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28 August 2021

I have continued to experiment. The bad news is it seems cornmeal mush is bad news. A small amount sent BG up unacceptably high, especially since my BG does go routinely down into the 90's and even 80's. I think chickpeas are in that category, too, if I eat more than 1/4 cup at a time. Waa! I love them! But no more whole cup servings anymore. It's not the same as limiting calories. Those you can fudge with, eat less of something else, but there's nothing I can trade to eat more chickpeas at a time without sending BG too high. Chronically spiking BG even it isn't terribly high but just a good deal higher than before the meal is associated with a lot of diseases associated with aging. The one that scares me the most is stroke. I will do a lot to avoid one, though it's not a party thinking of what I will be eating a LOT less of.

I tried 1/2 pearl barley at dinner. BG went up a little high but doable. I hope that stays. Even 1/2 cup spread out with the other food at the meal made it seem like a small amount. That's another starch I used to routinely eat a cup at a time of, along with veggies and "good" fats. That could mean I have been doing a lot of spiking without knowing it. The materials I'm looking at now say it's the combo of fat and starch that keeps the fat on . That sure fits what's been happeingin with my body fat in recent years.

It's funny because I remember reading The Zone diet book years ago and Barry Sears said then that 1/4 of anything like beans or grains was about as big a serving as should be tolerated. I thought he was crazy. He might have been because it's possible my body tolerated these things much better decades ago. But it doesn't now.

I feel lucky that I have already gotten used to a lot of changes already. If I had been eating the way I used to eat and suddenly got told that even more things were off the table, I think I might be reeling.

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19 August 2021

This is getting a little worrisome. I am hoping to be able to include some starches in my diet, ones I enjoyed and are basically whole foods. I actually was not keeping track of my bg after meals on the DDF challenge, as their emphasis was on lowering bg and waiting until it was low to eat. In their view, chronic fluctuations of more than 30 points from before to after meals has been shown to be associated with degenerative diseases. I had seen a pattern of my bg dropping to certain levels after meals of mostly protein and non starchy carbs so I haven't
been measuring as much as I'd like to avoid using up the testing strips unnecessarily, since they start getting expensive. Yesterday after a lot of cherries plus protein for breakfast, my bg had dropped (don't know how much it might have risen before the approx 2 hours when I tested) to 80, which is much lower than I expected. At lunch, I had food from an Asian market; some kind of shrimp that I picked most of the covering off (not a sauce) with vegetables in some kind of sauce and a few bites of noodles. BG rose to about 137 which is rather high if my BG was as low as normal before I ate. Was it because of eating cherries earlier? Was there sugar in the veggie or noodle sauce? BG dropped quite a bit again and I forgot to test after dinner, which was just fish, kale, and dark chocolate with only a few grams of sugar. I'm aiming for about 40% protein. BG was in the 90's after breakfast; I had a quarter of a cup of pearled barley with fish, cottage cheese and other vegetables at lunch but an hour later, BG is 147. That is definitely more than 30 points and likely even higher as I doubt my BG was over 100 when I ate. Do I have to start testing before and after? I spoke with a dietician from my plan who said lots of things can drive up BG but so erratically? Sleep? I don't sleep well but would that affect some meals and not others? She warned against my getting too stressed about this, but it is a bit frightening to feel I have so little control. This is so different from being nutty about calories, which I have not even tracked most of the time because just limiting my eating to mostly meals and mostly unprocessed foods with a fair amount of freggies took care of keeping my in my normal BMI range for years.

Ok, just getting my thoughts out. Not really expecting anyone to solve this now. I think I will have to test more before I draw any conclusions. I'm not going to throw out my cooked grains and beans in the freezer or my apples in the fridge yet.

I will say that eating more animal foods does seem to be very satiating. I've been getting to a more than decent calorie deficit every day. It just feels la little precarious, that I might have to be a lot more hawkish when I don't have total control, but I do feel a bit more freedom now that I am willing to eat some meat, which most of the restaurant world revolves around. At some point, I'll experiment with starches.

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16 August 2021

My weight went up over the weekend as soon as I ate differently, but it's back down. I almost didn't record this because I expect it to fluctuate as I work out my new macro ratios. My sanity with food is more important to me than my weight, but keeping my blood glucose more stable is also important. That alone may keep my weight more stable. I actually weighed a bit less than this on Friday and today, but that's not enough of a trend for me to record it, in my book.

Weigh-in: 136.0 lb

lost so far: 6.0 lb

still to go: 0 lb

Diet followed reasonably well

(1 comment) losing 0.9 lb a week

08 August 2021

Have moved into eating much higher protein than usual as per the recommendations of the Data Driven Fasting program I'm on for another couple of weeks. It is challenging because I had my routine down and usually had all the components of meals pretty much ready to go and knew what proportions to make the meals in. This is of course taking a lot more mental real estate. It's like a part time job. Not necessarily the food prep but educating myself so that I'm willing to do what I'm told! I loved my grains and legumes, and I believed in them, and now those are being vilified. But I can't deny the labs that show my blood sugar is rising, my cholesterol readings are going in the wrong direction, and my body fat is going up.

Plus I found out that my father developed diabetes in the last years of life. I knew he had a quintuple bypass- can't miss that. But nobody talked about his having to read his blood sugar or take insulin. I never remember catching him. And he wasn't heavy, though he wasn't skinny. but he had some tough last years of his life, and this program is saying it's because of the bread, and potatoes as much as the dessert after every dinner followed by ice cream every night. He eventually died of bone cancer after apparently having cancer metastasize from his prostate. He did not fit the common profile of someone eating himself to death. The vegans will say it was the meat and the low carb-era will say it was the starch . And they both have a lot of evidence. I sure saw and heard a lot of pro-unrefined starch evidence over the past few years! And opted for it. But I have to admit, I often had food thoughts even though I wasn't particularly healthy. I thought (and still suspect) that was about other deficiencies in my life. But we'll see if things feel different after another week, or ten days. I am not planning to stay on this until I try blending the two and seeing what it does to blood sugar.

Weigh-in: 137.0 lb

lost so far: 5.0 lb

still to go: 1.0 lb

Diet followed reasonably well

(1 comment) losing 0.4 lb a week

04 August 2021

Well, I can't say my program has helped me recover true hunger because I did not feel empty stomach hunger at all today, but I still ate. I was so hungry yesterday! It had me scared, but I ws fine today. I aimed to eat at least 40% protein in each meal. It came out even higher. The program promoter said this amount supports good satiety. I have to admit I didn't feel hungry even though I ate well below my calorie need, but I also didn't feel I like skipping any meals from lack of hunger. I still wanted to eat. It did not make me forget about food. I am not sure there is an eating program to do that for me. I would love to just forget to eat dinner or lunch or whatever because I am so enthralled with what I am doing. But I refuse to feel bad about it, either. It just is what it is right now.

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