own blood sugar? Also yes.
And I think we should be allowed to say that without someone immediately responding, “But Type 1 diabetics can eat anything!”
I know we can.
That’s not the point.
The point is that being allowed to eat something and being able to eat it without consequences are two completely different things.
I understand why people say, “Your life doesn’t stop after diagnosis.” And no, my life didn’t stop. But it sure as hell changed.
I wish instead of trying so hard to convince newly diagnosed diabetics that everything can stay exactly the same, we were more honest about how much this disease can change your relationship with food, your body, exercise, sleep, going out, and even the most basic decisions you used to make without thinking.
I don’t want pity. I don’t want to be told what I can or can’t eat.
I just want people to stop sugarcoating how exhausting it can be to live with a disease that requires you to make decisions your pancreas was supposed to make for you.
My life didn’t stop because of Type 1 Diabetes. But pretending it didn’t change doesn’t make me feel empowered. It makes me feel like we’re not being honest about what living with this disease actually takes.