White Rice: Not the Breakfast of Champions

So, the question on your minds, I am sure, is why Jennifer would eat a bowl of white rice for breakfast? I will tell you.

My mom and my sister were diagnosed with pre-diabetes and diabetes, respectively, within a few months of one another. I figured it behooved me to find out of I had it as well. So, I bought a glucose meter and ran the equivalent of a glucose tolerance test on myself, using rice rather than that nasty syrup they give you at the labs, or jelly bellies, which make my stomach unhappy. (if you don't know--you can actually use jelly belly jelly beans--so all you pregnant ladies, go armed with this info to your prenatal appointments! LOL)

The results? Nothing too terrible but not great, either.
Fasting level: 90
1 hour after eating rice: 164
2 hours: 112
3 hours: 86

The interesting thing is that I was trying to get used to my meter yesterday (rather than using it for the first time at 5:30 a.m.) and tested myself an hour after eating a turkey salad sandwich. I tested at 84, which is really good.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I don't handle straight carbs well. This, of course, would explain why I rarely drink soda, and then only with a meal, always have to have protein with my breakfast, can no longer happily eat the amounts of rice and other carbs that I used to eat, and that apples make me hungry. I have decided that by eating intuitively, I have allowed my body to tell me what it can and can not deal with, and have basically been managing my sensitive blood sugar without knowing the numbers and dealing with sore fingertips.

I will, of course, be calling my doctor's office and requesting an A1C test to confirm this theory.

Now, if the question in your minds has become, 'Will this scare Jennifer back onto the diet bandwagon where she belongs?' then you clearly have not been reading what I have written, and you suffer from some misconceptions.

First, being fat does not cause diabetes. Being diabetic frequently does cause weight-gain, and that is where you get the correlation, but you don't cause diabetes by what you eat or what you weigh, and losing weight doesn't magically make it go away.

Secondly, even if losing weight made diabetes go away, the fact is that 99% of diets fail. And weight cycling IS bad for diabetes (weight cycling is another risk factor), and is also bad for my mental health, and so I will never, ever be going there again.

Thirdly, Intuitive Eating has brought me to a place where I feel better than I have in years and I can't imagine abandoning it now would make me healthier.

And, finally, I choose not to live in fear.