Is A Plant Empowered Diet For Me?

I've been reading a lot about nutrition, wellness, healthy living and all that jazz recently. I stayed up late the other night learning about Gerson Therapy by complete accident. It's well known to all my friends that I'm addicted to the internet (most, if not all, would say Facebook). While there's some truth to this Facebook addiction, I am also genuinely in love with the amount of information, inspiration and ideas that are out there online! Gerson Therapy seems to surround cutting out everything from your diet and having juices 6 times a day. It's not something I could ever manage as a Diabetic but it was interesting nonetheless.

Awhile back a friend of mine gave me the link to the trailer for the documentary Forks Over Knives. I'd heard about it before but hadn't looked into it. If you're not familiar with it, this blog gives a really good review. Good as in balanced :) Basically it's about how living a plant empowered diet is better for you. Just a warning for Diabetics, I felt just a slight kick in the gut, when I heard this line in the trailer:

"I have reversed the Diabetes. The Diabetes is not coming back."

Of course, comments like that in general make me not want to give any kind of credit to the documentary as I believe that the millions of preconceived notions and assumptions about Type 1 Diabetes stem from things like this. However, since I'm addicted to the internet and information I of course, looked into it. I really do believe in the power of plants. I think there's something to be said for eating organic, natural and unprocessed food. In a previous blog post I posted a photo showing the difference between free range and store bought eggs. If that's not enough evidence that eating organic/natural foods is good I don't know what is.

But what does that mean for me?
I'm not 100% sold on the idea of never eating meat again. I thought about living by myself last year and if I had I would probably have ended up making mostly vegetarian meals. However it ended up being cheaper to live with a group of friends. One of their comments was, I'm so glad you're not vegetarian. The idea is to do flat cooking and they obviously have a bit of bad will towards vegetarians! I don't but I can see how a vegetarian would make flat cooking a bit tricky. For me, I would just see it as a challenge to make sure I was including enough vegetables with my food! But each to their own. So it's looking like I'll be eating a bit of meat for flat dinners. This isn't something that bothers me but I'm going to make it a bit of a new years resolution to increase the amount of meat free/plant empowered breakfast and lunches that I have. At the end of the day, I don't need to be eating meat with every single meal. In an ideal world I would be eating a mostly plant empowered lifestyle with organic meat 2 to 3 times a week. For now, and for 2013 my focus will be on delicious plant empowered lunches and experimenting with my own flat meals. I found this year that a lot of my flatmates meals were often half carb, half meat. E.G Spaghetti Bolagnaise. So I'm going to ensure my meals have a heap of vegetables in them, and low GI carbs etc.

I love how Forks Over Knives calls it a plant empowered diet. I think it's much more politically friendly than just saying Vegan/Vegetarian. And I also love the idea that what I eat empowers me.

On a similar note, the friend who showed me the link for the trailer is also visiting me next week. I haven't seen her in over a year and I'm bouncing off the walls with excitement! She's a vegetarian and also a chef so I love seeing her ideas for meals. I also love her to pieces for everything else, not just her amazing cooking abilities.

I truly believe that Friends are the backbone to my own happiness and sanity  :)

xx

Changes and Refresh

Someone posted a question on Reddit recently that made me think. It was How do you make yourself care *about* your diabetes, not for it.

There was a few comments that were I like my eyesight/limbs/want to watch children grow up and etc. But when you're living in the here and now, Diabetes complications seem like such a far off thing. I've always "cared" about my Diabetes. I know it's this long term, chronic condition with the likelihood of complications if you have poor control. In all honesty, my way of dealing with it was to just take my insulin every day and test on an ad hoc basis. Over the last 6 months how I care for my diabetes has changed into this scientific guessing game. Carb counting, correction doses, balancing, exercising. It's exhausting. But I keep going. Because I know I can do this. 

This is one of the replies to the question, it really encapsulated how I feel - Not sure if you can read it but I'll put the majority of it here:

It boiled down to not feeling defeated if you screw up during the day. Like, if I checked my bloodsugar only twice throughout the day, I can't think, "Oh crap, I'm taking shitty care of myself so why bother at all?" Instead I try to think of it as a win. "I tested two more times than I did the day before! I'm working on it, so it's ok."

