My Effort to Avoid Diabetes

       The first time I heard about diabetes was in reference to my maternal grandmother who developed it at an early age. She needed daily insulin injections and  died from an overdose. I never really delved into the seriousness of the illness despite having seen that severe consequence. Instead, I ate what I ate and simply assumed that my body would handle it properly. It never occurred to me that eating induces a response from organs such as the liver, and  the pancreas,  and that these organs could begin to malfunction, especially if they are subjected to excessive demands.  As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Or is it really?

    Eventually, I began to read up on how diabetes affects the body, and found that it can even lead to amputation of limbs due to the damage it inflicts on the circulatory system.  I  observed a certain storeowner who had previously appeared to be healthy have his legs needing to be amputated. Also observed how my mother in law suffered the same fate. Eventually, it made me feel  that I was playing some sort of dietary  Russian roulette.  

      So  the sensing of imminent danger arrived rather late in my life and I was lucky. It is only recently that I have started to get serious about a pre diabetic diet. Now I no longer throw caution to the wind and consuming large amounts of carbohydrates. Now I know that is tantamount to consuming sugar. I no longer consume large servings of rice, spaghetti,  brown sugars dumped into recipes, and sugary soft drinks.  No longer consume pure sugar in the form of chocolates and candy corn. 

     In view of my splurging for all those years, I am very fortunate that I didn't' become a full-blown diabetic, but still managed to retain my far more acceptable pre-diabetic category. Fortunately,  now that I am living in full awareness of what this disease can do, I am becoming healthier.  In fact, it has already begun to pay off since i have lost approx. ten pounds of fat and am down to 180 pounds from approx. 190. 

     Has it been easy? Well, at first, no.  For a few weeks, I was  strongly craving the entire pizzas I  had been  consuming in one sitting while washing them down with sugary drinks. Yes, I was extremely annoyed at my increasing large pot-belly which was forcing me to where a spring jacked the entire springs and summers. But no matter how hard I tried. that fat seemed impossible to remove.

     Not any longer. Now my diet has the stored-fat in full retreat since it is being used as an energy source.  My new target weight is 168, the weight that I had when I was 22.  Am I suffering from deprivations. Well, I honestly no longer  don't feel that way. I have come to relish the variety of tantalizing  tastes that this new diet offers  with its  fruits such as apples, plums, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, and its veggies  such as cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. In fact, now my former diet seems rather bland.  The only thing that I do miss is being able to eat bread without having to worry. But I have solved this problem by restricting the bread to two slices per day and following its consumption  with a mouthful of lettuce in order to keep the sugar insulin-spiking reaction. 

                                                                 Favorite Food Combo

     Strange as it might seem, my favorite dish is to consume an entire lettuce along with two tomatoes. All splashed wit virgin olive oil along with a can of either mackerel or Salmon  Absolutely delicious and absolutely no worries involved.