Did you remember to cover the popcorn with copious amounts of butter and salt?
I always though popcorn was just a vehicle to deliver salt and butter to my mouth 
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It had oil on it (packaged) but yes, it probably would have tasted a lot better if I’d drenched it. (I can’t eat butter, but find olive oil works just as well.)
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when i began limiting my carbs and going on a HPHF diet, i had no idea that my body would readjust itself as far as expectations; what i mean is that the longer i avoided carbs, the more sensitive to them i became. when i used to be able to eat an english muffin with eggs for breakfast with a regular bolus, i now had to do a dual bolus of 50/50% over 2 hours, and i had to increase my insulin dosage for the exact same meal. it seemed that my body was just no longer interpreting the carbs as it once had.
but then i began, very slowly, to increase my carbs again; and although i began with a lot of spikes and doing a lot of corrections, my body has bounced back and i am completely able to digest carbs w/out the dual bolus or help from extra insulin. and i am not just talking about starchy carbs either; i am talking about things like yogurt, nuts and cheese and proteins.
so, i don’t know if that makes any sense to anybody, but re-introducing my body to carbs slowly has made all of the difference for me and my meals are much easier to prepare and much more enjoyable to eat.
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There’s a sometimes zealous orthodoxy about carbs at the moment, much as there once was about eggs or butter or fatty steaks. I find myself divided. I could go radically low-carb … but then there’s a good chance something that has zero to do with diabetes will kill me. I derive a lot of pleasure from cooking and from eating. The idea of willingly going without for some potential but not guaranteed benefit is just sort of objectionable to me.
However, I find myself eating fewer carbs just because I’m eating less in general. Where I once routinely had two slices of toast for breakfast, now I have one. Where I once went with the suggested serving size for dried pasta of 85 grams, I now weigh out 50, and often end up not eating all of that either. I have not noticed any significant change in my control (nor, unfortunately, in my weight). I think the French are on to the right idea: enjoy good food, but in smallish portions.
I had a friend who said she wouldn’t indulge in pastries until she retired. A year before she retired, she died of cancer. Granted, if there’s an afterlife, she may not be bothered by the fact that she never got to eat pastries. But there’s a lesson in there regarding how to live this life we have that may turn out to be shorter than we hoped. For me, I intellectually recognize the benefits of a low-carb diet, but there’s this thing in life called enjoyment … Let’s check back in 30 years to see who was right.
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I think there is a happy medium in all things, including carbs.
While I don’t think Keto (i.e. <20-30g of carbs a day) is for everyone (us included)
I also don’t think 250g of carbs are necessary.
For us living on 100g or so a day looks pretty normal.
Typical breakfast - 2 egg omelette with vegetables and cheese and a slice of toast (25 carbs or so)
Typical Dinner - piece of protein and two servings of vegetables. (12 - 20 carbs or so)
Lunch can be all over the place, from low carb on some days, to 50-60+ carbs if we eat out.
Is that a restriction? It doesn’t really feel that way. Sometimes I get a little lump when someone offers my son a cookie or cake and he says “no thank you”. But would the cookie or cake really help him?? Interestingly, my D son is the one in the family who liked sweets the least. So it doesn’t really affect him.
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A lot of high-carb foods are comfort foods for me, so modified versions don’t satisfy whatever other cravings are rolled up into the food beyond absolute taste. For instance, I like zucchini or spaghetti squash and think they are very tasty – but they suddenly become depressing to me if I call them “noodles” and try to dress them in pasta sauce.
But any kind of fake burger does not bother me at all, because I never liked the original.
So i think all sorts of complicated calculations go into whether substitute foods are better, worse or interchangeable with equivalents.
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I agree that having food try to be faux versions of other things is self defeating. Zucchini in season right now, and tastes amazing, if you bake it with some hot Italian sausage and top it with cheese. You don’t need to call it anything other than delicious and a zucchini bake.
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What is zucchini called if you spiralize it and don’t bake it? That’s what I refer to as zoodles when talking to others. And ditto with riced cauliflower. And I do tell people that I replaced pasta and rice with these dishes, because it’s true. It’s not so much that I’m trying to pretend that they’re pasta and rice when I’m eating them, but they’ve just become my alternatives to those foods when I get home from work and make dinner. It used to be that I’d make some rice or pasta with sauce and meat. Now I make spiralized zucchini or riced cauliflower with sauce and meat.
