If I see another article about ‘guilt free’ Easter meal ideas, or read about how people will ‘be naughty’ and eat chocolate eggs, I am going to throw myself into a vat of Lindt Bunnies and not emerge until next Tuesday. It’s everywhere – and even more prevalent on diabetes-related sites.

Is it any wonder that so many of us with diabetes have a fraught relationship with food? With so many judgement-laden words associated with the foods we eat, our diets, and eating during festive periods, it can seem impossible to not feel that everything we put in our mouths comes with some sort of grading.

I don’t know how many times or in how many different ways I can say that food doesn’t have a moral compass. There are no good or bad foods. There is no one eating plan that works for all people.

And more than everything – it is not okay to tell a person with diabetes that they should feel guilty for eating a chocolate Easter egg (or anything else for that matter).

Being diagnosed with diabetes does not mean that you are now open for business for comments, criticism, advice or condemnation about the foods you choose or choose not to eat. Your eating choices are not for public scrutiny. No one has buy-in on your food choices unless you ask their opinion.

We are programmed from when we are young to think of foods as a way to measure our virtue. Unlearning all that messaging is really, really tough.

And diabetes makes it so much harder because we see the impact of what we eat and how our food choices affect our glucose levels. CGM may provide countless benefits, but it also lays bare what we have eaten. But, just as our food choices are no one else’s business, neither is what that food is doing to our CGM trace (or reading on our glucose meter).

My hope for all my diabetes tribe this weekend is this: may you find some chocolate of choice (or not, if your choice is no chocolate). And may no one pass judgement on what you are eating, pass comment on your glucose level, ask you what you ate, tell you to eat only half a hot cross bun, or belligerently ask you if you have bolused for it.

So yes, let’s have a guilt-free Easter. But I don’t mean that in terms of cutting out what we want to eat, or being made to feel bad about it. I certainly don’t mean it in reference to being made to feel guilty because we have a higher glucose number than we would like to see. I mean let’s just free ourselves completely from any guilt associated with food, or the numbers following eating that food. That’s actually one thing I am in favour of completely restricting.

Easter baking plans…