Blueberry Chips

It's late at night when I often feel inspired to write. I'm excited. One of the pieces of my journey to health has been an experiment that I've been carrying out for almost a month now. In about a week I shall expound more on it, but for now, suffice to say that I have seen a significant change in my bloodwork which is quite exciting. My blood glucose has dropped 10 points since January, and I have an inkling that it is due to this change I've made in my lifestyle.

Am also working hard on adding more fruits & vegetables to my diet. I realize that a huge part of it is sheer laziness. I can't be bothered to cut up the fruits and veggies when I can grab a pastry or a slice of bread instead. I do eat a diet rather heavy in carbs, and while I am learning that sustained weight loss will happen with a diet higher in carbs rather than attempting to eliminate carbs, I also realize that I still need to swing the balance a little more towards the whole plant foods. A meal should ideally consist of 70% fruits & veggies and 30% carbs/proteins is what I read/heard somewhere recently, and I tried it. For about 2 days. Then I realized that I didn't have time to calculate it all out, neither prepare enough foods or get to the store to buy the fruits & veggies to have enough variety. So I scrapped that.

I'm still cooking without added oil, though, which I'm also excited about! I've found it is so easy to dry-fry if you have a good non-stick pan, and if you don't, just add a little bit of water to the pan and stir vigorously. A great combination to start a dish is to try garlic, onions, mushrooms, and bell peppers. The peppers and garlic really help to flavour the dish and mask the rather strange smell that onions have when they are sauteing in water.

And as I'm learning as well, keep experimenting. Keep trying. Don't be afraid of new things; you may find that you really love them! I picked up a tub of quinoa tabbouleh salad at Costco on Friday and I'm excited to have that as my main dish one day. Super healthy and great on the calorie side too!

Become aware of labels. Even learning little things has helped me. For example, keeping sodium below 200 mg is a great idea. It's difficult to find tomato sauce, though, so I try to keep it as low as possible. Or reading up on how many servings are in a bag of whatever it is you're purchasing. When you calculate how many servings are in a bag, and realize that you'll probably eat half the bag by the time you're home (which would be me), then it is just easier to put the bag back on the shelf and walk on by. But do find foods you enjoy and treat yourself with them. Buy the $9 box of fresh blueberries and leave the $3 bag of potato chips in the store. I know, I know, the chips taste sooooo much better. But seriously? The last bag of potato chips I bought a couple of weeks ago had a warning label on them: may cause cancer. Blueberries don't come with that kind of warning!

So till the next update, keep eating healthy and having fun!