Exciting stuff, I know, but it keeps coming up. Most notably at the hostibule last summer. My numbers were all kinds of screwed up, to the point that a couple of doctors felt it necessary to accuse me of mismanaging my diet – I’m diabetic, so I have special dietary requirements. Then they saw my numbers continue to be screwed up despite being on a carb-controlled diet (and at the low-carb end of it) while I was there.
Most notably, I’m supposed to eat 45-75 grams of carbohydrate at a meal and 0-30 grams per snack. 3 meals, 2-3 snacks per day. 135-315 grams per day total. The purpose behind the carb limits is to keep the carbs I eat coming in slowly so they don’t spike my blood sugar.
As a result, I am explicitly not allowed to go berserk at 6AM, pound down sixty Halloween candy bars, and go the rest of the day on lettuce and water. I could, but I would spend the day drinking gallons of water and running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. I am also absolutely not allowed to eat really carefully for a few days, save up a few hundred grams of capacity, and eat an ice cream cake. See above for why.
So here’s my typical day’s eatin’.
For breakfast I have a Jimmy Dean Egg’wich, 2 cans V8, and 2 sugar free anarchy drinks. Breakfast total: 42-44 grams carbohydrate. 6-8 for the Egg’wich, 26 for the V8, and 6 from the anarchy drinks. I come in slightly low at breakfast despite it being perfectly filling and pretty nutritious – the Egg’wich is a nice pile of protein, and the juice has four servings of vegetables.
It’s also consumed over the course of two or three hours. I nuke the Egg’wich when I get to work and eat it a bite at a time while I work. Sometimes I still have a bite left at 10AM when the break alarm goes off. Likewise with the V8 an anarchy drinks. I rarely just slam one or the other, but drink them like a human being. Easy when you have a workbench and a boss who values your skills more than arbitrary rules.
Lunch is more variable and falls into three camps.
Most of the time, I just have a frozen entrée. These aren’t the best option, but they have the advantages of being cheap and convenient. I can stock up and stick a half dozen in the chest freezer, then grab one on my way out of the house – my Egg’wiches are in the same freezer. Then ten minutes before lunch time I toss it in the microwave so it’s good to go. Obviously I choose entrées that fall within my carb limit.
Sometimes I go with leftovers. We’ll hit the Chinese place or something similar and I keep half of it for the next day. Occasionally (maybe once a month) I do Subway, but a sub is a bit over my carb limit for a single meal. If I split it between my snack and lunch, though, I’m good to go.
Time permitting, I’ll make a big batch (four servings or thereabouts) of something good on Sunday night. This is usually along the lines of homemade teriyaki chicken stir-fry or a flagrant ripoff of some pizza joints’ “keto crustless pizza.” If I do a stir-fry, there are nearly zero carbs in it, especially after being split up into four servings, so I put enough rice into it to put me at around 45 grams carb for the whole thing. The “pizza” comes out saucy enough that I can eat it with a couple pieces of garlic bread and still come in at or under 45 grams.
Snacks are usually meat, cheese, nuts, cracker sandwiches, or chips and salsa. The cracker sandwiches I buy are 21 grams of carb per pack, so one is well within my limit, especially after how light my breakfast usually is. In the case of chips and salsa, I figured out how many of the chips I buy end up coming out to 15-30 grams of carb.
By the time I head home, I’m usually still at the low end of the 90-180 grams I’m allowed for two meals and a snack.
Night food is incredibly variable, largely depending on who cooks or if we get takeout. Of all my meals, that’s the one that can do the most damage. Brats and a salad? Nice and low-carb. Pancackes (one of my mother in law’s favorites)? Not so much.
The real issue I have is lack of exercise. Thanks to my adventure last summer I still have trouble walking for very long; there are occasional days at work where walking to the bathroom and back to my workbench is a minor chore. Since my exercise method of choice before that was hiking at the nature preserve near me, this is a problem. I am not risking having to do a medevac from the middle of the woods.
That said, we moved last fall and our new house has a pool. That’s perfect when you have issues walking. Since both Stacie and I have mobility issues now, that thing is going to see a lot of use once it warms up enough to start swimming. So that’s the plan for the summer – keep eating relatively healthy and start hitting the pool after work a few times a week and on weekends.
We’ll see how that goes in a few months.