8 Tips From a Working Mom Managing Type 2 Diabetes: ‘When I Found Community, That’s When I Started Doing Better’
Key takeaways:
Brenda Rae Garcia built an online community that’s been her support system for managing her Type 2 diabetes.
She makes TikTok videos about cooking, managing blood sugar, and balancing work and family.
She’s also had to learn to think differently about food, which has a strong cultural component in her region of South Texas.
When Brenda Rae Garcia started her job as a family consumer sciences teacher and teen parenting coordinator for a school district in her South Texas community, she threw herself into her work. It was 2007, and she didn’t yet have children of her own.
“There was a lot of stress with running the program,” says Brenda Rae, who is now 41 and married with two children under 10 years old.
The teen moms she worked with needed help, often beyond the classroom. And Brenda Rae was there for them. But the emotional weight of it all got to be too much.
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“I didn’t deal with the stress in a positive way. I turned towards food and overindulged,” Brenda Rae says. She drank sugary sodas, grabbed a sugary coffee drink every morning for her long commute, and let herself fall into unhealthy eating habits.
She started feeling unwell. Tired. Lethargic. Unable to get off the couch sometimes. Coworkers were concerned about her, but she would brush them off. “I kept saying, ‘Oh, I just need Coke!’”
This went on for several years, until she finally forced herself to go to the doctor in 2013. That’s when she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
The diagnosis shocked her, and she didn’t deal with it in the right way, she admits. But she’s learned a lot in the 9 years since. For the past few years, she’s been sharing her challenges and successes on her TikTok account, where she has more than 25,000 followers.
There are some common themes she returns to when she talks about living with Type 2 diabetes, including these tips.
1. Be honest with yourself
“I was in big denial when I was first diagnosed,” Brenda Rae says. When her doctor told her she had a high A1C (after explaining what it meant), she dismissed it. “I didn’t even go to the appointment with the endocrinologist that he set up.”
She continued to feel worse, and even her vision was affected. At first, she tried to blame it on dry eyes because of her contacts. “But when the road started getting blurry while I was driving, I realized I had to go to the endocrinologist.”
For a long time, she was angry, she says. And she was embarrassed. “I didn’t want to tell others,” she says.
To be able to help herself, she first had to accept the diagnosis and have an internal reckoning. She still sees people who stay at least partially in denial about their Type 2 diabetes, and it breaks her heart.
2. Find community
“When I found community, that’s when I started doing better,” Brenda Rae says. At first, it was a weight loss support group. Talking to other people living with diabetes helped her start learning how to eat in a healthier way.
“When I found community, that’s when I started doing better.”
For several years, she made great progress. And then the pandemic happened. “Everybody was in panic buying mode,” she says. Rice, tortillas, beans, flour: the staples that can feed families in a crisis.
She started to go back to the way she had been eating. “And then I started to get sick again.”
She knew she needed community again. “But I thought: How am I going to find community during a pandemic?”
That’s when, with the encouragement of her husband, she took to TikTok and began making videos. “That was huge for me, to put myself out there,” she says. “It has helped me build community with other people. They motivate me as much as I motivate them.”
She offers carb-cutting tips, quick recipes (like chicken fajitas in the crockpot), and lots of reviews of diabetic-friendly dishes at restaurants.
3. Plan ahead when you eat out
“I’ve made living with diabetes into the lifestyle that I want,” she says, and that includes eating out at restaurants. It just takes some legwork to make sure you choose the right things to eat, she says.
Whenever she eats out, she analyzes the menu carefully, and asks for substitutions, like a side of broccoli instead of a side of rice. “People don’t always realize they can substitute,” she says. One time, she even brought her own low-carb tortillas and swapped them out for the tortillas that came with the meal.
She focuses on eating slowly and drinking a lot of water. She’s also learned that if she has more than one alcoholic drink, she won’t feel well. And if she’s going out with others (who aren’t family), she has to prepare herself, because it’s easy to indulge when you’re around friends.
4. Try to move for at least 30 minutes a day
“I really push the 30 minutes of exercise a day,” she says. She led a very sedentary lifestyle for a long time, sitting most of the day, except for some time teaching. She would still be exhausted after work and would take a nap.
“Now when I leave work, I go to the gym,” she says. Exercise helps wake her up, even though it can be hard to get motivated to start. Many of her videos aim to motivate people to try to move more, even if it’s just a walk around the neighborhood.
5. Eat a breakfast that matters
“A lot of busy people skip breakfast because of their schedule,” she says. She used to do that, too. “But then I would be starving at lunch and I would overeat.” With a full-time job and two kids who can be picky eaters, she likes to keep it simple.
She’ll often make several omelets loaded with veggies and some lean meat in an omelet maker. Then, she individually freezes them to be able to eat them all week. She also makes things like overnight oats or other dishes she can prepare ahead.
6. Know what works for your blood sugar
Another reason Brenda Rae eats breakfast is because it helps to balance out her sugar in the morning. “Everybody is different with how their blood sugar works,” she says. For example, she knows people with diabetes who practice fasting. “That just doesn’t work for my body,” she says.
She has a continuous glucose monitoring or CGM system (she uses Freestyle Libre) to help her keep track of her blood sugar. Many of her videos show her checking her sugar, and figuring out what she should eat if it’s too high or too low.
“Sometimes it’s too high because I haven’t eaten, and sometimes it’s too low,” she says. You get to know your own rhythm and how to troubleshoot, she says, and you can usually trace it back to food choices.
7. Understand the role of culture
“People get offended in the Rio Grande Valley if you don’t eat what they’ve offered you,” she says. “It’s very much a cultural thing.”
She’s had to change how she thinks about food. “I’ve had to rewire my thinking and train my brain from years of habits,” she says. “My grandmother wasn’t measuring a quarter-cup of rice; [she] would just grab a bunch and slap it on my plate to feed me.”
Traditions are passed down, and she’s had to learn how to make new ones that still pay tribute to her heritage.
8. Give yourself grace
“I will make mistakes because I am human and I get tempted,” Brenda Rae says. A frequent topic of her videos is how to get back on track after a high sugar reading.
She is careful not to demonize choices. “It’s normal to want a slice of cake,” she says. “I just can’t have one every day.”
When Brenda Rae has a bad day, she turns to her community for support — a community she has built and never takes for granted. She also remembers one of her big motivations. “My little ones need their mama,” she says. “I want to stay healthy as much for them as for me.”
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