There are a few good things about living with diabetes, you read it right. Initially, I did only think there was one and that was obviously food related; see my Perk of living with diabetes post to understand how I came to this conclusion. However, I’ve been in search of a few more and I have come up with the following.

Expert Level

How many subjects can you say you are an absolute expert on? It has been said that it takes 10000 hours to become a master of a certain subject / field of expertise. So, if this is true, at time of writing this post I have been diabetic for around 2 years and 5 months, which is equivalent to around 21168 hours. That makes me an expert two times over and will keep increasing until there is a cure. Remember, we don’t get the time off when we sleep / go on holiday so every single hour can be accounted for.

A good excuse not to share food

I’ll happily share anything I own, but I don’t share food (obvs unless you are diabetic and lowJ). Now that I am diabetic, when I am eating something I have the perfect excuse not to let someone pinch a few or my carbs because I’ve already bolused for it. I’m giggling as I write this because everyone takes it so seriously, even if the food is only worth less than 5 carbs.

Changes to Your Own Lifestyle Rub off on people around you

When you make the effort to treat your body with more respect by eating healthier and exercising more, the people around you will begin to consider the choices they make too. For instance, one of my friends really cleaned up his diet when he realised how many carbs were in certain foods he was eating. He would check and say “you’d have to bolus x amount for this amount of carbs” and he eventually phased most of those sugary food out of his diet.

Deeper Understanding of Your body

Although diabetes is the most confusing thing ever, it has also given me a deeper understanding of my body; what irritates it is, what foods it works better with, what exercise very effective. Highs and lows tell us a lot about what is going on inside and if we pay attention to that we can really fine tune management to stay as healthy as possible.

My post on stress and hyperglycaemia is the perfect example of this.

Carb Counting Masters

I know this might not sound like a big thing to brag about, but gym bunnies who are not diabetic would love to have our discipline when it comes to carbs. Especially the IIFYM group of flexible dieters out there. They might have a slip here and there without much consequence and will thus learn / progress a bit slower. However, when we slip or miscalculate we have from hypers / hypos to remind us to calculate the food properly next time.

I could pretty much eye ball the portions of most fruit, veg, potatoes, pasta, rice and breads. Although it is still good to weigh them where possible.

It shows us we are strong and can adapt to any situation

Aside from the other diabetics, I don’t know anyone who actively makes themselves bleed every day in order to stay alive. We do this with a smile on our face and get on with the rest of the day.

It goes with that saying – you never know what you’re capable of until you try. Being forced to manage diabetes has taught me that I am ready for anything life has to throw at me because I know I will adapt and handle it.

Insulin pumpers are technically Borg

Speaking of adapting, my GF / friends always jokes that I am like seven of nine from Star trek because of my medical devices that could be passed as borg implants. Seven of nine was part of a collective and is very efficient and smart. I’m happy to be compared to her so I’ll take it.

I would loooove to hear anything you have to add to this. Let’s not take diabetes so seriously so we can keep smiling.

Rowena x

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