Eating Right

That picture is supposed to be nonfat yogurt, from an article titled "9 Foods You Should Be Eating for Type 2 Diabetes," and to my surprise I am already eating 7 of them, although the salmon may not be wild, who knows?  The yogurt is in fact nonfat.  I am also eating decent quantities of avocado, broccoli, oatmeal, almonds, and fish (not salmon, I guess.)  Have not worked in a lot of beans yet, or egg whites (yeah right) except as part of a whole egg.

It turns out that a good diabetes diet is a lot like a healthy diet for anyone.  Maybe with less carbs, but you don't have to avoid carbs altogether.  Eat lots of fruit and vegetables. Keep your fat calories down.  Don't eat so much.  Eat good carbs -- whole grains, some fruit, carbs with fiber.  Eat food with some nutritional content.  Avoid saturated fats.  Some alcohol is OK, but not very much.

Some things are easier than others.  I don't have much trouble moderating my carbs, and I have some standard whole grain/high fiber foods that I eat:  high-fiber tortillas, whole grain pastas, oatmeal.  I cook chicken and take it for lunch.  This week I found a nice approach to vegetables.  I cut up some crunchy raw vegetables -- turnips, cauliflower, carrots, etc. -- and put them in the fridge for snacks and lunches.  That works.  Vegetables have to be easy to grab.  It's the preparation that makes them difficult.

Some things are trickier.  I am supposed to have dairy, but I don't drink milk, and then they want you to have nonfat or really lowfat dairy products.  This is a problem because I have tried some lowfat or nonfat dairy products, and they not only didn't taste good, but they tasted like something you wouldn't even call food, in the same way that chewable vitamins are not food.  However, I find that nonfat plain yogurt with berries in it is an edible, actually pretty good snack.  I still eat full fat cheeses though, just try to limit them.

Berries, by the way, have been a godsend.  Jackie and I picked raspberries and blueberries at a local farm last month, and Jackie froze them and bagged them.  They transform plain yogurt and oatmeal both from a chore into something I look forward to.

There is chicken for protein, and the occasional fish, but there are so many cheap, easy, really bad-for-you, sources of protein.  Meatballs, hot dogs, bacon, chicken wings, salami.  There's only so much chicken in the world, and I eat it with the skin anyway.  So my proteins include some pretty bad foods.

Drinks are another item with limited choices.  Rule out milk and anything with sugar.  If you try to avoid artificial sweeteners and caffeine, you begin to see why bottled waters are so prevalent.  For now I am drinking lots of tea and Diet Dr. Pepper, but I really should lay off the Dr. Pepper.  Also, this week I added V8, which is a nice change.

One last comment: candy and desserts.  I still eat them, but I just have a bite.  One heaping teaspoon of ice cream, three peanut M&Ms, one bite of the dessert we share at a restaurant.  And this is not so bad.

I could do better, but I do pretty well, and it's not as hard as I would have imagined.

Living with Diabetes

Better would be to live without diabetes, but that's not an option right now.

One thing that is certain is that this disease has to be controlled; letting it run its course is not an option.  I saw what it did to Mom and what it has done to other people, and it isn't anything you want for yourself.  Death by diabetes can involve a lot of unpleasant factors:  mental problems; physical disabilities; deteriorating vision; infections; possible amputation; lots of time with doctors; and the type of slow, progressive slide into disability and death that will likely see you spend time in a longterm care situation with the need for round-the-clock professional care.  Sort of the opposite of having a massive heart attack while sky-diving at age 95, the way we all wish we could go.

Can't let that happen.

The good news this week is that I went back for a follow-up blood test, and my my three-month average blood sugar (I think it's the hemoglobin A1c test) was within normal range, which my doctor said was better than most diabetics are able to achieve.  The last time I saw him, he was going to prescribe a new type of faster-acting insulin for me, to go along with the Metformin and Lantus that I am already taking; however, he never called it into my pharmacy as far as I can tell, and I thought it was unnecessary anyway.  After this test, he told me that he didn't think it was necessary either.  Less drugs is better, as long as my blood sugar is where it should be.

A little back story on that last visit:  Per instructions, I had tested myself seven times every day for 5 days prior to that last appointment, and I brought the results to the doctor.  One of those days included a trip to Olive Garden, where I ate a bread stick and a half, and a big tasty pasta dish with a cream sauce.  As is my custom, I ate every bite that I was served, which also included appetizers and a large caesar salad.  Afterward, I had a small bowl of ice cream at home.  My blood sugar shot up to over 250, by far the highest it has been since the first couple of days that I started taking insulin.  My solution, rather than stronger drugs, is to not eat like that anymore, and the highest reading I have seen since the last appointment was 146 -- higher than you want, but not bad for a worst case.