It's always a work in progress, so you have to take the view that anything you do is better than nothing. "My A1C is down .2 points! Great!" or "I tested 4 times today!" I know I should do better, but thinking in this way has made me feel less like I am always circling the drain. Instead, I am slowly clawing my way out of it. I hope that helps.

Sometimes you can't win with diabetes, it throws in curves ball blood sugars and whacky overnight lows. But you just have to keep trying.

I fell off the wagon a tiny bit with recording all my food and exercise (slash actually doing exercise) but tomorrow is a new week! I'm starting small but my goals for this week are:

- Producing 3 diet records for the Dietitian

- Exercising 3 times - I think this will be more of the walk variety but I have access to some lovely gardens so will make sure this includes some uphills! Ultimately I'd like to do some running but just starting small. 

- Some sort of strength/core training exercise twice.

It's all very manageable. Since I've been super busy lately I've had less of a routine, so I'm getting back into it. Changing it and just starting afresh! Writing it down helps keep it present in my mind and makes me actually want to complete some of my goals. 

Until next time!

A few crazy, hectic weeks

Whenever I'm super busy I become really focused on one thing. Often this is to the detriment of my own health and sanity. I feel like I've been like that this last week. Last Friday I completed my Legal Professionals Course, otherwise known as Profs. It's the NZ equivalent of sitting the Bar exam for Lawyers. Basically it's a 5 month online course with two onsite modules. Last week I was completing the last module. It consisted of two exams, a 4 day workshop and performance assessments on the Friday. The whole thing was stressful and I was glad to be done! But I was seriously overworked. I'd had a couple of advocacy cases to deal with through my work, which meant I had to schedule meetings as well as completing the full time workshops. 

Also, I'm dealing with a lot emotionally, as my wonderful, amazing, precious boyfriend is leaving the country in a week. I feel like these past two weeks have been a complete and utter roller coaster. But last week instead of dealing with anything, I just focused on my profs course. Now that it's finished I feel like I have room to breathe again and writing all this down is a very healing and relaxing move for me. I'm supposed to be packing as I'm going away with the boyfriend for a couple of days before he leaves but instead I'm taking 10 minutes of me time. Just to sit, post a blog post, catch up on the mountains of blog posts from others that are filling up my google reader. My blood sugar levels have not been ideal, and I haven't been as focused on checking them as I should have been. Diabetes is a roller coaster in itself and although I have gone off course a little bit I'm still heading in the right direction. I may not have been checking 6 - 8 times a day but I have been managing about 3 or 4. My levels have been a bit higher but not outrageously. I think no matter what I did, management wise, my levels still would have been sitting higher than normal due to the stress.

I feel a little bit like I'm broken but I know that its the stress and emotions talking. I just need to take time, gather myself and get back on track. I'm really looking forward to a couple of days off and just relaxing. This is what life is all about. The stress, the crazy, the hectic. I usually love it. But what I need right now is to just relax. 

And that's what I plan to do. :)

S xx

Happy Anniversary!

I've got a couple of blog posts about healthy living/a plant empowered diet/etc in draft mode but this one especially needed to happen today.

I've been focusing on this last assignment I have to do for my legal professionals course and it's doing my head in, so much formatting and rules to follow. Argh. But, I thought that I would take a chill pill and write this blog post. :)

It's my Diagnosis Anniversary today! Later on this afternoon/tonight I will have officially reached 9 years with this chronic condition. And I call it a condition because I don't like talking about Diabetes like it's a disease. For me using the word disease turns it into a weakness. And it's only recently that I've come to terms with the fact that this condition I have, is really, my greatest strength. Friends often think I'm scatter brained and unorganised. Some part of that is true... but I think I seem unorganised because I have this thing, this condition that I constantly have to take care of. I have to make sure I carry around my insulin, meter, sugar, snack, money (in case I need to buy sugar or snack). I have to think about everything single piece of food I put into my mouth. For breakfast this morning I had a banana and blueberry smoothie, so I had to work out how many carbs that was and how much insulin to inject, I needed to know what my blood sugar level was and how much insulin to inject if it's too high. I have to figure out when I can have lunch because I need to make sure there's a 2 hour gap between injecting insulin. And there's even more. I know that I'm not unorganised, not at all, I'm someone that is constantly balancing all those things every single day. 

