Thursday, January 20, 2011

You Can't Believe Everything You Read.

I get a lot of email from various diabetes sites that I've signed up for.   I got an email today that included a recipe for a diabetic dessert.  

First of all I'm skeptical of any kind of so called "diabetic" dessert but his particular one was just shocking! First of all, just the title of the recipe told me that it wasn't going to be good for any one with diabetes and the next thing I saw was that 1/2 cup of this dessert contained 34 grams of carbohydrate.    I'm sorry?  Was I supposed to skip the main course?

This recipe, which was submitted by a diabetes nutrition specialist, made me cringe.    It had dried apples which would have more carbs than fresh apples and it had raisins which are about the highest carb anything out there!   Then the rice and the milk, oh and oh yeah, let's make sure to throw in a quarter cup of sugar for our sweet tooth!   Wow, this recipe must have been meant to make sure that the nutrition specialist would keep her patients for a long long time because I'm sure that if you weren't on insulin before  this you are soon going to be if you eat this kind of stuff!

Believe it or not, this recipe came from a very well known organization that puts out a national monthly diabetes magazine.   I've seen some other unbelievable recipes on other websites as well and it makes me wonder what is really going on.   Is our nation really committed to creating healthy lifestyles and helping people manage their diabetes and metabolic problems, or is our nation committed to keeping us on our prescriptions?

I was walking through some isles the other day at a Walmart while I was waiting for a prescription to be filled.   I happened to look in the aisle where the diabetic products were and I also looked at the diet aisle.  I just shook my head in consternation.   Why are some of these products being marketed?   There were diabetic shakes with 25 grams of carbs and 7 grams of sugar!   "Diet/nutrition" bars with 34 grams of carbs and 12 grams of sugar, etc.   What's going on here?

As a diabetic, trying to control my diabetes with a minimum amount of medication, I find that the maximum carbs per meal should be less than 20 grams and better yet, less than 15 grams per meal.  When I see the things that I've been seeing it makes me wonder if the goal is to keep us all fat & diabetic and on medication.  This may sound harsh and unbelievable but the evidence seems to be there for me to think it.

The bottom line here is that you just can't believe what you read or hear and just because someone says that they are a nutritionist or a doctor doesn't mean that what they are telling you is the right thing.   I'm learning to be very wary.   I spend a lot of time looking for the right answers and I hope that by spending a lot of my time I can help others who don't quite have the time.    So, be careful out there!

Friday, January 7, 2011

2011 Progress

Since I made my resolution to start Dr Al Sears PACE exercise program and follow the glycemic load eating plan, I'm feeling very positive.  I think that I've really finally found the key to eating properly for diabetes.  The Glycemic load is different than the GI plan in that it determines it's effect on blood glucose by portion size.   So, something may have a GI number of say 70 but it's glycemic load may only be 4 by it's portion size of 1/2 cup.  (watermelon is an example).
Dr. Sears explains the GL very well in his book.

So, I'm experimenting a lot and I'm finding that the foods that are below 10 on the glycemic load scale really don't do much to my blood glucose.  This is good.  Very, very good!

The exercise part... I'm still struggling with getting myself motivated to stick to a schedule but I'm working on it and I will get there.

To check the glycemic load for your foods check out nutritiondata.com
To learn more about what the glycemic load is check out Dr. Mendosa

Sunday, January 2, 2011

I hate it when I screw up!

I started out so well yesterday.   I made some special soup that had lentils and a bit of barley, fresh vegetables, spinach and cabbage.... oh and it tasted good too!    Everything I ate yesterday was low glycemic and healthy.  I made my healthy chia/flax and cocoa drink  (see my recipes).  I did my 14 minute PACE program exercise and all seemed good.    Then came last night and a movie at home.  I had some left over tortilla chips from Christmas so I thought it would be a good treat to grab some nacho cheese dip to go along with the tortilla chips and the movie.   Then there was that gumdrop cookie, (just one cookie mind you, after all I do have some control!).  A little later I saw the leftover mini wieners in BBQ sauce so I heated up about five of them too!

So much for yesterday!  I hate it when I do this!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

News Year's Resolutions

Time goes so fast.  It's been a year since my type 2 diabetes diagnosis and I've learned a lot.  At times I've felt it to be like two steps forward and then a step back but I guess that's normal.   I've been stuck lately though and my A1c number went up a bit from 6 months ago.   I did finally start to take 500 mg of Metformin at night just to get my morning numbers down because despite all I do that so called "dawn phenomenon" just stays with me.  

I have resolved that this year I'm going to lose another 20-25 lbs and start using the PACE exercise program by Dr. Al Sears, to get into shape and strengthen my heart & lungs.   I want to get my A1c number down to below 6.0 and I want to stop taking the Metformin.  I'm hoping that losing the weight and committing to PACE will be the answer.  What is your resolution?