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.