At the same time, I have cut back on my insulin, from 110 "units" per day to 75 now, which seems to be enough.  Two rules for keeping insulin usage down while keeping your blood sugar under control:  Be careful what you eat, and don't eat so much of it.

Since this post is long enough for my standards, I'll write more about diet in another post.  I suppose that means I should change the picture, but I eat a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and raspberries about every other morning as part of breakfast, so I'm keeping the picture because I like it.

One more piece of interesting news.  In response to a recent diary I posted on Daily Kos, and reposted here, I got a message inviting me to send in a writing submission for consideration for a new website called Writer Beat, which is going to be a new website for writers and bloggers (not just left-leaning political bloggers.)  And while I am not really inclined to submit a piece of writing (and be rejected!), I think it's amazing that anyone would even ask me.  Me, a writer, sending in a writing submission for a writer's website.  That would be be something.

Leaders

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/10/1129815/-The-Dubious-Patriotism-of-Republicans

For anyone who wants to read one of my totally partisan political posts on Daily Kos, there's the link right there.

I have found that it is much easier to write consistently when I am not working.  Too bad, although that may mean I get to do more writing in a few weeks.

But about leaders.  On a non-political note, let me start with a political analogy.  In an excellent world, politicians would be elected and re-elected based on their ability to accomplish things in the political arena that helped the people who elected them.  The better you did at making good policies and voting for the right bills, the better your chances of being re-elected.  That seems reasonable.

But we all know that it isn't the way that politicians are chosen or re-elected.  In fact, being a good legislator is not even the most important requirement for the job.  The most important trait for a politician is the ability to obtain and hang onto power.  Making intelligent decisions in office is a component of obtaining and hanging onto power, but it probably isn't a very big factor.

As a result, we get the politicians that we get, and on the whole, I don't think most people are impressed with the leaders our democracy turns out -- Congress's 11% approval rating, for instance, is a strong indication that we are not real happy.  Sure, we get some good politicians on occasion, but not often enough, and the truth is that the type of person who can navigate the election process and get into office may not be the type who should be leading us.

And I think that the same problem exists in the working world.  One thing that people at the higher levels of any company all have in common is that they know how to keep their jobs, or move on to the next one.  And when you sort people based on this criterion, you aren't always going to get the best, the most reasonable, the smartest, or the most decent ones.  And you don't.

Now the argument can be made that the selection of leaders in corporations is much more based on merit than it is for politicians, and this is probably true.  Still, when you consider how many jobs in any company cannot be objectively evaluated in terms of the profit they bring to the organization, you have to realize that there is enough room for subjective decisions that the politicians have the advantage.  And, just as with real politicians, I have heard this phenomenon justified on the grounds that the ability to communicate is a critical part of the job.  It is, but unless your job is in a field like Marketing that really is about communication, it's probably more important as a factor in keeping your job than it is in doing your job.

So what to do about that?  Beats me, and I think I have written enough for today anyway.  But perhaps one day I will come up with a better way.

Tough Choices

Two posts in a row with pictures of Clint can't be bad.  The following is a copy of a Daily Kos diary by some guy called "Akronborn," who, in case you can't guess, is me.

In the aftermath of the Republican National Convention, I'm seeing one of those stupid things the media prints without thinking, so that in time it becomes part of the accepted narrative -- that Republicans are proposing to make the "tough choices" that need to be made to restore fiscal sanity to Washington.

There are a few of problems with this notion. For one thing, it has been pointed out by many that reducing the debt is not what the country needs right now. Also, Romney/Ryan's prescription for reducing the debt goes something like this: lower taxes, increase defense spending, rob from the poor, sprinkle a little trickle-down fairy dust, and presto! Actually, they are going to need a dump truck full of fairy dust, but that's basically how it works. Those are the kinds of tough choices that Bush II used to run up record deficits.

But what bugs me about the media narrative is the "tough choices" phrase. The tough choices Republicans are offering up amount to "You have to give us everything we want, or else!" Their choices will be tough for many Americans, but for Republican politicians, it's everything they could ask for. There is nothing "tough" about giving tax breaks to their wealthiest benefactors, who will turn around and reward them generously. It isn't difficult for them to take money away from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, or to spend more and more on the military. Those aren't hard things for a Republican politician to support. It's their Christmas list.

What would actually be a tough choice would be to stand up to Grover Norquist, admit the Bush tax cuts didn't exactly work out, and vote to raise taxes. What would be tough, for Republicans, would be to work with Democrats, give some consideration to constituents who disagree with them, compromise, give up some of their wish list in order to govern, or put military spending on the table. That would require a little toughness. I don't see any Republicans these days making those kinds of choices, the actual tough ones. That would take actual courage. That would require leadership.

There is nothing challenging about sticking rigidly to ideology and insisting that you either get everything you want or you will hold the country hostage, or hold your breath until you turn blue. Any four-year-old can make that sort of tough choice. Someone should call them on that.



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