Low glycemic food.

[gottawonder]

I've been making some hard core changes to my eating, and I've been seeing some very real outcomes.

The first noticeable change, is that I have VERY even blood sugar when I am eating low glycemic food. I used to be a slave to having to eat all the time, or I would have a blood sugar crash. These are awful. You feel so weak, sometimes sweaty and clammy, like you might pass out. Shaky, irritable, you literally can't push through it, you have to eat something sweet, then let that take care of the shakes, but it only buys you a bit of time so you have to eat something better, like a protein. It meant that I was forced to eat every couple of hours, or even a little bit all the time, even if I wasn't hungry. I got so paranoid about the attacks that I would just eat all the time pretty well. Sometimes I would eat, but start to have low blood sugar if I went for a long walk, or worked outside. It's frustrating, and you feel so afraid of ever being without an apple or two in your jacket, or granola bars. I have granola bars stashed in our vehicles, my purse, my jacket.

It got so that this seemed "normal". I just got used to always planning ahead when we would eat in town so I wouldn't crash. Stopping everything if I felt a dip, and finding food if I didn't have something in my purse. Always making sure I had something in my purse before I left the house (I'll never stop doing that, likely. Too ingrained).

Since I've cut out sugars and simple carbs, I've been able to go a lot longer without eating, and I don't have a noticeable blood sugar response. I might feel hungry, but just normal hungry. Not weak. In fact, I don't feel hungry anywhere near the same as I used to. We've gone on a few longer walks recently at the park down the road, and my energy was good, and I didn't feel low blood sugar. I don't seem as tired.

This is a pretty big deal for me. Part of the reason why I'm overweight, is likely because I've always eaten all the time, whether I was hungry or not, out of fear of low blood sugar.

I've also lost between 15 and 20 pounds. I say this because there are normal fluctuations depending on water and such, but it's often close to 20 pounds difference. I have NEVER lost more than a few pounds, and that's only been for short periods of time, like if we did a ton of yard work or something, and it always came back.

I don't want to jinx this, but it's been just a steady loss, not dramatic, a pound every week or so. I'm sure it will taper off at some point, and I might gain some back in the winter when I'm less active, but this is still meaningful to me.

My husband has also lost almost 20 pounds since he's been home from work, because he's just been eating what I've been eating. He's also been working in the yard, and it's normal for him to lose weight when he's home, because he eats differently at work (he works away from home a lot, and lives either in a work camp or a shared apartment) and is less active. That said, he still doesn't normally lose 20 pounds in a short period of time. He was always worse than me for wanting to eat out and get pizza or Chinese with lots of white rice or noodles, and drinking soda, and wanting to bake cookies and banana bread and rhubarb crisp and pancakes and eat ice cream and get a big Slurpee whenever we were in town, and get potato chips, and burgers and French fries. He's always the one who wants a giant buttered popcorn, giant soda, and some kind of candy when we go to a movie in a theatre.

I used to go along with it, but since I've put my foot down and said I can't eat that way anymore, we've both seen changes.

He used to work hard enough at his job that he could eat like that and not put on weight (but I still got heavier because I didn't have a construction/oil field job), but in the last few years his job is more sedentary. He's a small framed man, and even though he didn't look fat with clothes on, he had a lot of fat on his torso that was noticeable without a shirt. I don't know if he'll keep up eating like this when he goes back to work, but if nothing else, I think it sends a strong message to him about how much crap he was really eating.

What's crazy, is that even before all of this, I know that both of us still ate much healthier than most of the people we know. He's worked with guys who would eat a stack of hamburger patties for supper at the mess hall, and the full eggs, sausage, bacon breakfast every day, or people that didn't seem to drink water, just soda.

I thought I was eating well just being a vegetarian!

I have to admit, I miss eating what I thought was a moderate little bowl of ice cream, or having a couple of cookies at my aunt's house, or a soda a couple of times a week, some chocolate throughout the day, a bowl of pasta for supper. Yet, every day I was having stuff like that, and it adds up!

When I was home visiting family three weeks ago, I caved and had ONE sweet banana muffin with chocolate chips at my aunt's, but then about two hours later when I was out having my evening walk, boom! Blood sugar crash. The first one I'd had in weeks. I had no idea how badly my body metabolizes sugar.

Anyhow, I'm not one to bother with fad diets at all. I'm not interested in some crazy thing to lose 50 pounds in a month, and ruin my life trying to stick to eating only cabbage or some nutty thing. I've always loved junk food, it just doesn't love me.

Anyhow, for anyone who sees themselves in any of this, I just eat low glycemic food. If it's sweet or processed, I basically don't eat it. That means balsamic vinegar instead of dressing, watching condiments, cutting sugar in coffee, quinoa instead of rice, limiting my carbs to mostly some whole wheat toast in the morning, cutting my evening bowl of cereal (unless it's a measured amount of unsweetened muesli), and just saying goodbye to sugar.

It's tough, but the nice thing is, you generally end up not craving sugar after a while. I don't know if I can really keep this up forever, but really, I think the steady blood sugar is the best incentive.