The Post-Easter Edition

Hope everyone who celebrated it enjoyed a happy Easter; hope those that didn't enjoyed a great weekend!

We had a nice time over the Easter weekend:  excited kids, big ol' living room egg hunt, special time spent with family and family of family. Ours was a rainy Easter; I don't recall ever having a rainy Easter in California! This means the hills will get to stay green a little bit longer; everything would have been brown by now without the rainfall we've had this spring.

Thing 2 was pretty excited about Easter!
(So was Thing 1, but it was manifested in wiggling rather than making a countdown chart.)

So why am I writing today, a Monday? I guess it's in the interest of full disclosure, and to figure out how I felt about eating more sweets in a single day than I have since I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes nearly 2 years ago. Some history: my diagnosis happened in early summer.  As I've written elsewhere, it completely turned my world...well...opposite.  In some ways, the timing was great, because I had a whole summer with no holiday minefields to overcome and no school schedule to work around.  By Easter #1 with type 2 diabetes, I'd lost a bunch of weight, was exercising regularly and eating sensibly, and was in good enough shape to have two pieces of candy for dessert at the annual gathering without totally blowing my blood glucose levels or going off on a binge.  I had good strategy for our own Easter candy: get stuff I didn't care about for the kids and get a little bit of high-quality 70% chocolate for my husband and I to share. That was my strategy this year, too, but it didn't fully work out that way.

I could blame the well-meaning person who sent us nearly 6 pounds of See's, the premium candy of my childhood Easters.

I could blame Mr. Handsome-and-Handy, who opened one of the boxes on Saturday.

I could blame feeling down and crappy from having a nasty chest cold thing that has totally sapped my energy.

I could blame the human cultural tendency for food-as-celebration, or Mary See and her minions who followed for engineering their tastebud trifectas of sugar, fat, and salt.

But really, I can only blame me.

Thing is, I don't really feel like blaming anyone or anything.  It seems to me to give too much power to what happened.  I'd rather think about what happened, chalk it up to experience and being human, hopefully laugh about it a little with people who understand, and move on.

Memo
To: Pubsgal
From: Me, Myself, and I

It has come to our attention that we ate things and quantities that are in direct conflict with our health goals this past weekend.  The good news is that we didn't eat as much as in pre-diagnosis days.  That opened box would have been emptied and spinning on the ground like a fallen hubcap mere minutes after we'd been let loose on it.  The bad news is that we let one or two pieces turn into many, even though they were sensibly spaced through the day and consumed with healthy foods.  The scary news is that we don't even remember how many pieces we ate, we knew there would be little opportunity to even play it out of our system due to the rain, and that we knew full well that foods like this cause addictive behavior patterns in rodents.  (Side note: For those that already read Debby's excellent "Back in the Saddle" post, this is the same article.  I'd seen it before, but I don't recall the mention of "sausage" and "cheesecake", which gave me a chill; it's not just processed flour+HFCS foods.  And the researchers' question of "why do some people who have a biological tendency towards addiction go to drugs, while others go to alcohol, and others go to food?" merits an entire post on its own.  Okay, back to the memo...) We respectfully note that See's assorted chocolates are officially labeled a "trigger food" and are summarily placed on the "really, just don't go there" list.  On a positive note, we commend ourself for taking the remaining boxes to the Easter gathering and to the farthest removed breakrooms at our place of employment.  We also duly note that any withdrawal-like symptoms may be cross-checked and dismissed by use of the blood glucose meter, and can be endured in conjunction with that nasty cold.  April madness must not be allowed to bring May badness.

P.S. I just couldn't resist going with Easter egg colors for April, I know it's a little busy....