I was in my 40s when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. With both a long family history of the disease—my dad and grandmother both had it—and a lifelong obesity problem, it was a when and not an if. The diagnosis was not at all surprising.
As someone for whom food is both pleasure and profession, my initial concerns were about how it was going to impact my day-to-day life. After all, when you cook and work with food for a living, and your vocation is also your greatest passion and the way you spend free time with friends and family, it can be scary to suddenly find that you have limitations on your diet. But health is more important than anything, and so instead of focusing on the negative, I attempted to lean into the challenge of my new restrictions. After all, if cooking is something I already love to do, why not take on the opportunity to learn new skills and develop new recipes?
Along the way, I’ve learned so many things, but these five lessons in eating and cooking stand out—and I hope you can take away something from them, too.
Low-Carb Doesn’t Mean No-Carb
The major thing I wish I had known when I was first diagnosed with diabetes was that low-carb doesn’t (and in fact shouldn’t) mean no-carb. Many people hear diabetes and think you can never have dessert again, which is thankfully not the case. There are literally no foods that are off-limits on a diabetes diet—there are only limits on volume. Yes, you can absolutely still eat cake. You just need to be mindful of your portions.
Finding smart ways to balance carb intake is essential to managing the disease. What I have learned over the years is to make incremental adjustments to dishes I love. I aim to get that balance to a place where I can get all of the pleasure from them, while still staying within my carb limits. As such, many of the dishes I cook simply replace a percentage of the carbs with other ingredients without eliminating carbs altogether. For example:
I cut back on sugar in my tea by cutting back to a teaspoon of sugar and boosting the sweetness with a packet of Splenda.
I have baking recipes that replace between one-quarter and three-quarters of the sugar or flour with artificial baking sugar, keto flour or almond flour. I even have a loaf cake that uses all baking sugar replacement and a combo of keto flour and almond flour that is so delicious I have served it at dinner parties and no one knows it is low-carb!
I’ll make fried rice with about one-third rice and two-thirds fresh cauliflower rice to get the bulk but still have some of the chew and flavor of the grain.
I have dishes where I replace about half of a strand pasta with spiralized zucchini for all that twirlable yum, but half the carbs.
Love a lasagna? I replace half the noodle sheets with thinly sliced eggplant and don’t even miss the pasta.
Deprivation Is Dangerous
Finding effective ways to adjust your diet and still have deep pleasure and satisfaction are key to an eating program that needs to be lifelong. I never think of being on a “diet”; I just think about my eating as a habit. In my experience, if I limit my food choices too much for too long, I can go into a near fugue state of eating everything I have been denying myself—never a healthy way to eat, diabetic or not.
Ensuring that I get some small portions of my favorites on a regular basis allows me to eat the foods I love intelligently and safely. So now, I occasionally have a small (half-cup) portion of super-premium ice cream instead of whole pints of the fake stuff, because I find that a small amount of traditional ice cream satisfies better than a giant portion of something else. You will find the balance for yourself with your own favorite foods.
Cook at Home
In almost every case, cooking from scratch is the best way to avoid accidentally overdoing your carbs, especially since so many processed products have sneaky added sugars. If I am going to have some sugar in my salad dressing, I want to be in control of what it is and how much. There is a little half-teaspoon of honey in some of my vinaigrettes to round out flavor, but not a wallop of unnecessary corn syrup. I became a label hound, and I make sure when I am buying products I know what the carb load will be.
But just avoiding processed foods as much as possible still can have some pitfalls. Even healthy whole foods, like carrots, sweet potatoes, dried beans and certainly fruit—all of which are very good for you and part of a healthy diet—have a carbohydrate component. It is important to be mindful of your carb sources, find a balance with other nutrients, like protein and fat, and always do your research.
Read Labels Carefully
Identifying some specialty products to help in your cooking practice is also a good idea. Many substitutes can have a similar carb load as the food you’re trying to replace; it is just calories they are reducing. That’s why it will be important for you to find the products that fit into your program and to be careful about watching your numbers and consulting with your doctors along the way. Many sugar substitutes, for instance, have almost identical carbs to regular sugar, so while the calorie load is drastically reduced—if not eliminated—those products can still work in your system like sugar when it comes to your body’s blood sugar response.
Not everyone responds the same to either food or meds, so going slow and listening to your body and your medical team will be essential. For me, I have found that King Arthur’s baking sugar substitute, almond flour and keto wheat flour have become invaluable tools in my baking practice. I experiment with how much I can replace in my recipes and still get delicious results. Powdered inulin also allows me to make satisfying meringues with less sugar.
Understand Your Unique Needs
Learning how to best cook for your body is also essential. I became a sourdough bread baker not because I don’t have access to great bread here in my community, but because I realized that a 72-hour cold fermentation of my dough makes my homemade sourdough bread low-glycemic! So, I can eat a slice of homemade, crusty sourdough toast for breakfast every morning, and it does not spike my blood sugar. I can also use the same process for everything from homemade pizza dough and English muffins to bagels and pancake batter. If you are not a sourdough baker yourself, but have a pal with a starter who loves to bake, ask if they will make you a loaf with a 72-hour cold proof—and then see how it impacts your numbers.
The Bottom Line
If you, or someone you love, are embarking on a journey of healthful diabetic eating, just know that this is not the end of culinary delights in your life. By making some achievable changes in your day-to-day cooking and eating habits, you will find that you really can have your cake and eat (a small portion of) it too.