It is nearly impossible to omit pesticides and hormones from our diets let alone control the environmental and emotional stress we experience on a daily basis. Common sense tells us to keep our body as clean as possible. It may be more reasonable to accomplish this by drinking adequate (approximately 8 eight ounce glasses) of water). The amount is influenced by the individual: perspiration, high sodium foods, low water-containing foods, their body chemistry. Try eating water and fiber-filled foods (fruits and vegetables have water and fiber and lots of cancer-fighting nutrients) and exercising daily. We can also help ourselves ward off diseases by avoiding inflammatory agents such as high saturated fat and trans fat, processed and prepared foods, artificial foods, food coloring, being sedentary and being stressed out. Simple! 

A simple rule is to eat deeper, darker and more colorful fruits and veggies: red, green, orange/yellow, blue/purple, even white foods (like onions and cauliflower) to get the most nutritional value. We know this already! Think of dark leafy green, dark/whole grain bread or cereals, sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes, berries, beets, etc. you get the point!

Another simple rule is to replace less healthy choices with more healthy choices – a double-packed choice! Fish instead of meat or poultry, grains instead of white/processed starches like white bread, white rice or white pasta, fruits or non-fat yogurt instead of chips or ice cream, guacamole or salsa dip with vegetables instead of sour cream based dips or even high fiber muffins:

High Fiber Muffin – low glycemic recipe 1 ¼ cups rolled oats (oatmeal)
Per Serving Count
Carbohydrates 15 grams
Protein 4 grams
Fat 5 grams
1 cup oat flour
½ cup skim or 1% milk
¼ cup olive or canola oil
¼ cup sugar or equivalent
2 eggs
1 cup chopped apples (no skin)
Mix all the ingredients together. Use butter ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
Spray in a 12-muffin tin. Bake at 400 1/3 cup flaxseed meal
degrees for 15-20 minutes or until brown. ½ cup chopped walnuts (or other nut)
1 Tbsp cinnamon (or to taste)
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

You can use unsweetened applesauce to replace some of the processed and no-value sugar and some fat, etc.

Think!!! Consume primarily wholesome foods including whole grains, beans, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and fish. If you’re adventurous, try eating hiziki or other seaweed for loaded vitamins and minerals including calcium.

Did you ever wonder why these bars or shakes are supposed to help to stabilize your glucose levels? Or if they do?
Uncooked cornstarch, resistant starches, fiber, protein and fat all help to slow digestion down and reduce fluctuations in blood glucose levels. The best way to determine their effect on YOUR blood sugar is to test yourself before you eat a bar or drink a shake and then test again an hour or two later. If you don’t see a spike – you’ll know it was a positive food for you!
Uncooked starches, found in Extend Bars or drinks, seems to level out your blood sugar over several hours (the label says it will extend a level blood sugar for 9 hours). These are good to take you through the night if you find that your blood sugar drops while you sleep or you rebound and it rises higher in the morning than when the number you went to sleep with.
Resistant starches, found in Glucerna snack or meal bars or drinks, keep your blood sugar from spiking or dropping for about 3-4 hours.
Another slowly digested carbohydrate is found in tapioca dextrin which makes up part of the Nestle Boost Control drink. This drink has higher protein, soluble fiber (guar gum) – both which slow digestion and release of sugar over time into the bloodstream – and L-arginine, an amino acid that may promote wound healing in doses of 2-3 grams 1-3 times a day.
Other alternatives are simply incorporating protein (low-fat cheese, eggs, nut butters, poultry, lean meat, fish, shellfish) and/or healthy fat (nuts, nut butter, olives, avocado or guacamole!) with a moderate amount of carbohydrate to mimic the action of these resistant starches. Mix 6 crackers with cheese or a fruit and peanut butter or 12 tortilla chips and guacamole or ½ sandwich on rye, pumpernickel or wholegrain bread.
The uncooked starches might be advantageous overnight, however, since they digest over several hours – more so than the protein/fat/carb mixture.
Again, the best way to tell what works best for you is to test your blood sugar!

Keep your body strong with nutrition for disease prevention
It is nearly impossible to omit pesticides and hormones from our diets let alone control the environmental and emotional stress we experience on a daily basis. Common sense tells us to keep our body as clean as possible. It may be more reasonable to accomplish this by drinking adequate water (amount is influenced by the individual: perspiration, high sodium foods, low water-containing foods, their body chemistry), eating water and fiber-filled foods (fruits and vegetables have water and fiber and lots of cancer-fighting nutrients) and exercising daily. We can also help ourselves ward off diseases by avoiding inflammatory agents such as high saturated fat and trans fat, processed and prepared foods, artificial foods, food coloring, being sedentary and being stressed out. Simple! 
A simple rule: Eat deeper, darker and more colorful fruits and veggies: red, green, orange/yellow, blue/purple, white foods to get the most nutritional value. We know this already: dark leafy greens, dark/whole grain bread or cereals, sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes, berries, beets, etc. – you get the point!
Another simple rule: Replacing less healthy choices with more healthy choices is a double-packed choice. Fish instead of meat or poultry, grains instead of processed starches, fruits or non-fat yogurt instead of chips or ice cream, guacamole or salsa dip with vegetables instead of sour cream based dips, high fiber muffins, using unsweetened applesauce to replace some of the processed and no-value sugar and some fat, etc.
Think: Wholesome foods including whole grains, beans, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and fish primarily. If you’re adventurous, try eating hiziki or other seaweed for loaded vitamins and minerals including calcium.

