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When you’re in a group setting, like having lunch with coworkers or at a gathering with friends/family, how often do you feel you are judged or criticized for your food choices because of your T1D? Please feel free to share more details of your experiences in the comments.
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Rarely. My biggest issue is being included/invited. Their excuse? They don’t want me to be tempted to eat the wrong thing. I don’t bother (unless its family or people with whom I would socialize regularly) but I do tell them that I have been thriving with T1D for 40+ years and my labs basically come back like the “normies” (I often have to define that term). I then tell them that it is the company and comeraderie that I like – food isn’t of great interest to me. Just so long as the choose a place with good coffee and/or iced tea I am happy. I’ll even contribute to the tip.
If I don’t give them a reason to judge me, then there is nothing to worry about, right?
When others are drinking or having dessert I will get comments on why I am not participating. Unless I am with a group that already knows I am a T1D.
Never…or at least that I can remember. People have been knowledgeable and supportive. These days my friends themselves seem to be more in tune with healthy eating than when I was younger. (I’m 72.)
If I’d been worrying about what other people thought about my food choices for 69 years, I guess diabetes might have been horrible. But I haven’t, and it hasn’t.
Sometimes people think that because I have diabetes I cannot eat dessert. I just tell them I bolus for it, that I manually do what their body does automatically.
My diabetes is very well under control.
Never. I am so rip-roaringly insouciant, that my standard reply is almost Robert-Burns “How do I abhor thee? Let me count the ways.”
You are drop-kicked out of the diabetic universe, so cease & desist.
Being polite, I tidy it up a bit. But not too much.
Oops! Not Robert Burns but Elizabeth Barrett Browning!
As my partner says it is challenging to shop for me because of my food allergies like milk and fructose (strangely, I can have kefir no problem). When we go out to eat on the rare occasion, I try to pick places that keep the meal as clean as possible, prepared with oils and fats that are fresh and little preservatives. I think I would eat clean even if I didn’t have type 1, but we’ll never know.
Eva, have you tried goat milk? Or, lactose-free milk or soy milk?
Rarely. There have been a few occasions over the years. I am T1D, plus have Celiac disease, so I’m very careful about what I eat. A friend of a friend openly criticized me in front of everyone because I wouldn’t eat some of the deserts or drink beer or liquor. He yelled, “Stop eating so damn healthy and enjoy yourself once in a while. You gotta have some fun in your life.” He continued to push alcohol on me. I just ignored him and stayed clear or him.
Another time, while visiting my sister, I was measuring my breakfast cereal, for which I measure 1 and 1/3 cup. But, to be quicker, I just do a heaping cup. My sister berated me about why I bother measuring my food if I don’t use the measuring cup correctly. She didn’t know that I was measuring 1 and 1/3 cup. It was frustrating, to say the least.
But, rarely.
Ha! I weigh or measure just about everything i eat, Lawrence. NO, we T1Ds are NOT obsessive-compulsive. Maybe we’re “religious”. Isn’t ritual an aspect of every religion? Doesn’t every healthy T1D follow set behaviors daily? Rituals of one sort or another seem to be common to most,i if not all, hundreds of societies.
I really don’t care if they like my food choices. I am eating it not them and everyone who knows me knows I have type 1 diabetes so they learn from me to eat better.
I don’t feel judged because most of the time the people I’m with forget that I have diabetes because I am discreet. But my husband will usually ask me “Did I do my insulin?” once I begin to eat. I try to choose from the menu wisely so that I can sit and enjoy the conversation rather than having to get up and go for a walk immediately afterwards.—That doesn’t work a lot of the time but I do try ☹️. And finally, I’ve been diabetic long enough that I don’t care what others think as much as I care about my TIME IN RANGE.
I’m vegan, so if there is any mention of what I eat, it’s about my vegan diet, not my diabetes.
Scott, when younger I was suspicious of vegetarianism. Some of the vegans were so zealous they reminded me of cultists! Maybe your friends had similar past exposure? According to Wikipedia Dr. Deepak Chopra claims Ayurvedic Medicine, which includes vegetarianism, can cure cancer. There are certainly some good things about ancient practices, like a plant-based diet, but curing cancer? Curing T1D? Successfully preventing SOME cancers or SOME types of diabetes is not the sane as CURING ALL types of cancer or ALL types of diabetes. Wider practice of veganism would help prevent much pollution and maybe even slow globval warming according to environmental scientists. (I finally gave up beef, pork, turkey.) 😎
Gosh, my friends/family wish they could eat as well as I do!
