Confession #2: I do not always make the healthiest choices.

Just because my numbers have been good, doesn't mean I'm always following the rules of eating healthy.

I confess! I do fall off the healthy eating wagon.  The last couple months, I've been extra busy.  It's been hard to find time to cook and prepare fresh snacks.  I own that I could make time and that I could scale back on my commitments.  I love my busy life, though, and it keeps me moving.  So, I'm not trading it in.

About the end of March I noticed that my numbers were starting to creep up a little.  In fact, I had taken my A1C down to 5.3 while I was singing and dancing in a show last year.  I have a sneaky suspicion, I'm now back to 5.9 (or possibly higher).  I'll find out next month.

I started thinking about it and I realized it's because, while I've been busy, I've been making some not-so-healthy choices.  I will have 2, 15 carb gram, bags of crunchy munchies in a day instead of the 1.  I'll have store bought mashed potatoes instead of corn.  I'll have a couple sandwiches in a day instead of a sandwich and a meal.  I also noticed that I was "stuffing" myself at meal times.  I had gotten good at eating til I was full, but lately, I'd been eating until I was stuffed.

When I fall off the wagon, there are guidelines I follow to help me get back on track.

1. Don't panic!!  My first instinct is to panic and run right to the grocery store to buy the healthiest food I can find.  I followed that instinct once.  All the healthy food I bought went bad because I didn't eat it. So, this is NOT helpful.
2. Choose in the moment.  I find it's better to choose in the moment instead of forcing myself to eat healthy.  So, the next grocery trip I look for foods that sound good.  Then I ask myself what the healthier option may be.  I don't trade in my mashed potatoes for broccoli.  I trade my mashed potatoes in for some new potatoes this week.  I like new potatoes, but I don't eat as much of them as I do mashed potatoes.  So, I still get my potatoes, but I'll eat a healthier portion.
   
   Gradually, by honoring my craving with healthier alternatives, I stop craving the bad foods.
   
   The same applies to stuffing myself.  Each meal, I choose to stuff myself less. I find that if I have a pile of tasty, healthy snacks in the house, this is easier.  For some reason when I'm in stuff myself mode, I worry I'll be starving later.  If I know that's not true, I can choose to eat a little less.  As I continue to reduce how much I eat in a sitting, it gets easier to not want to stuff myself.
   
   A few weeks later (sometimes longer) and I'm back on track.
3. Learn from my mistakes.  Usually, when I fall off the wagon, it's because something has changed and I haven't taken the time to figure out how I want to manage it.  I need to learn how to incorporate it into my life.
   
   This year, I've been out of the house/office a lot more.  I've been doing things in the evenings and my business has been busier than I'm used to, so snack times are rushed.  I have not quite figured out how to do busy life and eating healthy.  Now that I'm aware of this change, I'm looking for new ways of coping.  I've discovered low-carb frozen dinners with a little side dish (30 grams of carbs or less) are good between work & evening activities.  Then I eat again after the activity (again, 30 grams or less).  So far, this works well.  In fact, because I'm in a hurry, I don't really care what I eat.  I just need to eat so I can enjoy my evening without a low.  As long as I have quick, healthy choices, there is no choice.  I just eat what's there.
   
   
4. There is no bad girl here.  Sometimes my brain wants to blame myself and get all mean.  I put the k' abash on that really quick. Things happen.  I'm not perfect.  Always eating healthy does take work and sometimes I get off track.  That's ok.  I'm human and I accept my flaws.  What's important is choosing to get back on track.  It's always a choice.  If I focus on making that choice, I get back to where I want to be.
5. Celebrate!  Once I feel I'm back on track, I celebrate.  I congratulate myself and do something for me.  I've been known to buy clothes to celebrate weight loss.  I'll give myself a techy toy.  I'll dance around shouting "I rock!!" When Hubby's not home, of course (he doesn't need to witness that).  Pat myself on the back.  Give myself a hug.  Brag to Hubby or a friend who loves to hear these things.  Anything to celebrate getting back on track because darnit, I did the work to get back and I deserve to celebrate that.  

