Whether considering going on a low-carb diet and stalling around a bit, or stuck in-between diet-rounds making lame excuses for not getting back on program, there comes a point where reality plows into us. That point, for me, was driven home a little more than a week ago.
I was standing in the kitchen, frying up a cast-iron pan full of potatoes, and my husband had just walked outside to have a cigarette. In Utah, there's an extra state tax placed on the darn things, so they are really, really expensive here.
I had been mourning our current situation, worried because my blood glucose levels were over-the-top with all of the fried potatoes and brown rice I'd been eating daily. Due to circumstances beyond our control (known as: no work = no money), and no food storage of any kind to fall back on, we were eating the cheapest foods I could get our hands on: eggs, potatoes, rice chex, pork, a bit of marked-down ground beef, and brown rice.
My blood sugar levels were so bad, I began skipping the bowl of rice chex for lunch awhile back, and cut myself down to 2 meals a day to give my poor pancreas a rest. At least for a few hours. And I kept telling myself that as soon as things improved, I would return to low carb and right things. Except things didn't get better. In fact, they got worse.
Our saving grace was the owner of the house we're currently renting told us we could work off July's rent by fixing the sprinkler system and taking down the wall paper in the bedroom, among other things, so we took him up on the offer.
As I stood there in the kitchen that morning, cooking breakfast, I was suddenly struck with the financial reality I'd been denying for weeks. That the cost of a week's salad and veggies was no more than a pack and a half of cigarettes, even at Utah prices. More than 10lbs of potatoes and a 2lb bag of rice, yes, but we were maxing out one credit card after another, or spilling over into our checking account's overdraft protection program to get my husband his cigarettes in-between jobs.
So who was I kidding, saying that we couldn't afford for me to go back onto low carb?
The only person I was hurting with my lame, low-carb diet excuses was me. I'm the one with messed up blood sugar levels. I'm the one who is suffering with neuropathy. And I'm the one who is in danger of becoming diabetic if I don't get my blood sugar back down to normal as fast as possible. So even though we really couldn't afford to spend the money, we took the next little bit that came our way and got me the salad, broccoli, carrots, and green beans I needed so badly.
The surprising outcome was that while we were shopping, a friend of ours happened to be there, and shoved a ten-dollar bill into my husband's pocket while he was looking at some fresh plums. Even with a few pieces of fresh fruit, the bill only came to $9.50.
The take-away lesson for me was that low carb is only too expensive if you want it to be.
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