March 23rd is Diabetes Alert Day
Did you know that 1 in every 5 Americans have pre-diabetes? 57 million Americans have pre-diabetes! The risk of pre-diabetes (that will progress to diabetes unless you make some lifestyle changes) leads you to the same complications as diabetes. Higher than normal blood glucose results in macro or microvascular disease – English please – it damages your large and small vessels all over your body. The result? – kidney disease, heart disease, eye disease, nerve disease.
Today I was counseling a small group of people who have had diabetes for several years. 5 out of 6 people were morbidly obese (100+ over their ideal weight) and one person was thin because her excessively high blood sugar was forcing her body to turn on itself and get energy to LIVE from her muscles and fat stores. In other words, if you don’t control your blood sugar and it reaches 200, 300, 400 500 or more….your body has no way to feed itself with sugar (all the sugar is hanging out in the bloodstream and not feeding all the cells in the body like the brain, muscles, lungs, liver, kidneys, etc.) and it must feed itself with another source of food: fat and muscle. When this occurs, your vessels are rapidly being damaged.
I was upset and frustrated when I left the small group session. I wish people would take more control of their health. I wish people would take advantage of what control they do have. I wish people would take this all seriously.

Some of you reading this may remember that game show, To Tell The Truth, and others may think I’m just old. I think of this show because I’ve been reminiscing about the terrific movie I saw, The Invention of Lying, by the talented comedian, Ricky Gervais.
It was about a world full of blatant truth-tellers. No, we don’t live in that world. At ADW, I bring you into my smaller, truthful world of “blog”. It’s similar to the truth I told in my book, The Diet Game: Playing for Life! Unlike what you may read, there are no quick fixes, miraculous weight loss plans or exercise gadgets that transform your body in 10 minutes without breaking a sweat. Because I told the truth about how to lose weight by gradually transitioning eating patterns (knowing that you can never completely change them – however, the smaller, daily changes and thought involved in your food decisions, can be the difference of being overweight or not) I could not bring my book to the “best seller” list.

I, once again, will bring you the truth about controlling your diabetes: use your common sense, gain knowledge from a reputable source (www.destinationdiabetes.com or www.diabetes.org to name a couple) and be moderate. Being moderate means to stay balanced and not lean to either extreme – in this case – of eating and/or drinking everything and anything you want and starving yourself! Some personalities find being moderate easier than others. Admittedly, I am an extremist and I struggle to find that place somewhere in the middle. The constant temptations from the media and self-created justifications (yeah, life is tough and we are deserving) don’t really get us to where we wish to be.

Those words, stated by a person with diabetes, make me cringe! Over the past 14 years that I have been a diabetes educator I have heard those words too many times. One example is a woman with an A1c of 7.5% (that’s a 3-month average blood sugar reading of 169 ml/dL) who isn’t convinced that her blood sugar is high enough to call it diabetes or take care of her disease before it causes serious damage to her body and future health. She was set to attend an educational class but didn’t want to inconvenience herself for too many hours. There was no convincing her that she would never regret gaining knowledge over her disease and how much she would appreciate the education. I plead with anyone who questions the importance of diabetes education. Whether you have diabetes or even pre-diabetes you owe it to yourself to understand how your disease affects your body and what you can do to delay or diminish the possible complications. It is one of the few diseases that we actually have some control over. Why would anyone want to give that control up?

What do you think affects your blood glucose? Usually, the top things that come to mind are: food, activity, medication and even alcohol. Do we ever think the impact of stress or emotions has an affect on our diabetes control?
Fluctuating blood sugars can affect your moods/emotions. Our moods can swing right there besides our blood sugars. In fact, since sugar is our energy, the fluctuations of blood sugar make us feel like we’re on an energy rollercoaster! Keeping your blood sugar level helps you to feel more energized, emotionally balanced, suppresses your appetite, and will be less dangerous for your organs. Spikes in blood sugar can harm all the vessels in your body. That’s why the complications of diabetes overtime can be in the eyes, kidneys, nerves, and heart – where your vessels allow your body to receive nutrients and oxygen to function. Dips in blood sugar can harm your heart muscle, harm brain cells, and make your body run out of energy so it doesn’t operate anymore. Think about what happens to a car when it runs out of gasoline? Gasoline to a car is sugar/glucose to us! It’s the main source of fuel to keep us going. So, take a deep breath and smile…

