Husband Diagnosed
Hello Jewl,
Ok, you get a lot of information over the next few weeks and months, lots here one hopes, lots from the medical professionals as well. There are all kinds of diabetes but boiled down the body is NOT functioning as it is supposed to. It is not producing a hormone called insulin which among its other many talents, turns the food we eat into energy the body can access. No insulin from the body and there is no access to the energy.
Let me try this metaphor:
The body is like a car. You put fuel into the car… no fuel, dead car, won’t run right? When he eats food, any food it goes into the “gas tank” and sits there… slowly being digested. Now, in order for your husband to use those nutrients, to get access to the energy he’s digested and is available in the gas tank… he must have insulin.
Insulin is literally the key which opens the valve and lets the engine HAVE the gas stored in the tank. WIthout the body producing insulin there is/are valves but they are literally welded shut.
Now regardless of which type of diabetes he turns out to have… your husband is pouring sludge, kerosene and as much crap food as he can get into that tank of his…. it stops NOW or his engine will seize up, and he’ll be dead not killed by diabetes very likely… but by a massive heart attack.
You get to join him in the healthy path. Toss out EVERY piece of junk food on the shelves, cakes, cookies, chips, pretzels, marshmallows, all the sodas EVERYTHING. I promise you it will be hard, make no mistake. But having any access to those foods makes it far too easy to just “…have one…” (yeah right, half the bag later…)
Remove them from reach and no more access to garbage.
There’s more but that’s the basic route you’ll be on. If your husband is foolish/silly and continues unchanged whatever his diagnosis might end up, he will STILL eat the garbage, the junk but WILL pay for it… his body will GUARANTEE he does.
Good eating habits take a while to build, he’s how old? If he doesn’t get overwhelmed, (or give up) he’s going to loose weight just because he’s eating more reasonable, smaller quantities. And please do not mistake what he will be told as some kind of “Food Nazi Death Sentence…” whereby you both are sentenced to a thousand years of only cucumbers and celery sticks. Its not….
But, it will take time to figure out how to measure & estimate quantities of different foods. Until its accurate and second nature, you’ve got to remove the temptations until he can make an informed choice… can have the chocolate cake again, BUT not also the baked potato, the 24oz of beer, and some of those little candy things on the way out the restaurant door…. He will eat them again, it just takes a while to figure out carbs/calories accurately. Once you do its a game called “balance”…
Jeff