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Educating family & friends

Ask her why there are so many overweight people wandering around the supermarket despite (bad) health advice to avoid fat in the diet. You can then go on to explain that excess carb intake is stored as fat and eating fat has very little influence on blood cholesterol. If she is still listening by then tell her that NHS diet advice is strongly influenced by the food companies who don't care a **** about your health but the money they make from profitable carbs. I suspect her eyes will have glazed over by then....

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Thank you all! I glad I am not alone.

Its a bit complicated to tell her to be quiet. My FIL passed away a few months ago (not from diabeties) which has meant we have ALOT more interaction with my MIL. She comes to stay with us for weeks & often I take her to the supermarket to give my hubs a break - i've known her since I was 12 & she's my 2nd mum so I feel like I have to look after her. She's obviously lonely & neither me or my hubs want to make her upset by telling her bluntly to shut up. Tempting though it is!!!

I don't think she is trying to be difficult or annoying, she's just not thinking & has been indoctrinated by years of diet advice which says carbs are good & fat is bad. I get it - its just I wish I could get her to understand that doesn't work for me!

Short term, I think I will just start online shopping deliveries so i have no need to go to the supermarket when she's here.
 
Antje's idea is a good one, there's a lot of information in there. And you could gift her the "The Diabetes Code" book by Dr. Jason Fung.... It hammers the point home on every page, so maybe that'll stick in her memory more than a leaflet? Plus, its written by an honest-to-god DOCTOR, she might take it seriously? If she's concerned about your health, and wants you to eat right, maybe letting her be actively involved will help?

It took a while for social obligations to improve for me, because people always want to buy me special stuff, or don't order something in a restaurant with their coffee because I can't have dessert either. (I'm fine with my tea, but whatever). But these days it's mostly just a matter of my mom-in-law getting to eat my served-with-the-coffee cookies, and she really enjoys that. It takes a while to adjust.... But my family saw me drop weight, and I shouted my improvements of HbA1c off the rooftops, (Read: Facebook), so... Yeah... It'll stick eventually.
 

Yes - the 'diabetes can be reversed' info in the media (which is a good thing after all), does have a downside when some folks, and I too am stunned how many non-diabetic folks that can include - and use this out of context information as yet another stick to beat a passing diabetic with! And yeah, sadly, it comes down to, well, dare I say it - folks who like to bully a bit (and your workmate does indeed sound like one of those!) I say this as a person whose type two does not get reversed from the Newcastle diet - and I have tried it twice. (You are welcome to use me as a case in point to Bullying-with-the-Newcastle Diet-folk .)

I think about this issue a lot, and wonder if it is because we type twos are walking talking testaments to what can seriously go wrong with our modern diets in our bodies - and we are a bit scary for that reason? We need to be controlled? Even - punished a little? (thinking about plain old bullying behaviour as control and causing hurt to another in order to feel better yourself.) Anything in order to put the food and us! - over there in a corner, mentally I mean, where the whole ugly business can't touch them. And the frankenfoods can keep on trucking into them.

Especially when the relationship between the modern bad diets and cardio vascular disease, and some cancers rears its ugly heads. Then we are seriously talking mass involvement! (And the human species is rather a mass...)

And yes - good point about food and eating being in the shared arena. I was told at a workplace that it was not OK to take the pastry off the (workplace bought) sausage rolls - I mean who was that hurting??!! By an otherwise perfectly nice woman, she seemed.

I'm very pleased to be able to share this stuff with other folks with diabetes. And figure out ways together to deal with the older related women, and workmates, in our lives trying to meddle with our diets, for sure!
 
My husband is being very supportive although he found the first few shopping trips a challenge. He'd find 'healthy' things to ask me about which were off the list. My eyes were still dodgy and blurry so I got him to help me read the carbs on packets. He started finding better things for me then and now enjoys finding me low carb instead. He now tells me not to eat stuff when I could be tempted.
Maybe that could be a strategy for you?
 
Its fab that your husband is so supportive. I think its key to success having people around you.. I am very grateful my husband is so supportive as well - he eats what I eat - including reducing his portions. I'm sire he sneaks stuff when i'm not around but he never talks about it & he's been incredibly encouraging. I think it scared him when i was diagnosed.

I totally understand why he doesn't want to confront his mum with her unreasonableness to me - he actually thinks she might be going a bit dotty which is also quite scary for him - so atm I won't push it!
 

Are you my sister-in-law?!?
. I feel your pain, although my MIL doesn’t know my DX as I just can’t cope telling her. It’s a generational thing. Fat is bad yet cake and sweet things are just fine.
Good luck with that one!
 
AloeSvea said:
I was told at a workplace that it was not OK to take the pastry off the (workplace bought) sausage rolls - I mean who was that hurting??
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It's odd isn't it......it's the equivalent of ....well I can't think of anything...maybe taking blue post it notes in preference to yellow.....who cares and, this is the thing, why do people comment, why do they feel it's OK to judge?

There is definitely something going on with the "ownership" of health and food which isn't fact based, this can lead (for the fanciful) to all sorts of futuristic dystopian constructs (though sadly not, so far, a best selling trilogy in five books with lucrative film spin off!)
 
@copilost - I would read your trilogy and watch the films - for sure! (Just make sure the additional two books post trilogy are not ghost written in order to fund any drop-kick relations after you are dead though!) (Remember I am Swedish too, a la the horrible tale of poor Stig Larsson and his trilogy, film spin offs, plus two books not by him...)

Yeah - where the big bucks are concerned, people can behave very very very very badly (even relations, too sadly) - bringing this back to food choices and the big picture of health, and the profit principle in what is going on with food right now.
 
AloeSvea said:
are not ghost written in order to fund any drop-kick relations after you are dead though
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laughing so hard!
AloeSvea said:
Yeah - where the big bucks are concerned, people can behave very very very very badly (even relations, too sadly)
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But they don't know they are....that's what is so scary, they have been 'walked' to this position but don't even know it!

#Working on the screenplay (not really) #talentfree
 
Talent-free? I don't believe it!

About folks not knowing they are behaving badly - I hope you are right @copilost

About my own stepmother - I am not so sure! She is, ultimately, very interested in one-upmanship and in competitions with her, and her own children coming first etc etc. (But she has many fine qualities...)

As for board members/shareholders/family dynasties in 'frankenfood' companies - I do often wonder how they factor in that they have loved ones who may and do also suffer from the affects of too much sugar in combo with bad fats, additives/toxins etc etc. Not to mention themselves!

I fear the 'short term gain' principle wins out over the longterm health and wellbeing and logic and sense and..., as it so often does in our species. (Oh yes - dystopian futures...)
 
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