I used to all the time with family and friends who I had to educate about type 1 and how. It’s different than type 2 and can eat whatever I
Like now with insulin pump. Most people who know me now don’t say anything. Only someone new.
The comments are usually ‘You can eat that?’ when I have carbs, something with sugar, etc. Always a time to educate the confused 😉
When I was a teen, newly diagnosed, it happened sometimes, “Are you sure you can eat that?” Back then relatives called it “sugar diabetes.” Now, it is questions or looks as I do not eat desserts or sweets anymore, Like I am “missing out.” I do not miss sugar at all. Read the 1975 book Sugar Blues!
Mostly immediate family out of concern for low blood sugar. Lows scare them!
Sometimes, depending on the people and situation. When I was using MDI/testing with a meter I would be asked “Can you eat that?” far more frequently. Now it’s simply not being asked to join because “we didn’t think you could eat the type of food that’s served”.
I wouldn’t say “criticized” but there is one woman at a required monthly lunch who always makes comments and asks the same ?s or delivers the same misinformation every time. She thinks we are friends — but I don’t! No matter how many times over the years I have told her that I have a different disease than her obese brother-in-law, she starts talking about what he should eat and that I should too.
😂
The people I interact with these days know that I’m healthy and fit and have my diabetes under good control so they don’t criticize. If anything, they seem to feel a bit sheepish if I see them make less-than-healthy food choices. I hope they know that I’m not judging THEM.
Since most of the people I eat with know I have T1D, and since I feel comfortable & do not judge myself for having diabetes, my public behaviors now include taking shots, checking my blood glucose levels or choosing not to eat certain foods. So friends can feel comfortable revealed by comments like: I understand why you chose to bring your own meal. Or, I understand why your’re just ordering a salad. Since the “disabled” dropped self-shaming and self-blaming & came out of the closet (like communists, lesbians, gays, AIDS victims, Muslims, Jews, et al) to build powerful social and political movements, I became more authentic, more open, more accepted &.more respected. FDR had to hide the affects of polio. Today restaurants accept people in wheelchairs. it”s now a LAW not to discriminate in public places (& publicly licensed private entities) which makes life easier for EVERYBODY. 😎
I only wish that were true. I live in Florida.
While I have never heard any criticism from others, I have occasionally noticed someone checking out my plate.
I grew up with a lot of food guilt put on me. The education about type 1 diabetes wasn’t as good in the late 70’s. It made me not enjoying eating around other people I usually eat at home, If I need to go out someplace to eat, with family or friends, I just get a salad. Most people don’t question salads 🙂
I chose rarely. I really don’t care what other people think about my food choices. My priority is to stay healthy and never have any diabetes related complications.
Sometimes, but I don’t care what anyone thinks. My business.
It depends who I am with. I have had jobs where coworkers questioned my food choices. My mother also does this. In my current job, no one has asked, which is much less stressful for me. My siblings don’t generally ask, but will warn me if they think something is very sweet.
On the contrary, my co-workers commented that my lunches were always so healthy!!
I N-E-V-E-R share my D with anybody in public with whom I am not intimate/blood related, period. “Most” will have no personal awareness, (by my hand anyway). Those who “do” know, I’ve never been confronted/judged/criticized re: food to my knowledge anyway. I would welcome that “discussion” if someone was stupid enough and dared to try criticizing, much less offering judgement about any of my food choice(s). Likely would a real short “chat”, unless I felt pity for their foolish ignorance. The ~death of the thousand cuts~ seems a likely fair comparison…
This is probably going to sound smug, but I judge others’ food choices much more than any one communicates judgment about mine. Funny note, I lost 78+ pounds over the last year & a half. I did it by controlling portions sizes and by becoming a workout junkie, not by changing my diet. My wife likes to dine out a lot at trendy restaurants and post on social media. I did receive quite a few comments asking how I’m losing weight going out to eat all of the time.
More so when I was younger (from my family) than now. I don’t think most of my friends/coworkers understand it enough to make judgements.