Day 124

4:30 p.m.
Had someone ask how I got my BG in control so well and what I found to eat being that I am such a picky eater so I thought I would share my response:



Because I am a slow starter I had to keep breakfast quick & easy so I eat Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls - one has eggs, sausage, potatoes and cheese the other has eggs, bacon, potatoes and cheese. I have also worked on adding oatmeal, so it is the instant variety (but that has been put on hold because it started making me gag just trying to eat it.) I tried Special K cereal but I have found that pasta and cereals are two of my greatest enemies. This may not be the case for everyone since Diabetes is almost as individual as our fingerprints. What hits my BG hard may not hit the next diabteics as hard.


Salads are either: 
(1) Spinach Strawberry Salad
2-3 c. Baby Spinach leaves -I remove the stems as much as possible so that I get more leaf in my dish. Depending on how hungry I feel I go with either 2 cups or 3 cups
1 c. fresh strawberries
.25 cup pecan halves
.5 cup Manchego Cheese (shredded) 
(about) 3 Tbls. Light Raspberry Vinaigrette dressing
*and . . . when I have real bacon left-over from BLT sandwiches I will crumble it up and save it to add to this salad - usually about the equivalent of 1.5 strips of bacon per salad)


(2) Basic Iceberg Salad
2 c. shredded iceberg lettuce
3 slices of sandwich ham (chopped up small)
.5 c. shredded cheese (four cheese blend)
1 Tbls. sliced olives (black or green - whaichever is open in my fridge)
(about) 2 Tbls Light Sweet & Spicy French dressing
*and . . . if I have pineapple tidbits already open in the fridge I will throw in .33 c for more flavor.


The other meal (because some days salad is my lunch and some days salad is my supper so whichever meal my salad falls to the other meals is referred to here) will vary. Sometimes BLT sandwiches (I found Arnolds Premium Italian Bread to be good and it is a denser texture so it is more filling), sometimes grilled steak or grilled chicken with a couple of side items. Maybe: 
- Sweet Niblet Corn 
- Carrots (I cook my carrots in a skillet - I slice them in rounds and add half an onion (chopped large so I can get carrots without the onion on my plate) sprinkle with 1 tsp. Truvia and about 1 cup water - bring to a boil and reduce to med-low and cook about 30 minutes. Makes really great tasting carrots)
- Broccoli with Cheese Sauce (frozen stuff)
- Green Beans (I cook these with a Beef Bouillon cube and some Garlic flakes for better flavor) 
- sometimes I will treat myself to half a baked potato with a little Smart Choice butter and some Manchego Cheese (shredded)
- Baked Beans


The best thing to do is to track what you eat and keep tabs on which foods spike your sugar and which are BG friendly. I started tracking everything I eat for two reasons (1) easier to identify what spiked my sugar (2) to keep track of calorie and carb intake (it's too easy to forget you ate a handful of cashews if you don't note it. You can log it in a notebook or log it online - but it is a great check-double check habit to develop. 

Day 19

1:00

Lost another morning to sleep and the internet. I was so tired this morning that I went back to sleep for an extra hour after my alarm went off. I'm not sure why I was so tired since I got more than 8 hours last night. But then again, one of the issues with Diabetes is being tired. 

Once I was up I got online to update my Food Tracker and got sidetracked by a new Diabetes website with more discussion boards. Lost the rest of my morning to that. Didn't update mt food tracker, didn't post my morning blog. Didn't even do my morning exercises.And having skipped my exercises means I skipped my morning shower. Now I have to do my exercises as soon as I get this post published and then hop in the shower.

Egads! Time does get away from me!

2:00
And still haven't started my exercises. I think it's a good thing I told my daughter that I would rather she brought my grandson over this evening rather than me going to pick him up from school. At this rate I may not have my exercise & shower out of the way by suppertime!!

7:00 p.m.
Got my exercise and shower around 3-4 this afternoon. Way late, but gosh it is so easy to procrastinate. Especially if you find interesting reading on the internet.


Made a high-protein/low carb casserole for supper. It was good. Good enough that I will make it again. My hubby and grandson said it was good and that they would eat it again, but neither helped themselves to seconds so I don't know if they were just trying to make me happy by saying it was good or not.


Ah well, still on the prowl for more & better high-protein/low carb recipes. :D

Day 7

9:00

Good numbers for my last 3 BG checks. I like the 3-in-a-row, but would love some 4-in-a-row's. And I am ever sooooo happy that my vision is actually a good bit clearer than it was this past Monday. I can again read the clock in my den and I no longer have to sit with my face 18 inches from my (big, like 22" big) monitor. I can't say how safe I would be driving yet. i will have to go out with Terry and see if I can read street signs again or not. In time, in time.

Kinda got a slight let-down with my breakfast this morning. I decided I need to start counting the fats as well as the carbs and discovered my "fallback" frozen breakfasts will seriously undermine my attempts. I have got to find a better solution that is quick and easy as well as tasty. I will finish the week and a half worth of what we already bought, but then I will pass on the Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls. I have one that is a Jimmy Dean "D-Lights" Breakfast Bowls and it has better numbers, but it is turkey sausage and I haven't much cared for the turkey sausage I already tried. But, if that's what it takes, then I will go with it. I am also going to look at some type of cereal, but it will have to be a tasty cereal - I will not eat things that taste like cardboard, so for me Product 19 is out (that's the one my dear hubby is pushing me to go with. Nope, tried it before and don't care for it.) I think I want to try Total cereal, one of the ones with little chips of dried fruit in it.

6:00
So happy! I have had 5 BG reading in a row below 200. And while they are not necessarily within the prime range of 90-120, they are below 200 which means I do not have to give myself the supplementary Insulin injections (of course the 9:00pm is always the exception since I have to inject the Lantus at 9:00 regardless of the BG number). So for right now I am just happy to be below 200! Once below 200 is the norm I will change my Happy Meter to register the numbers that fall in the acceptable range.

Overall I think I am doing okay with this. I had one day of shock & one day of emotional distress, but all in all it's okay. I expect there to be other days that fall into the emotional distress category as I deal with adjusting my diet to fit the Diabetes. Diet is gonna be my biggest obstacle to overcome because I am a very picky eater.

Today I also found a website that I think is going to be pretty helpful - http://www.everydayhealth.com/

This site has a calorie tracker that is pretty neat. I set my calorie, carb & fat ranges and then just plug in the foods I eat and it calculates the balances for me. It has a lot of foods  already pre-built so all I had to do for most foods was search it my name, such as Arnold's Italian Bread, and it found it for me. And for items that I can't find in the food search I have the option of loading the food and it's nutritional information and going forward I can select it from the list on the "Foods I Added" tab.  And for foods that I consume either more or less than a serving I can edit the entry and the site does the math for me. Like for lunch today I had a leftover steak - roughly 8 oz., the food search gave me a 6 oz so I just edited to show I consumed 1.33 servings.There is also a Glucose Tracker and several other tools, so I think I will be using this site a lot.