Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Since I was di­ag­nosed with type two di­a­betes a few weeks ago my life has dras­ti­cal­ly changed.

I wasn't sur­prised at the di­ag­no­sis. I was di­ag­nosed with poly­cys­tic ovar­i­an syn­drome (PCOS) long ago–too long ago to re­call ex­act­ly when, in fact. PCOS af­fects women's abil­i­ty to use in­sulin–they call it be­ing "in­sulin re­sis­tant"–and there­fore pre­dis­pos­es those with the con­di­tion to type two di­a­betes. Women with PCOS are of­ten treat­ed with the drug Glu­cophage (met­formin), but I tried it and hat­ed it, for var­i­ous rea­sons.

If you have PCOS you can mit­i­gate your risk of be­com­ing di­a­bet­ic with di­et and ex­er­cise. I sup­pose that's how I've been duck­ing that par­tic­u­lar bul­let for so many years. While I'm not par­tic­u­lar­ly fit, I used to en­gage in some kind of ex­er­cise, whether it be yo­ga or sim­ply walk­ing around the Sa­van­nah with my good friend Rhon­da. Di­et wise, while I'd nev­er been a calo­rie counter, I'd try to avoid egre­gious ex­cess­es, get my five a day, and pre­fer lean meats with lit­tle added fat.

All that changed when I met my hus­band. Since we have been liv­ing to­geth­er, I've been eat­ing like a typ­i­cal Tri­ni, right down to the three starch­es on a Sun­day and juice with every meal. Al­though I'd long ago giv­en up soft-drinks, I found my­self drink­ing them sev­er­al times a week. I was adding sug­ar to my tea for the first time in decades.

Liv­ing in a ho­tel with a gourmet restau­rant on site, as I did last year when I was in Grena­da for four months, was al­so a bit of a death knell to my healthy eat­ing. They made this choco­late brown­ie with molten choco­late in the cen­tre that was my un­do­ing, hon­est­ly.

All the yo­ga I did in Grena­da couldn't com­pete with the food I ate, and I packed on weight. To make mat­ters worse when I got back home, I went soon af­ter­wards to Scot­land, where every­thing was de­li­cious and every­thing came bat­ter-fried.

When I was an un­der­grad­u­ate 20 years ago I lived on dou­bles and di­ges­tive bis­cuits be­cause I couldn't af­ford much more. Hav­ing gone back to school last Sep­tem­ber, I found my­self slid­ing in­to the old habit of eat­ing dou­bles for lunch, not be­cause of strait­ened fi­nances but be­cause it's a con­ve­nient, quick, hot meal. Throw in a sa­heena or a bhaiga­nee and I could al­most con­vince my­self it was "bal­anced."

The UWI doc­tor who di­ag­nosed my di­a­betes quick­ly dis­abused me of that no­tion. One dou­bles has 400 calo­ries, he said. I usu­al­ly ate three at a time. Do­ing the math I want­ed to faint. I'm al­so deal­ing with my des­per­ate ad­dic­tion to ice cream. We're talk­ing a pint of the good stuff here: Ben and Jer­ry's Phish Food, at 280 calo­ries per serv­ing, and I'd have the whole pint, 1,120 calo­ries.

Clear­ly I have had to re-eval­u­ate my whole life since my di­ag­no­sis of di­a­betes. I won't lie: it's a bit sad­den­ing to look at a sliv­er of pi­ta bread, sal­ad and tu­na for break­fast. I am al­ready fed up of al­monds, one of the high­ly rec­om­mend­ed snacks for weight loss, and if I have to eat one more ap­ple...!

The hard­est part about it is chang­ing the way I think about food. I'm a food­ie. I love how food tastes, feels in my mouth, smells, looks. Now that I am eat­ing more meals but tiny ones with­out the fat, salt and sug­ar that makes food taste good, my re­la­tion­ship with food has to change. It's not about eat­ing for plea­sure, but eat­ing for fu­el.

I have to choose foods not for how they make me feel as a sen­so­ry ex­pe­ri­ence, but how they make me feel from a nu­tri­tion­al per­spec­tive. The last roti I had–a bone chick­en with bha­gi and pump­kin–left me drowsy and slug­gish be­cause a whole roti con­tains too much car­bo­hy­drate for my body to process at once. I'd have been bet­ter off just eat­ing the chick­en and veg and skip­ping the roti it­self, I sus­pect.

On­ly Sun­day night I took my nephews and daugh­ter for ice cream and had what the store called a "mi­ni." It still came in with 430 calo­ries and 56 grams of car­bo­hy­drate, way too much for my in­sulin-re­sis­tant body to han­dle in one go.

I'm learn­ing, though. But if you see me sigh­ing heav­i­ly as I pass next to a pie man or dou­bles ven­dor, don't hate. It's a steep learn­ing curve.