I like to think Diabetes is about balance more than anything else. Image credit: Here

And so, things like where my phone and keys are become less important. Because I know where my insulin and meter are. It's exhausting. But it's my life and it second nature to me now. Being able to to juggle all this and still be standing is my greatest strength. It hasn't always been something I've seen as a strength but over time I've stopped resenting my Diabetes and starting thanking it for making me a stronger person. 

I've taken huge leaps in the last few months with how I deal with my diabetes. I'm trying to be more open about it. And making sure I'm testing more. I used to hardly test my blood sugar at all and now I'm sitting on that 6 - 8 times a day average. But changing how I look after myself hasn't meant that I was on an 8 and a half year holiday. It's been a constant companion with me. The main change is just really really focusing on what I'm eating, how many carbs and actually working it out (you know, instead of guessing!). I've found the website Calorie King (AU) to be a super help as it is an Australian version so has a lot of the same brands as NZ.

I'm not really even sure where this blog post was going, or how it turned into a ramble about my organisation skills. But all I know is, 9 years ago today, my pancreas stopped working. And I'm beginning to be okay with that. Dealing with Diabetes and learning to love it, isn't something that happened over night for me. But I'm getting there. 

For now, it's back to reality and finishing my assignment writing a notice of opposition to an interlocutory application:

Cheers,

S.

What's Really In Our Food?

There's a show on TV in New Zealand called "What's Really In Our Food?". The show is about debunking common myths and misunderstanding surrounding nutrition as well as looking at any other health benefits or risks that could stem from every day food.

I've only watched two of the episodes this season and they looked into the scientific aspects of food quite a bit. For example, in the "Curry" episode they attached temperature taker things to people and then got them to eat curry to see if the food actually increased your temperature. I find it to be really interesting mostly because I love food. I love cooking it, baking it, experimenting with it and just generally learning about nutrition in general. Since really taking a hold of my Diabetes and writing numerous diet records, trying to carb count more precisely, I've become really aware of what I'm eating. I've become a bit obsessed with blogs in general and a lot of what I follow are food blogs. And I'm constantly faced with this question: What's really in our food?

Case in point:

On the left hand side are eggs from the supermarket, on the right are eggs from my flatmate's parents farm. There is such an astounding different between supermarket bought eggs and ones that are free range. Look how yellow the free range eggs are?!

Seeing the comparison of these eggs side by side really gave me food for thought (Pun!).  In the past I haven't been one who is insistent on only buying organic, free range food and etcetera but this has been mainly due to financial reasons. But, just seeing that very real difference between those eggs has made me really change (or want to change) my supermarket buying habits. Living in a flat situation makes it a bit difficult but I'm doing what I can now to buy organic and free range food. One of my potential plans for next year is to live by myself for 4 - 6 months and the thought of being able to have my own pantry is very liberating and exciting. I could totally fill it with delicious, healthy and organic food! Wholegrain flour instead of white! "Lite" sauces and condiments instead of the sugar laden ones we currently get. Trim milk all the time instead of blue. I'm getting a bit side tracked here. For now, I'm working on eating healthier, greener, and just trying to make better choices. So far it's working out - I'm meeting with a dietician soon and will ask her about my diet, see if I need to add in any more protein/iron etc and to see if I'm carb counting correctly. Healthy Living for the win! 

S xx

19km later...

One of my most annoying habits is a tendency to not finish something or to put it off for the rest of time. I can pinpoint numerous examples, the jewelry making supplies I bought off Etsy, the C25k programme I was going to start, the blog posts I have drafted but not written and published.. And these examples are from the past couple of months!

