High fiber and protein foods that don't taste like ass

Food and I have had a tough relationship lately. There are some things I eat that taste so good, I feel like I'm experiencing them for the very first time every time. And other things I eat just to put nutrients in my system. I waffle between starving and completely uninterested in anything. One of those things that wasn't necessarily in the pregnancy brochure is the need for extra fiber to keep ones system from shutting down. However, my dietitian harps on protein and ignores anything I say about fiber. If I eat nothing but steak and cheese for the protein, though, I may not survive. (Side note: I've always figured that those people who eat nothing but cheese must have bowel movements that are more like a menstrual cycle where they get all bloated and cranky beforehand but only poop once a month or so.)

So since I had to go to the grocery store anyways, I decided to share some of my favorite high fiber and protein foods of late. As always, I'm open to suggestions.

Quaker High Fiber oatmeal

I eat this every morning for breakfast with a hard-boiled egg. It has 10g of fiber in it! It's also got 4g of protein, so add that to the 6g for my egg and it's not too shabby.

Kashi Go Lean bars

I stumbled upon these in the Power Bar aisle and they're way tastier. They hold up well to living in ones purse or laptop bag for weeks at a time and they have enough protein and fiber to make the pretty versatile (8g of protein and 5g of fiber). They make a good breakfast on the go or snack. The blue box of cinnamon coffee cake is THE BOMB but they're really hard to find.

Fiber Plus and Active Lifestyle chewy bars

I first found the Fiber Plus bars and they're pretty tasty. Then I stumbled upon the Active Lifestyle bars in Kroger and they're a bit more tasty and less heavy. Both brands have a whopping 9g of fiber in them but only 2g of protein.

Frosted Mini Wheats and Fiber One raisin bran clusters

These are my two favorite cereals of late. The mini wheats have 5g of fiber per serving and a respectable 5g of protein, while the Fiber One earns its name with 11g of fiber (!) and 4g of protein. I had low blood sugar last night (31mg/dL) and ate three servings of Fiber One cereal to fix it. It was delicious.

Other random snacks to mix and match

Pretty much every day I have something from this photo. The apple and fiber selects have a decent amount of fiber in them (5g per serving) and the peanut butter, cheese and yogurt all have good levels of protein (7g, 5g and 6g respectively). After some of those high fiber things I've listed before, I can manage a bit of cheddar cheese and live to tell the tale. Oh, and fuji apples are the best, hands down. Our child's middle name may be Fuji.

This bear is apparently flying on a trapeze

I've spent about $200 for test strips since Friday. Since the beginning of the month, I've been trying to get my test strips from Liberty Medical (yeah, Wilford Brimley's place) with no luck. I bought 50 strips on Friday hoping they would last me until my refills came. Yesterday I had to buy another hundred. I called Liberty today to find out what the hold up is only to find out that they claim to be waiting on doctor's orders. I've been diabetic for 24 years yet I have to have an annual doctor's notes saying it's okay for me to have supplies that I'm going to pay for. It's like needing a hall pass for a disease.

I'm running out of CGM sensors and I've been out of test strips for weeks. If I run out of sensors, I'll be going through test strips even more than I already have. Even with the sensor, I tested my sugar 15 times today (at $1.20 each from our local Rite Aid).

As luck would have it, I've reached my 23rd week of pregnancy and as the ultrasound technician was kind enough to explain to me, this is when the placenta starts really growing with speed and it trashes my blood sugars.

Every day it's like wrestling a bear to get my blood sugars down with only sporadic success. Without sensors or test strips, it's like paying hundreds of dollars to wrestle a bear blindfolded.

I could use a diabetes vacation right about now

This is a sample of what my last two days have been like.

First, some explanation of the picture. Remember my blood sugars are supposed to stay under 150 at all times. I highlight my morning fasting blood sugars in blue so the dietitian can scan through them over three weeks (she complained about that a month ago that my chart was too confusing for her to read). I also label my breakfast, lunch and dinner meals to help break up each day and I made a pink header for each day to help separate those in each week. I do a new worksheet for each week, starting on Monday. I log my blood sugar, a description of the food, estimated carb content, how much insulin I took and any notes. I also added that protein column this week as a bit of a "screw you" after my last appointment. Oh and while I'm not a military time kind of person at all, it's much easier for logging data quickly.

What is so infuriating is that the dietitians want to have some reason (generally something I did wrong) that causes any blood sugar out of range. It's how they feel helpful. But if you press them too much with "alright, I give up. You tell me why my blood sugars were so high all day!" what usually happens then is they give some lame excuse of "well, sometimes there just isn't an explanation." Well, that's just fucking great.

I can't wear my infusion sites on my stomach anymore because the skin is tight and sensitive but everywhere else I've tried so far hurts and happens to be some place I run into all the time so I'm afraid I'm going to rip them out. I got a huge bruise on my arm from my last CGM sensor so much so that it hurt to sleep on that side. My blood sugar is 211 right now, despite taking twice the insulin I should have at lunch (I bolused for it and then punted on half the meal because it was gross).

The other day I was casually trying to explain something about one of the many devices I wear attached to me or some complicated routine I go through to manage all this and someone remarked, "I just couldn't do all that. If that were me, I'd just die." Really? You'd let something like diabetes sucker-punch you like that? You'd just give up? You'd just find someone else to make you a baby or tell you what to eat or do your math for you? God I hope not.

Matt used to talk about the hassles of his colostomy then laugh and say, "it sure beats being dead, though!" It's hard and it's unfair and it's a giant pain in the ass, but it's just another one of those things that isn't going to get better by ignoring it. I was hoping writing all this down would make me feel better, but I'm still pissed off.

I'll change my infusion site and tubing in case it's gone bad (wish me luck finding a new spot that doesn't hurt). I'll close my office door and have a good cry about it. I'll drink more water and check my blood again in an hour. And I'll just keep going. They don't make vacations from stuff like this.