Anyway, last night I met up with some of my girlfriends for wine and it ended up being a pretty fun night. We laughed ourselves silly and I stayed out past 11. (Anything past 8 or 9 is wicked late in my book.) Afterwards I didn’t sleep too great, so I got to thinking about what it means to be diabetic.
My endocrinologist told me that he can’t give me a time frame, but at some point in the not-too-distance future, my body will go from being insulin resistant (and on the hypoglycemic side) to being diabetic. Apparently, from years of compensating for low blood sugar,your body eventually gives out and your sugar is permanently too high from compensating all those years. So I decided to educate myself on the process. It turned out, I can choose to change many things about my lifestyle and I may not even have to be diabetic someday. Yeah, there’s the possibility that I will still end up diabetic, but if I can do anything at all to stop it, why wouldn’t I?
I have always been a healthy eater for the most part, and I’ve been increasingly returning to unprocessed foods (read about Project Eat Fresh here), but the holidays and being sick kind of derailed me. So, for the next 60 days (and hopefully longer, of course) I decided to eat like I already am a diabetic, making conscientious food choices, considering how they would affect my life if I already had diabetes. I already have a glucose meter, and I decided to start periodically checking myself again.
So I am issuing all of my Facebook friends and bloggee friends the following challenge: follow the ADA guidelines for diabetics for the next 60 days with me.
What are those guidelines, you ask? To educate myself further, I spent some time on the ADA website. These are your (and my) donation dollars at work, people. These are the kind of resources your funds help create.
According to the ADA, they're no different from other healthy eating guidelines: unrefined carbs, cut down or out your refined sugar, get plenty of lean protein and fruits and veggies. The biggest differences are counting carbs and checking glucose or A1C. Get about 3-4 servings of carbohydrate from whole sources daily; each meal should have no more than about 45-50 grams of carbs. My endocrinologist suggests making sure you have some type of lean protein at every meal or snack.
So here are the goals:
- Be aware of your carbs (and take in good ones)
- Be aware of your sugar (and eliminate as much refined sugar as possible)
- Get plenty of veggies and fruits
- Get lots of lean protein
- Use the ADA website to find out if your calorie intake is where it should be and track it for a while to see if you are where you need to be
- Learn what your blood glucose is, and A1C, if applicable. Get it tested if you never have.
Here are links to some awesome resources from the ADA.
http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals/diabetes-meal-plans-and-a-healthy-diet.html
You can even sign up for the ADA’s Recipes for HealthyLiving for free.
http://www.diabetes.org/mfa-recipes/meal-plans/
More Meal Plans
http://www.diabetes.org/mfa-recipes/meal-plans/meal-plans.html
Carb Counting
http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals/carb-counting/?__utma=1.74302406.1327083218.1327083218.1327083218.1&__utmb=1.15.9.1327083248044&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1327083218.1.1.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=(not%20provided)&__utmv=-&__utmk=211270677
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