Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was just diagnosed with prediabetes this week and have been in a shame spiral since. And wracked with thoughts like ‘now I can’t bake cookies with my son’ or ‘I knew I was too lazy’. It feels so nice to hear from someone going through the same thing and facing the same struggles. And knowing there is another way forward besides restriction. Wasn’t a subscriber before today but am now.
Thank you for sharing. I, too, have prediabetes. And PCOS. And I struggle so hard with diet culture, having grown up in a Chinese family who alternated between telling me I was too fat to berating me for not eating enough. I yo-yo dieted for so much of my teens and twenties and am still so broken from that. I’m definitely going to check out the podcast and Diabetes Digital.
I literally sobbed reading this and then came back to it today after meeting with a dietician to talk about my PCOS and other stuff. Her answer: eating more (like a lot more 😮💨) including more carbs. Our bodies need food. We deserve to nourish ourselves. I’m grateful for your writing and this corner of the internet.
This is is so similar to the spiral I went down with a recent diagnosis (of something else).
"One of the most insidious things about diet culture is how well it convinces you that you must be doing something wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be like (*waves hands around*) this. And one of the most insidious things about using food to control your anxiety is that it seems like it makes so much sense: Control what you put in your body, and by extension control what your body will do and how it will perform with those “right inputs,” and by extension prevent anything bad like disease or death from happening to you."
This is an incredible way of putting it! Thank you so much for sharing.
This made me feel so seen! I also recently got diagnosed with prediabetes (my doctor actually mentioned that she's been seeing a lot of her East Asian clients get their results back with higher A1C levels, like me lol). It was frustrating as hell because I'm a powerlifting athlete that regularly trains and am already wired in about my diet. The whole "damn, what AM I allowed to eat??" was really tough, and I appreciate all of the thoughts and reframing you share here.
This is so timely. I’ve been caught in this spiral for the past two months since receiving the same diagnosis. It even threw me for a loop while sick with bronchitis — am I “allowed” to have chicken soup if it has noodles in it????? Thank you for sharing, you really helped me see a bit more clearly.
A friend recommended your newsletter to me after I shared my recent type 2 diagnosis — after sitting on it for several months, after almost an entire adulthood spent prediabetic and revenge eating my way through [bread of choice] too. My first few months were absolutely spent in a disordered eating backslide after unhelpful comments from my PCP at diagnosis. So I got an endo, got a CGM, started “eating to my meter,” and stopped counting carbs or anything else. I walk more after meals, have added more fiber to them and try to eat my protein/fat/fiber first off the plate … and my A1C got a lot better. And I still get to eat dessert sometimes when the mood calls for it.
And I feel physically better now, which doesn’t hurt. I was so deeply fatigued in a disabling way that I thought was just mega depression but was actually also my physical health deteriorating. (If you can believe it, I was also diagnosed after going to a new PCP for a Wellbutrin script.)
Now, I feel like my world is opening up again. Because I have energy again, because I have brought new and exciting meals and recipes into my life, and because I have a reason to force myself to take care of myself.
It’s not good news, exactly. I am still navigating weird food feelings, a life of diet culture and toxic inheritance from my parents trying and failing to stop diabetes from afflicting yet another generation of my family. I still get frustrated I can’t go to town on my Bad Day Pasta of choice with the same gusto I once did. But at the same time, in some ways, getting diabetes officially added to my medical record has unexpectedly become one of the better things to have happened to me.
That said, my endo office’s diabetes educator is old school diet culture awful. I’ll definitely be looking into Diabetes Digital!
Wow, thank you for this. I was also diagnosed with pre-diabetes and chronic fatigue syndrome this week and the shame spiral, diet culture, need to take control is so challenging. I see you and I appreciate you talking about this.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was just diagnosed with prediabetes this week and have been in a shame spiral since. And wracked with thoughts like ‘now I can’t bake cookies with my son’ or ‘I knew I was too lazy’. It feels so nice to hear from someone going through the same thing and facing the same struggles. And knowing there is another way forward besides restriction. Wasn’t a subscriber before today but am now.
Thank you for sharing. I, too, have prediabetes. And PCOS. And I struggle so hard with diet culture, having grown up in a Chinese family who alternated between telling me I was too fat to berating me for not eating enough. I yo-yo dieted for so much of my teens and twenties and am still so broken from that. I’m definitely going to check out the podcast and Diabetes Digital.
I literally sobbed reading this and then came back to it today after meeting with a dietician to talk about my PCOS and other stuff. Her answer: eating more (like a lot more 😮💨) including more carbs. Our bodies need food. We deserve to nourish ourselves. I’m grateful for your writing and this corner of the internet.
This is is so similar to the spiral I went down with a recent diagnosis (of something else).
"One of the most insidious things about diet culture is how well it convinces you that you must be doing something wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be like (*waves hands around*) this. And one of the most insidious things about using food to control your anxiety is that it seems like it makes so much sense: Control what you put in your body, and by extension control what your body will do and how it will perform with those “right inputs,” and by extension prevent anything bad like disease or death from happening to you."
This is an incredible way of putting it! Thank you so much for sharing.
This made me feel so seen! I also recently got diagnosed with prediabetes (my doctor actually mentioned that she's been seeing a lot of her East Asian clients get their results back with higher A1C levels, like me lol). It was frustrating as hell because I'm a powerlifting athlete that regularly trains and am already wired in about my diet. The whole "damn, what AM I allowed to eat??" was really tough, and I appreciate all of the thoughts and reframing you share here.
This is so timely. I’ve been caught in this spiral for the past two months since receiving the same diagnosis. It even threw me for a loop while sick with bronchitis — am I “allowed” to have chicken soup if it has noodles in it????? Thank you for sharing, you really helped me see a bit more clearly.
A friend recommended your newsletter to me after I shared my recent type 2 diagnosis — after sitting on it for several months, after almost an entire adulthood spent prediabetic and revenge eating my way through [bread of choice] too. My first few months were absolutely spent in a disordered eating backslide after unhelpful comments from my PCP at diagnosis. So I got an endo, got a CGM, started “eating to my meter,” and stopped counting carbs or anything else. I walk more after meals, have added more fiber to them and try to eat my protein/fat/fiber first off the plate … and my A1C got a lot better. And I still get to eat dessert sometimes when the mood calls for it.
And I feel physically better now, which doesn’t hurt. I was so deeply fatigued in a disabling way that I thought was just mega depression but was actually also my physical health deteriorating. (If you can believe it, I was also diagnosed after going to a new PCP for a Wellbutrin script.)
Now, I feel like my world is opening up again. Because I have energy again, because I have brought new and exciting meals and recipes into my life, and because I have a reason to force myself to take care of myself.
It’s not good news, exactly. I am still navigating weird food feelings, a life of diet culture and toxic inheritance from my parents trying and failing to stop diabetes from afflicting yet another generation of my family. I still get frustrated I can’t go to town on my Bad Day Pasta of choice with the same gusto I once did. But at the same time, in some ways, getting diabetes officially added to my medical record has unexpectedly become one of the better things to have happened to me.
That said, my endo office’s diabetes educator is old school diet culture awful. I’ll definitely be looking into Diabetes Digital!
Wow, thank you for this. I was also diagnosed with pre-diabetes and chronic fatigue syndrome this week and the shame spiral, diet culture, need to take control is so challenging. I see you and I appreciate you talking about this.