The Firsts...

The extent of our Halloween candy this year.

I realized something in late October, and here it is:

I'm having a Year of Firsts.

What I mean is that I'm having my first year as a diabetic, which means it's a year of my first vacation with diabetes, my first church potluck with diabetes, and…my first Halloween with diabetes. 

OH CRAP.

I love Halloween, and I always have. My mom and I used to do some basic decorations, and we'd make these haunted houses out of construction paper and glue. I'd dress up, we'd go out trick-or-treating, and later, we'd dutifully hand out candy to neighborhood kids who came our way. 

Later, as an adult, I wonderfully fell into a group of friends that got REALLY INTO HALLOWEEN - but always in a fun way, not weirdly creepy at all. We'd have a big meal on an overly-decorated table, with cheese balls made to look like cute pumpkins and ice frozen in surgical gloves to make creepy hands. When Hubby and I had our first house, we got to a point of sitting out front, waiting for the trick-or-treaters, getting to know the neighbors in our cul-de-sac, snacking on our own candy.

Halloween and food, it seems, have always gone together for me.

So this year was a first. 

I can have a little candy, and I know that. But that's part of the problem - I can have a LITTLE candy. Quite frankly, I don't want a LITTLE candy - I want to sit down and eat half the bag of M&M's, please, and just not suffer any consequences like pesky blood sugar spikes. And so, Halloween this year became a battle of self control for me.

I made it through a whole Trunk-or-Treat and only ate one tiny package of Skittles. I stayed at my in-laws and ate two tiny boxes of Milk Duds and one tiny Kit Kat over three days. I came home, and Hubby had purchased peanut butter cups, which I can't have anyway because of a peanut allergy. I've been dutifully been ignoring the unopened package of Mint M&M's in our pantry since the day before I went into the hospital last March - went into the hospital dehydrated, with extremely high blood sugar, after binge-eating Mint M&M's. And thus began my journey with diabetes.

Halloween this year was a little different, but it was more than OK, it was wonderful. We went to visit family and had a lovely dinner out with dear friends, one of whom we surprised for his birthday. And so there was still this beautiful sense of celebrating and fun, but without bowls and bowls of candy sitting around my house.

The next set of firsts will be tricky ones - Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday…but it's all OK. I've made it through firsts before, and I'll make it through these, too.

Today's Confession...

Here is my confession for today:

I ATE A MUSHROOM CHEESEBURGER.

I ate all but two bites of the bun. I savored that burger, too - my first one since being diagnosed with diabetes. I'm not a big red meat eater, but sometimes, I just want a burger. And today was one of those times.

So, now that I have diabetes, this is what I try to do. I try to figure out ahead of time where I'm going so that I can look at their menu online. It's a big, fat bonus if they have nutritional info listed, too. Today, I determined that I wanted a burger and where I wanted to get it. I went to the website and looked up the nutritional info.

News flash: FRIES HAVE A POOPLOAD OF CARBS.

I love the fries at this place. They're crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. You can get them with this lovely sauce on them that's buttery, rosemary-ey goodness. So. Fricking. Fabulous. But SO. MANY. CARBS. Even the kids' serving would put me over on carbs! (What is wrong with this picture? But that's another day...)

So, I decided, before I even left my house, what I would order, based on the numbers in front of me. I even came up with a backup plan in case my primary plan didn't work. And the plan didn't include fries. I made that decision before I even got into my car.

The whole time I was driving over there, I went over and over the plan in my mind. If it seems like overkill, maybe it is. But I'll tell you that for me, this kind of looking ahead and planning ahead really works. I order better because I know better what I'm ordering.

The deal is, eating out can be really tricky. There are all kinds of hidden things in food we get in restaurants - if it's low in one thing (say, fat), it's probably high in something else (say, carbs). And so there's a balance to find. Sometimes, I do really well, and other times - not so much. But looking ahead and planning ahead really does help me to do better.

And, by the way, to the restaurants out there who provide nutritional info, as a diabetic with several food allergies - THANK YOU.