I'm in the process of getting back on track.  It make take me until the end of May, but I'm definitely moving in the right direction.  

What do you do to get back on track?

I did food prep. I think the world might be ending.

My least favorite part of cooking is food prep.  Slicing, dicing, mixing etc... Ugh!  So time consuming and annoyingly tedious.  

Because I hate prep so much, Hubby actually bought me a mandolin when I first started cooking.  As a former Music Teacher, I always thought a Mandolin was an instrument.  I had no idea there was a mandolin that that would help me slice faster and easier.  That mandolin has been a great addition to my kitchen!  I don't have to know how to slice and dice.  I just run it across my mandolin and it's done!

That doesn't mean I like doing prep.  In fact, I still hate it and try to find recipes that don't have much prep required.  

Since I've been so extremely busy lately, I've been finding it hard to prepare fresh snacks to eat.  On my busy days, I just don't have the time.  This week, I got home from the grocery store with all my fresh veggies, fruits etc... and decided to take some time, right then, to do some snack prep.  NOT something I've ever done, because...um...ugh...who wants to take time to do food prep when you're not going to eat it right away?!  Seriously!

I did it anyway.  I REALLY wish I could afford to hire someone to do food prep for me every week.  If anyone wants to come do it for free, just leave a comment and I'll take you up on it.  :)  

In doing the prep on Monday, I've had all sorts of fresh foods to eat this week.  It's very easy to choose healthy when I'm busy and everything is ready to eat.  I also found that I've had less kitchen clean-up at snack times.  When I prep at the time I eat...I tend to feel like I'm always cleaning up the kitchen.  Especially since I eat 4-5 times a day!  So, I might...I say MIGHT...just have to do this again.  

For those of you who are wondering what foods I prepped and how I made them into quick snacks, I've included that below.  

• Green Beans - Fresh green beans were $0.99 a pound.  So, I grabbed me a bag full. 
• Prep-Wash, snap off the ends and put in a veggie bag to keep fresh.
• Snack-I've been eating them raw and they are a very crunchy, tasty snack!
  
• Strawberries - Strawberries were on sale too, so I grabbed one container of those (probably should've grabbed two, but you live and you learn). 
• Prep-Peel off the leaves, core out the stem and slice.  
• Tools-Hubby got me a couple handy, dandy strawberry tools for Christmas this year.  One of them takes the stem core out and the other slices them like an egg slicer.  Easy!
• Snack-Strawberry and yogurt parfait.  Pile out some strawberries (2-3 strawberries sliced), spoon a couple heaping teaspoons of vanilla yogurt on top, sprinkle a tiny bit of granola on top of that and you have a tasty dessert.
  
• Cucumbers - These are one of my favorite veggies to snack on. I bought two, so I'd have plenty.
• Prep-Peel off four stripes and slice.  The mandolin is very helpful for this.
• Snack 1-I get those little pre-drained cans of tuna.  Add a little mayonnaise, some pre-shredded carrots, some dill relish for tuna salad.  Then I take one cucumber slice, add a bit of cojack cheese and then scoop on some tuna salad.  This makes a tasty, very low carb snack!
• Snack 2-Or shall I say, lunch side dish.  Hubby and I have been munching on these with our lunches raw.  Yummy!

 If you have any tips on food prep, I'd love to hear them. 

The difference between thin and regular bread is more than just carbs.

Picture ©Kristen Beireis

When I was diagnosed with Diabetes, I thought I had to give up all carbs.  In fact, for the first two weeks, I went without carbs.  Thankfully, I was sick with a sniffly/coughy/yucky flu or I woulda gone through carb withdrawl (been there and it's not fun).  Want to quit carbs?  Get a 3 week long flu and quit then.  It's MUCH easier.

