Episode 22: Eating at Restaurants with Type 1 Diabetes

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Eating at restaurants with type 1 diabetes often feels like a major challenge. There are so many things to consider, especially since we don’t know all the ingredients or if there are any hidden sugars.

Some quick tips for eating out as a type 1 diabetic:

Look up the menu ahead of time

Decide ahead of time if you’re going to have dessert

Look on the opposite side of fast food tray papers for nutritional info

Have enough insulin with you or in your pump to cover everything

Don’t be afraid to ask about ingredients or for substitutions

We also talk about pre-bolusing, not bolusing enough, predicting carb counts, and tips that have worked for us while eating at restaurants with type 1 diabetes.

Wins & Fails

Colleen’s Win: I kept my blood sugar in-range on the last day of my infusion site! This is usually difficult because of how Tandem pumps work.

Jessie’s Fail: Jessie forgot her kit while going to the store and felt weird not carrying it.

Hack of the Week

Instead of spending a lot of money on fancy sharps containers, just use a thick-walled plastic container like an old milk jug, vinegar jugs, and other things like that. To dispose of it, just duct tape the cap shut and put in the trash.

Diabetes Spotlight

This week’s spotlight is focused on diaTribe, an online resource for diabetics both type 1 and 2 that always seems to have a relevant blog post or article. Adam Brown, diaTribe’s senior editor through 2019 and now a guest contributor, wrote a post on restaurants and how he handles eating out. You can find it at diatribe.org/restaurants.

diaTribe can act as your one-stop-shop for learning more about diabetes, especially if you start at their resource page.

Especially relevant today is the ever-increasing cost of diabetes care. diaTribe has a directory of information on insurance appeals, saving money on diabetes care, how to get access to insulin, and so much more. All of that information is at diatribe.org/access.

diaTribe is a website URL I give out to anyone who asks about resources for type 1 diabetes. You could spend hours on this website just going down the rabbit hole of knowledge, which is the best way to educate yourself about all the strange things you don’t understand about diabetes or just want to learn more.