The Struggle is Real

Good morning everyone!  I titled the blog as "the struggle is real" today because it is!  Let's face it it's no fun to stick yourself every morning and before or after meals.  While I have put my type 2 diabetes in check it's still something I have to monitor closely as I found out last winter and even as recently as last week.  

One thing I've always stressed is DIET. Diet is king when it comes to either defeating or maintaining your blood sugars.  What I've seen this past few weeks with my own testing has really emphasized that fact.  

What happened is that I started experimenting on what I can and can't tolerate when it comes to my blood sugar.  What I found (at least for me) is that fresh fruits are vegetables are absolutely essential!  For example two nights ago I didn't eat a salad with my hamburger (without a bun and grass fed beef) because of a webinar I had to attend.  I didn't want to be on video with a piece of lettuce hanging from my chin lol.  All I ate was the hamburger and went back down to my home office to get online.  What I found the next day was startling.  

My blood sugar reading had gone up by 14 points overnight!  This has been consistent with my past readings depending upon whether or not I had eaten salad and fruit the day or evening before.  The more I read about the positive effects of the berry family (strawberries, raspberries blueberries etc) the more I realize how much I need them.  In fact here is a great article about the fruits to avoid and the fruits to eat if you're diabetic or pre-diabetic.   Fruits that raise or lower your blood sugar! 

So with a little experimenting I found the following to be true for me.  

1. I need to eat a fresh salad everyday without fail.
2. I need to eat a variety of berries everyday without fail.
3. I need to lay off the peanuts and other snacks at night.
4. I've found cucumbers to be very helpful as a veggie.

Did I forget to mention the peanuts?  Yes I did so I'll discuss it here.  I love peanuts as a low carb snack however you need to be careful with them as they're not the ideal snack for diabetics if you like nuts.  A better choice would be almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds (look at the labels!) and pumpkin seeds.  They don't taste as good to me so I was using peanuts however they caused me two issues.  First they made my sugar count go up as I ate too many of them late at night and they caused me to puff up from the salt content.  Once again that was because I was eating too many of them.  If I just have a couple of handfuls that's fine but any more than that it's a problem.   Lessons learned once again. 

So how do you keep fresh veggies and fruits in the house?  There are great selections at Costco (stay organic as much as possible) and of course your local farmers market should be up and running soon.  Or you can grow your own using heirloom seeds (non GMO) in a traditional garden if you have the room OR you can get your very own Tower Garden from Juice Plus like I did!  Yes that's a cheap plug because I sell them but I see the value in them!  In fact here is a picture of my very first strawberry! 

I have several more growing now (that was taken Monday 5-23-16) and the rest of the tower is taking off as well!  Here is a picture of my friend Nikki's tower at our local health food store.

As you can see that one is growing indoors with the available grow light kit.  This is after 5 weeks of growth time (seedlings were about 2-3 inches high to start) and it's been harvested several times already!   Getting excited yet?  You can get yours here:  Get your tower garden here!

That sums it up for today!  Keep these diabetes tips in mind when you go to the store or when you eat out.  Always read the labels on items you buy to make sure they're OK for you to eat.  And of course always remember to Live to Win NOW!!!

Johnny