Sabotaged by partner ?

Hi Mat,

If I'm completely honest, I don't think she is trying to sabotage your good efforts. I know you're keen to control your carbs and that is completely understandable. What you have to remember, however, is that she isn't diabetic. She has no need to carb count like you do. She needs to be supportive of your diet and lifestyle, but you need to support hers too.

My partner HATES low carb meals - in fact it's the more carbs the better! We try and compromise - same base meal but small difference so he gets his carbs and I have still get something that suits me. We still have 'treats' in the house that he can eat if and when he wants to.

You need to find a solution that suits you both. But I honestly don't think she is trying to sabotage your control and probably doesn't realise how it's making you feel.

Em

Hi Mat

We've had a couple of threads like this recently but with the sexes the other way round! My opinion is the same. Your partner needs to grow up / (wo)man up and support you as your health has to take priority at the moment. So try and get things sorted now while its still early on.

You're only a couple of weeks in from diagnosis and its hard enough working out what you can safely eat let alone having to try and work out separate meals.

To ease the pressure why not try cooking things where the high carb bit is separate so cook a curry but you eat more curry and minimal rice, spag bol you eat more spag and minimise the spagettii, sunday roast you eat more veg, meat etc but minimize on the pots etc. Do a fry up bacon, eggs, mushrooms, chips but minimize the chips. Have no idea if what I've said is any help as each family is used to eating different things.

You will of course have to resist the temptations. My children have all flown the nest but when they come home they WILL taunt me. My daughter is especially bad. If they are snacking on too many nice things I take myself off and have a bath and just remove myself from the situation.

I think my wife (of 6 months) is sabtoging me too...

When I was first diagnosed, it was "we're all in this together", not sweets, chocolate, no biscuits...
...it lasted about a month. Now my non-diabetic family, eat non-diabetic food, while I eat meat and veg.

You just get used to it. It's not fair expecting them to follow your diet.

The fish and chips thing is a bit out of order, mind. Luckily our family night out of choice has always been Nandos, which is just about perfect for a diabetic, so that's never been an issue.

(...and I was joking in the first line, my beautiful wife cooks something special for me almost every night, if it wasn't for her I'd be on a diet that consisted entirely of steak and eggs).

My partner has been very supportive but about two weeks in he went mental and came home with a HUGE bag of chocolate bars etc! It was a one off and I don't know what inspired it. I think perhaps he was a bit panicky that I'd somehow force him to be a pretend diabetic, but now he knows I still cater for all sorts. :roll:

If I'm honest Mat I think your being a bit unreasonable, it is you who is diabetic not your wife or anyone else in your family so why should they have to eat the same way as you do. TBH this is why I have never gone down the low carb route to control, I do low carb but I dont avoid carbs I just eat what I know my meter tells me is OK, so I dont eat a different diet to the rest of the family I just have less rice, potato, bread and every other carby food than everyone else.

We always have a white cut loaf and a Burgen or Wholegrain loaf, we have only ever eaten basmati rice as we like it, we have chocolate biscuits and crisps and all the other sweet or carby snacks every family has I just dont eat them. The only food that we rarely if ever eat now is Pasta which I do find very hard to tolerate but other than than that I eat a the same meals as everyone else just less of it.

Diabetes is for life and you have to accept that not everyone is going to want to eat low carb meals every day, so I think you either have to accept that you are going to have to cater for yourself or just eat the non carby bits of every day family cooking or you are going to have some serious conflict in your life.

A once in a while trip to the chippy for lunch is no big deal, we regularly drive down to Hastings to our favourite fish n chip restaurant maybe once every 5 or 6 weeks, I have cod and chips and I eat the cod but only a small amount of the batter and only a handful of chips......Lovely :thumbup:

I was determined not to let diabetes run my life and it doesnt, I eat to my meter and by lots and lots of testing I know roughly what I can and can not eat, and its up to me to have the self control to stick to that, I personally feel it would be totally wrong to try to inflict my diet on anyone else.

I am lucky in that my husband and children (8, 17 and 19) are all happy to eat the low carb food that I cook and bake, although they do eat more fruit and have new potatoes or basmati rice with their meals, they eat the low carb breads I bake.
My daughters absolutely love baking, and its always low carb goods, they take great delight in telling people 'this muffin/cake is sugarfree and low carb'.

