Diabetes loves routine

For someone who writes a food-centric blog, my eating habits are pretty boring. I eat a lot of pork chops and salad. The reason? It makes it easier to manage diabetes. Well, that and I’m a lazy cook. I used to be a shift worker, so my eating and sleeping habits were all over the place. Since I changed my occupation from late-night-bar-slave to lazy-full-time-student, I’ve become a creature of habit. I sleep a lot more, and my bedtime routine has become very complicated with:
– Chamomile tea
– Coconut oil mouth rinse
– One hour no screen time
– Eye mask
– Special sleeping pillow
– Evening primrose tablets

The last one’s a joke, but you get where I’m going. Diabetes-wise, things have never been better. All this routine with regular meals is working wonders. I remember reading in Dr. Bernstein’s book about keeping carbs and protein consistent between meals. At the time, it seemed a bit extreme, but he was (of course) right. It makes blood glucose more predictable, so it has me repeating similar dinners day after day.

As any diabetic on insulin will tell you, you can eat the same meal with the same starting blood sugar and insulin dose and get a totally different result. That’s diabetes and the 5000 factors that influence blood glucose for you. However, the ballpark figures do stay the same. If you have 200g of meat one day and the same the next, you’re more likely to get it right than if you’re changing insulin doses all the time.

Hence, diabetes loves routine. It seems like boredom and being stuck in the house every night is great for blood glucose control. Still, it would be very nice if the pandemic lockdown could end soon. I’m starting to forget what real people look like. Also, I’m worried I won’t be able to find the way out of my pajama trousers.

Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay