On a Monday Moanin' A calorie is not just a calorie

For those trying to control their type 2 diabetes, keep in mind that a calorie is not just a calorie.  While there is no official diabetic diet, some calories are better than others to control type 2 diabetes. The key is eat the foods that don't cause a big surge in glucose. Keep the surge low and you keep the weigh down and off and the type 2 diabetes under control. 

But first, as always:

The Numbers:

• Fasting Blood Glucose Level:  93 mg/dl.  
• Weight:  187 lbs.  Maybe a tad lower, but I am playing it safe or honest or whatever you want to call it.
• Exercise:  None.  Got to bed late, had an early meeting and just did not have time and I feel miserable. 
• Mood:  6.5.  The Charming Mrs. SWMBO back issues have not eased at all and this is playing havoc with both our schedules. 

 The Menu:

• Breakfast:  Morning fruit medley of a banana, an orange and blueberries, and a bagel, high on the glycemic index. 
• Lunch:  Red bean and brown rice and some red cherries
• Dinner:  It's Monday and that usually means fish taco and cole slaw, and that is what we are having.
• Snacks:  None, really.  Had a little bit of the cole slaw to tide me over until dinner.

A recent study compared three different types of diets at the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.  The three were:

1. Low fat, which is recommended by the U. S. Government and the American Heart Association and it emphasized foods low in protean and fat and high in whole grains
2. A low glycemic index diet of minimally processed grains, vegetables, healthy fats, legumes and fruits.  It had more fat and protein and emphasized food that digest slowly
3. Low carbohydrate similar to the Adkins and Paleo diets.  Only ten percent of calories came from carbohydrates.  

Each diet plan offered the participants the same number of calories per day.

The winner at losing the weight and most importantly keeping the weight down and benefits of good health up was the low glycemic diet.  That is the key bit for people trying to control their diabetes or prevent it from happing.

People on it were the most with the foods offered, mostly because they did not have to really give up anything they like, just modify the selections a bit. 

Other bits from the study I found interesting, on the low fat diet, the participants metabolism went down, meaning they burned fewer calories.  Their lipids also went up, which is a precursor to heart disease.  For the low carbohydrate diet, while the metabolism went up, so did precursors for both heart disease and insulin resistance.

The low glycemic index approach reminds me a lot of  the DASH Diet and the Mediterranean diet, and that is what I try to follow. 


Plus, I can have pizza and if I get a whole wheat crust, so much the better.

Here is a good chart for low glycemic foods I use and there are many such to be found on the web.

Here is a good explanation of how to put low glycemic foods in your diet, courtesy of Isabel De Los Rios.  For the record, I do okay with wheat.

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Sensible Splurge Friday and Is Your Office Chair Likely to Cause Diabetes, Heart Problems?

Who knew metabolic syndrome could be part of one comfy bit of office furniture. How to protect your self, but first:

The Numbers:

• Fasting Blood Glucose Level: 96 mg/dl.  Good. 
• Weight:  187 lbs.  Same.
• Exercise:  None.  Because of some medical issues with Charming Mrs. SWMBO, it's been put off for a bit. Bad.
• Mood:  6.0  Continue to worry about the Charming Mrs. SWMBO.

The Menu:

• Breakfast:  The usual fruit medley and slice of leftover Margherita pizza.
• Lunch:  Leftover bean chilli. 
• Dinner:  Tex-Mex and margaritas
• Snacks:  None.  Too busy. 

Is Your Office Furniture Killing You?

One often cited reason for the world getting fatter is we have sedentary jobs. The whole world does less physical labor now to burn calories. We sit at a desk and move paper to work or sit to watch TV to be entertained.

We eat, we sit and we are more likely to get heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and an early death. A Canadian study found that those who spend most of waking time sitting are 54% more likely to die of a heart attack.

What is worse, eating healthily and exercise supposedly don't help. Sitting is not what we are designed to do for any length of time, apparently. We now have a new disease to explain this, sitting disease.

There are two possible solutions to sitting disease. Number One is simple and inexpensive.  Number two is expensive, maybe a bit radical and popular among great artists, thinkers, businessmen and scientists.

1. Every hour or so stand up and move around.  Take a water cooler break, take a walk to the break room for a snack, a healthy one of course, take a brisk walk to the next cubicle for a bit of chatter and gossip, take whatever you can get away with doing and not get into trouble.  If someone questions what you are are doing, tell them you are are working to keep the company's health insurance costs down and save yourself from incapacitating injury.
2. Radically change your office set-up with a stand up desk.  This is an approach favored by Ernest Hemingway, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Vladimir Nabokov, Winston Churchill, Henry Clay, Michael Dell and Donald Rumsfeld.  It's also now an expensive trend in office furniture. 

Supporters of the stand up desk like to argue that it prevents our bodies from atrophying in a sit down world.  If preventing atrophying is really your concern, you can also get them with a treadmill.



Yet standing most of the day can lead to heart, atherosclerosis and varicose veins.  The push 100 years ago was to get a job where you could sit down at a desk.  It was easier on the body.  Never happy, are we?

Monday Moanin' Celebrity Diabetes News.

In celebrity diabetic news, Chaka Kahn says she was a type 2 diabetic and what she did to change it. No drug company endorsements involved, from what I can tell, yet I think she put Paula Dean to shame.
 
The Numbers:

• Fasting Blood Glucose Level:  100 mg/dl.  Okay, nothing to jump up and down about.
• Weight:  187 lbs.
• Exercise:  N/A.  Tending to a very under-the-weather Charming Mrs. SWMBO.
• Mood:  6.0.  Worried about the under-the-weather Charming Mrs. SWMBO.

The Menu:

• Breakfast:  Morning Fruit Medley and a bagel
• Lunch:  Southwestern four bean chilli and a big bunch of sweet cherries.  Nearly as good as the blueberries in season now.
• Dinner:  Fish Tacos and coleslaw.  A bit of tradition around here. 
• Snacks:  More cherries. 

Chaka Kahn Admits She is a Type 2 Diabetic, Loses Lots of Weight.

Chaka Kahn announced that she is a type 2 diabetic.  She overcame the problem by going on what some would call an extreme high-protein liquid diet.  She joked her Vitamix because her best friend.

Extreme or not, it did work.  She lost 60 lbs. and I assume she got the best of her diabetes as well. The diagnosis and that she has taken custody of a  granddaughter motivated her to lose weight to be healthier.  Two very good reasons, indeed.

Before the diet, this is how she looked.


Now she looks like this.



Heck of a difference.

What I like is that she did with out going on a diabetic drug.  For most of us, these drugs really don't fix the problem, just the symptoms.  She fixed the problem. 

Update:

Vegsourse claims she is now on a vegan diet and also beaten her high blood pressure.