When I wrote down what I'd eaten for the Diabetes Educator during Diabetes Training Day, she took one look and said "You aren't eating enough carbs."  What?!  That's possible?!!!  Who knew!!  Come to find out we need carbs in order to create energy.  So, I got to put carbs back into my diet.  Not as many as I was eating before I got sick and went off cold turkey, but still more than I was eating.

So, in order to keep carbs low and get my 3 allotted grain servings per day, I bought very thin bread (pictured on the right).  Of course, whole wheat does actually effect me like most diabetics...my numbers are way better after whole wheat than if I eat white bread.  The thin bread was the only whole wheat bread I knew I liked.  Then we found a really tasty regular sized bread that Hubby and I would both eat (pictured on the left).  So, we started using that all the time.

Recently, I bought a fresh loaf of the thin.  There's a big difference between the two.  Ok, yes, I can have 2 slices of the thin for the same carb count as 1 regular piece of bread.   You can see in this picture the size in diameter and thickness is a lot smaller.  So, carb count is a difference, but that's not the fun and exciting difference!

What's fun and exciting about the thin bread is that I can stuff a lot more between two square slices of toasted thin bread than I can between two halves of a slice of regular bread.  I can get a whole bunch of protein, lettuce and tomato in that puppy.  So, I get a much more filling sandwich.  And I feel like I actually ate a sandwich, not a half-sandwich (brain tricked!).

That's not the only exciting part!  If I only have 15 grams of bread carb at lunch, then I can have grains later in the day!!  I can even have ANOTHER sandwich at dinner if I want.  I don't do that often, but what a treat when I do.  Two sandwiches in one day was a regular occurrence before my diagnosis.  So, anytime I can enjoy two sandwiches now is an extra special treat.  With thin bread, I can!

One of my favorite things to do is have a sandwich at lunch on thin bread, then have rice or oats at dinner and have crackers and cheese for a snack later in the evening.  It feels like I've been eating "bad for you" food all day, but it's still all within my carb count, all whole grain and it's also food I love to eat.  No deprivation for me!!  Just spreading it out over a day vs. eating it all in one meal like I used to.  I kinda like savoring my food that way now.

What about you?  How do you trick your brain into eating less carbs without feeling deprived?

What happens when healthy food is in the house.

If it's winter where you live, I'm sure you've noticed that it's been an unusually harsh one in most areas of the USA.  Pre-diabetes diagnosis, there was cheese, bread, chips, cereal, mac & cheese, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, frozen hamburgers and frozen dinners.  I'm not a fan of frozen dinners so I didn't even eat those most of the time.  Only if I absolutely had to. Usually, I relied on Hubby to cook anything if we were snowbound.  

I had heard the predictions this September.  Then in December, when we had two snowfalls before Christmas, I was convinced that they were right!  So, after the holidays I decided to stock up on some foods.  I've been keeping eggs, spinach, cheese, lettuce, tomato, some sort of fruit and whole wheat bread in the house at all times.  I've also had a stashed freezer with easy to warm up frozen meats and veggies. 

Since I've been cooking for the last two years I find it funny that we actually have spices and canned veggies in the house all the time too.  What happens when all these healthy foods are in the house?  I find myself throwing together meals.  Hubby and I were debating on whether we needed to go to the grocery store for lunch food one day.  Suddenly, I started rattling off food we had in the house to use up (eggs, bread, spinach, frozen chicken, apples, tuna and cucumber).  First of all, two years ago...without looking, I wouldn't have had a clue what food was in the house!  What's even scarier is that I actually suggested what we could do with those ingredients (fried egg sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, baked apples, cucumber slices with tuna etc...).  Did we need to go to the grocery store?  Nope!  We had several days of lunches right there in the house.  Ones easy enough, I could quickly throw them together.  Eeeks!!  Did I just say that?!

So, the key to eating healthy is to have a stockpile of healthy foods in the house.  Noted!  Will do from now on.  What about you?  Do you stockpile healthy food, especially when the weather is bad?