Salt is composed of about 60% sodium and about 40% chloride and at the time of this writing – it is the worst thing to consume next to saturated fat and sugar. In America, we tend to focus on saturated fat, white table sugar and salt to flavor our foods. Why? When they are all contributors to ill health? You know, butter, cream sauces, fatty meat, whole milk or cheeses contain lots of saturated fat. Cookies, cakes, pastries and some fat-free items contain sugar – I’m not even referring to what we actually add ourselves (may I remind you that sugar turns into fat – triglycerides!) Salt is found in prepared foods, processed foods, even skim milk! The amounts we should be using of all the “disease-culprits” you ask? Saturated fat: 20 grams or less (zero is best since it is a major contributor to our high cholesterol levels), sugar: as little as possible and salt (put into sodium terms which will be most familiar to you all): sodium intake should be 1,500 mg to 2,500 mg a day. Going out to eat fast food can result in an entire day of the above three in just one meal, if not 2 or 3 times the suggested amounts.
Other countries use spices that not only DO NOT have the potential to take us down the path to diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, kidney disease and obesity but spices also offer some medicinal properties. Turmeric, an anti-inflammatory spice found in curry is one example. Inflammation occurs in most of our top diseases and so to focus more on anti-inflammatory diets (think: wholesome) would be advantageous to us all. Cinnamon’s benefits are controversial but if you add it to your cereal instead of butter – it’s reducing the saturated fat and thus artery clogging/heart disease risk somewhat while at the same time perhaps offering something worth while to our health.
So, what’s our problem? Is it a control issue? We’re too busy to think? We’re not convinced that we have a huge hand in our own demise? We don’t care? Lazy? Ignorant? Then that word comes to mind that my patients are not very fond of: moderation. It’s easy, do-able and healthy – it also keeps the stress level down because you’re reducing not omitting!

Last night I saw this tomato sauce commercial (I won’t mention any names). Sure, the commercial itself was cute but the message was that this tomato sauce can be counted as a vegetable serving. Didn’t President Reagan say that ketchup was a vegetable? Pahleeease! That’s not really something a dietitian wants to hear or see. In actuality, one vegetable serving is ½ cup which is a fraction of what is recommended for the day. If there is high fructose corn syrup in the sauce – I might look further. The sauce I buy (OK, I don’t make my own) contains no added salt (very little salt, however, tomatoes have a great taste on their own), tomatoes and some spices. It is important to learn how to incorporate vegetables – a variety of them in different colors – into your life!

Being creative with your “healthier” foods can make a huge difference on whether you will eat them or not. For example: if you don’t favor vegetables (and I’m talking about dark greens like collard greens, kale, spinach, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower, carrots, tomatoes, onions, etc. then try to make them taste good or better with something you like. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with: I like to sauté fresh Brussels sprouts with olive oil and garlic or add one tablespoon of butter to my broccoli with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Perhaps use chicken or vegetable broth to steam asparagus or to make rice tastier with added vegetables in a casserole. My favorite – I think I’ll make it tonight! – is my version of mashed cauliflower (for those who don’t like to cook much and for those, like me, who like to multitask and exercise while dinner is cooking itself)! I take a bag of frozen cauliflower florets, ½ bags of frozen chopped onions and ½ bags of frozen sliced yellow squash and put them in a microwaveable dish and press cook for 20 minutes. When “mushy”, I take a fork and mush further and then add a tablespoon of butter and pepper. What a gourmet I’ve become! What about adding tomatoes with spices to your green beans? Even splurge and add low-fat shredded cheese to your broccoli. Add feta cheese to cooked spinach and onions. The most decadent vegetable recipe is to dip the broccoli, cauliflower, etc. in beaten egg or eggbeater (easier!) and then dip in breadcrumbs or panko crumbs and “bake-fry” by using spray butter under and over them. Dig in and enjoy!

It’s the new year and many of us seem to be ready to LOSE WEIGHT!  The guilt is piling up from all the extra food and snacks we had over the holidays and now we MUST get down to business. 

Please try not to set yourself up for failure!  Don’t put too much pressure on yourself for immediate results.  Simply: THINK BEFORE YOU EAT!  If you do this, you won’t be on a “short-lived” diet, filled with so many, too many, restrictions.  Rather, you will be allowing yourself satisfaction with better food/beverage choices for the long-term.  Just spread less butter when having butter.  Replace chips with fruit and take a smaller handful of nuts.  Remember how oil adds up in calories: 1 tablespoon is already 120 calories!  Non-starchy veggies like salad, broccoli, green beans and carrots don’t add up to many calories so emphasize these foods instead of the starches.  Keep this information in a safe spot in back of your head so you pause before over-indulging.  You’ll be fine!  Try to enjoy your food and not let it hurt you….