However, that being said. I am really happy to report I have finished my first long distance, endurance walk/race. It does bear some element of previous mentioned annoying habit - I had some intentions of entering it to run it - but I kept that conditional on how much training I did. As I should have anticipated, this "idea" of me running this 19km didn't come to pass. A friend I work with was going to run it and she encouraged me to enter anyway and walk it. Her justification was that it was a nice walking track and it was a fundraising events. So, I entered it and committed myself to walk the event. The event itself was held over a long weekend and was called the Twizel Hard Labour Weekend. It consisted of three events, a mountain bike on the Saturday, a run/walk on the Sunday and a road bike on the Monday. My committing to the Sunday event was made easier by the Boyfriend, who had committed himself to all three events. So there I was at the start line, ever so terrified of what I had undertaken, when said Boyfriend said to me "You don't have to do this you know." I knew in my heart, I could back out. But by him saying that I got the push I needed, I didn't want to back out, I wanted to do this and finish! And so, with that determination I took off, knowing I'd see him a bit later when he overtook me on his run.

The Map: Here's the Google Maps link for more info

The scenery itself on the course was beautiful, but there was a couple of things I'd underestimated, one being that everyone else seemed to take it way more seriously than I did! I ended up at the back of the pack, I'd thought there'd be more people taking it slow! And second, was that the giant hill in the middle of it was an absolute killer. I should have had some idea, given it was called the "Pyramid Run." All in all, even though I walked about the pace of a sloth up and over that hill, I enjoyed myself. 

Diabetes wise I'd started off the morning high at 13.2 mmol/l but I didn't correct that as I wanted the buffer in there. I'd decreased my lantus dose the night before, had breakfast as per usual. Had a glucose gel at the first drinks station, 7km right at the saddle of the pyramid. Had a museli bar at 11am and 12.30pm, checked my BSL at 12.40 and it was at 5.6mmol/l. I finished just before 1pm (having started at 8.3am) so it was probably the longest I'd ever exercised. I ate a whole bunch of carby meals following this, thinking I would drop down quite low as a result of delayed exercise blood sugar lowering but it turned out that wasn't the case. I was actually in my teens for the rest of the day. I've heard of having delayed lows of 1-2 days of lowering so I've been keeping my eyes on that.

Overall, crossing that finish line felt fantastic! It was such a adrenalin rush of happiness. I actually got really choked up with tears as I rounded the corner, something about seeing my wonderful boyfriend hobble over to me (after running said 19km!) so he could hold my hand as I crossed the finish line combined with just the physical effect of it all. I had a sly cry as he came over to greet me, but quickly wiped it away so I could cross that line. 

It felt fantastic. Something I will definitely do again. Every time I've gotten out of the car today, or stood up from sitting for a while, I feel my body creak and groan but know it is just the sign of a happy accomplishment. I'm proud of myself and proud of doing something I said I'd do a long time ago. Take that annoying habit of putting things off!

My number - gonna keep this baby around for daily inspiration :)

P.S I've just seen this blog link which talks about 3 Type 1's running their first half marathon - also very inspirational :) Canadian D-gal: 3 T1D's run a half marathon for the first time

Why I Love My Blogroll

I recently added a blogroll to my blog. I unashamedly love it!

As I've mentioned before I've only recently discovered the DOC but I fall in love with it more and more each day. I love hearing about other diabetics experiences and that reassuring feeling that others are going through what I'm going through.

However the DOC isn't the only reason I love my blogroll.. I love it because it is my own crazy, wacky mix of things I like. Broadly speaking, there's food, fashion and the DOC. I'm not fussy about who is on my blog roll, the more the merrier! I just enjoy having a big mix of diabetes and non diabetes related stuff. All the blogs on my blogroll are ones that I personally read, there's also some that I'm yet to add.

I'm not sure how others read/subscribe to blogs, but I do mine via Google Reader, it's this handy wee part of Google/Gmail where all your blog entries are listed in one place. I've created quite the routine where I have my breakfast/coffee at work at my desk and read what's new on my blogroll. I find it to be a nice, calming start to the day.

What's on your blogroll?