I’m actually writing a blog post about my experience transitioning to a low-carb diet, but I think for me it’s a very different experience than many others. I grew up with diabetes and multiple food allergies, so I don’t remember a time when I could truly choose what I ate, nor a time when I could eat and just experience pure enjoyment without the shadow of a possible allergic reaction or high or low blood sugar hanging over my head. As I’ve transitioned to a lower-carb diet, I’ve gradually begun to do more and more cooking from scratch without any boxed or packaged food, and I’ve found a new hobby and skill that I enjoy developing. And, because I’m cooking everything from scratch and have full control over all the ingredients, I don’t have random allergic reactions to hidden ingredients not listed on products. Since it’s low-carb, I don’t have to stress about figuring out a complicated bolus. I don’t have to take time to triple-check an ingredients list or calculate a bolus from a nutritional label. For the first time in my life, I can sit down to a meal and eat and not worry about how it will affect my allergies or diabetes. I just sit down, bolus a unit or so with my pump’s touch bolus (I don’t even have to pull it out), and eat. I think that entire experience is a big part of why I’m so satisfied with this way of eating. To me, it feels almost like freedom.
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@Jen congrats! I am so glad it feels like freedom to you. So glad you’ve found something that works for you, and that feels good and is enjoyable!
We eat a low carb/paleo-ish/gluten- and often grain-free diet, primarily because years of health issues disappeared for me when we started. Ironically, we tried it at EH’s instance to see if it would help with BG control. But I benefitted. And I never thought it was possible - I’d met people who were on similar diets for allergy/health/whatever reasons, and I thought they were nuts. But when eating makes you feel like crap, and you figure out WHAT is causing that, it’s such a relief, I found I didn’t miss most of it.
(And I love zoodles, no matter what you call them. Skinny zucchini tastes so much better than giant mushy zucchini slices to me! Lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, herbs and some of those raw zoodles - best salad ever!)
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@Chris I wonder if he likes sweets less because they made him ill before his diagnosis? EH doesn’t love sweets, and I think he got to that point because he associated feeling crummy with eating cake, cookies, etc. He WILL eat them now sometimes (ugh, the post-Christmas A1C number wasn’t amazing) but not regularly.
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That’s great that it’s helped you! Did it also help with EH’s diabetes control at all?
For me, it’s not really that I didn’t know what I’m allergic to (I carry EpiPens…so my allergies are fairly obvious), but between some of my most severe allergens not being “priority allergens” (and therefore being “allowed” to be in a product without being listed in its ingredients) and cross-contamination due to allergens being in the manufacturing facility, there were a lot of products I would randomly react to.
The one downside to eating this way is it can be very hard when I don’t have a kitchen, such as when I’m travelling. For those times I try to bake low-carb bread so that I can have low-carb sandwiches or other more portable food.
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I totally get that! I can see how if foods both a) made you literally sick shortly after eating them and b) raised BGs, which may make you feel crummy + leads to long-term complications, the positive associations with those foods would be a lot more tenuous, and you’d wind up enjoying foods that didn’t have that effect.
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Wow! Thank you for all of the responses - I’ve had a couple stressful days and just had to shut down for a bit, and it looks like I missed a lot! Definitely gives me some things to think about, when I feel like thinking about it again. 
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Yes, sorry I was unclear about that. We are presently in a weird diet modification/running thing that isn’t currently working well, so of course it clouds up hindsight pretty well.
I believe it made an improvement in diabetes control, which was really nice at the time! Less insulin to correct, fewer wild swings, and he was feeling more energy. We both lost extra weight in a good way (not like his runup to diagnosis where he dropped like 40lbs - that was the bad way).
Ingredient listing is insane, and we’ve been reading up a bit on that lately - come to find out the standards for ingredients listed and nutritional information are really…flexible. This article is a little dated, but sums it up well (I have not verified their sources, and hope things have improved since this was published.)
It sounded like you were taking a big trip soon, so I can imagine it’s on your mind! If you’re not camping sans electric, have you thought of taking either a slow cooker or a insta-pot along with you? I have friends who’ve done so in the past and found it really useful. Sounds crazy, but lets you have hot food, which can be nice.
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