It all depends on how flexible people are, and a willingness to try something new, at the end of the day, sugary foods, high carbs arent that good for anyone, diabetic or not.

WhitbyJet said:

It all depends on how flexible people are, and a willingness to try something new, at the end of the day, sugary foods, high carbs arent that good for anyone, diabetic or not.

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I think in reality it really depends on who in the family does the lions share of the cooking, the diabetic or the non diabetic and I cant agree with your last statement either carbs are no problem for non diabetics its eating habits that can be good or bad

If I wore fur or went fox hunting I wouldn't expect everyone else to happily do the same. Ok, a bit extreme but I'm saying that I don't expect everyone around me to be diabetic with me.
When I was younger ( a million years ago ) I was a super-strict vegetarian and soon ended up cooking meat for others whilst not eating it myself. Although, I did go out of my way to find recipes that everyone loved and those were a great success and I now do that with low carb recipes. Variety is key! Check out the low carb section.
You are probably still finding your way with diabetes. Your family are still finding their way with your diabetes too. It takes time.
Good luck and stay with us!

Well Sid each to their own, I hae noticed that you are fond of making a stab at low carbers, but I was only stating my point of view, I dont expect everyone to agree with me.
I am lucky to have such a supportive family, the children dont feel that they are missing out on anything, if they did, they would be free to eat something else, its not an army camp in our house. Eg I cook pasta sauce, typical Bolognese, I eat mine with shredded cabbage sauteed in butter, I cook spaghetti for the girls (son is away at uni), both wanted to eat 'cabb-etti' = shredded cabbage mixed in with the spaghetti, so is that so wrong in your eyes? Their own free will. Eating this way may well presere their pancreatic function as they get older.
My husband is open to low carb eating, low carb is widespread in Scandinavian countries, my husband is Swedish.

MadMat said:

Spag bol - used wholemeal pasta, they didn't even notice the difference

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Did you test after this meal Mat only I have found no difference between wholemeal pasta and the ordinary stuff, just a thought.

WhitbyJet said:

I hae noticed that you are fond of making a stab at low carbers,

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Am I? thats strange because I am a low carber, I think you may find that I disagree with the way that some low carbers try to tell everyone that their way is the only way to control your diabetes, I have no problem with low carb diets per se. Only when I hear someone tell a newly diagnosed diabetic that they should cut out all carbs or that carbs are bad, evil or any other emotive adjectives that spring up often. I simply prefer to tell people to eat to their meter and merely cut back on carbs to a point that is conducive to good control.

Sorry if you have a problem with that

Now that your testing Mat you will soon find your own limits on the amounts of carbs and what types of carbs you can handle :thumbup:

I actually find a Sunday roast one of my best meals for a postprandial reading but then I generally only eat two small halves of roast pots (20g carbs average) and some veg so quite a low carb meal really plus whatever fruit I might finish with :thumbup:

Unfortunately, partners can undermine our efforts.
My husband is T1 and also comlplains if i give him what I think he needs. He'll also have sandwiches for lunch, which of course I don't . It's not deliberately against my efforts, just him having what he wants to eat and being fussy about what he's offered. for example, he refuses even to try Burgen bread.
Since he retired and is at home a lot, he's started to try to take over all the cooking.
Last week, I got a fantastic deal on some fillet steak tips [£10:99 a kilo!!]
So he made a stir fry and only when i was eating it, did I find the rice under my meat and veggies. It was hard to avoid, but he thought he was helpful, as there wasn't a lot of it.
Getting hopping mad doesn't help. I just have to get to the cooker first and not just to clean it.
Hana
Ps I plan a whole week's dinner menus before shopping, but he still squirms around them.

Just because certain foods may be off-limit to us shouldn't mean they are to the rest of our families, I quite enjoy seeing them indulge in the occasional treat and don't for one-minute begrudge them of their indulgences.

My brother was a vegetarian for 22 years, he did most the cooking in the house and would quite happily prepare and cook meat of any description for the whole family, he didn't once try and pass on his views to his wife and children and just ate the same meals minus the meat......although he did eat meat substitutes. Around 10 years ago he went to my mothers and she had the frying pan on cooking bacon, the smell was irresistible and that was the end of his vegetarian days...sitting with a bacon butty in his hand :lol: