Friday, August 3, 2012

Living as a Diabetic Day 4

Purple Food.

If you live in Harlem and do not have purple food at the local C-Town, print this in, take it to the manager and let him or her know that you want more selections in Harlem.


Watch the raisin consumption, they are high in sugar. But you can eat Kohlrabi greens with impunity. Dr. Culpepper at Harlem Hospital tells all of her patients to put a lot of color on their plate, and what color is more fun that purple?

Before I get to today's breakfast let me share a recipe for Split Pea Soup. This soup warms the body and soul. This version has no fat, less sodium and all of the tasty goodness of the more traditions.

Pass by the Ham hocks, they taste great but are high in fat. Choose either smoked turkey wings or Smoked Neck bones.  Toss in some garlic and simmer for hours in about 16 cups of water with a few garlic cloves thrown in.

Split Pea Soup
12 cups of stock made from smoked turkey or neck bones, chilled with the fat removed.

6 stalks of celery chopped fine.

1 lb of split peas.

Add the peas and the celery to the stock and simmer. Add water as needed to maintain 12 cups. Simmer for about 3 hours. This will give you about 9 nice bowls of soup at slightly over one cup each.

Per bowl you will be getting 30 grams of carbohydrate (pair with protein for a meal) and 12 grams of fiber or 48% of what you need daily.

Bonus...this is seriously delicious and all that fiber makes you feel full.

And onto breakfast...coffee with goat milk is a given and that was followed by 2 cups of cubed watermelon and a small portion of chicken hash.

I used the one small potato I roasted with the chicken and 1/4 cup fennel along with 1/2 cup chicken. I cooked in a nonstick with the tiniest drop of oil and the hash was delicious.

66 grams of carb but fewer than 400 calories. I should be eating more calories in the morning but it is hard for me to make the non carby choices. When not following this a common breakfast was toasted baguette, butter, fruit and a little cheese. AKA fat and carbs. When I eat otherwise, I reach satiation very quickly.

51 grams of carb at lunch. I had a portion of the split pea soup and a tiny tortilla with 1 ounce of cheese and one ounce of meat done as a quessadilla in a non stick skillet with no fat added. I am under where I should be with calories but I feel satisfied and tend to have more calories at dinner after a heavy bout at the gym. At my age and condition the bouts are less heavy but the work twice as hard so off I go.

Bread; I have several favorite foods, bread, pasta, and rice are at the top of the list.

On the way home I decided that I would have a cold supper, I have a lot going on and was running late and cold roast chicken is a lovely meal, but I stopped at the store for my goat milk and it is opposite the bread. A little bread with my meal would be a good thing I rationalized and before I knew what day it was I had purchased a mini ciabbata.

I repeated the tomato salad with the yogurt ranch dressing (alright you convinced me this herby mixture is very good)sliced the rest of the fennel, chopped up a cup of cabbage and 1/2 cup roast chicken.

I was careful about the bread, 1/3 of the loaf (more of a roll by my standards) had 26 grams of carb, so I cut it, wrapped it and put it away.

When I say that fiber makes you feel full, I am not kidding. I ate the cabbage and fennel first dipping it in the dressing and could only manage 1/2 the tomato, though I did eat all the bread with some butter.

I did have a glass of wine, something that works for some diabetics but always watch your sugar.

Dinner came to 41 grams of carb, all very good. My day was more balanced that previously and my nutrition and fiber were higher, however I only managed 1,492 calories. Not enough for me. If you are trying to lose weight learn from my day...the more fiber you eat the more satisfied you feel and less chance of colon cancer.

5 comments:

Brenda said...

I wrote to the hospital and they don't answer e mail. Sorry to ask again but WHEN are you coming back to Harlem?

LondonRand said...

Good Day!

I am one of your English readers and a type II. When we take the tube to Paris I refuse to count carbs and I tend to be less careful and eat what I like, however I do test sugar. For whatever reason my sugar is better and more stable.

Can you explain why?

Nomi said...

I work at Harlem Hospital and everyone is so excited about the Doctor bringing in a chef. You are going to have a lot of staff wanting classes. My big problem is coffee breaks. A lot of times in the morning someone goes over to Dunking Donuts for coffee and we all put in for stuff we don't need. Then in the afternoon it's bagels and things like that. I am not diabetic but what is a good snack to have with coffee? I can be pretty good with meals but baked goods kill me. Don't tell me fruit, I been bringing in oranges and apples and they sit in my desk and rot, they just can't compete with a chocolate glaze.

Karl said...

London Rand,

I cannot explain why, so I took your question over to Rhonda Trousdale at Harlem Hospital for an answer.

As to the guy in London. I hear this a lot from patients....they leave NYC to go to a Caribbean island for vacation where they eat tons of fresh fruits and rice but their sugars are somehow better.

There could be several reasons for this and probably all of them are working together on a good vacation.
I agree with you that its probably a reduction of stress level, not just from being away from work but also because people tend to get more sleep on vacation and poor sleep or not enough sleep can contribute to stress on the body. Stress hormones definitely increase blood glucose. Also people tend to have a more flexible schedule and eat slower, giving themselves time to enjoy the food and allow the stomach to send signals that they have had enough to avoid over-eating. Although the food they are eating has more sugar, they are more likely to be having healthier food options and less fast food/greasy food.

For the guy going to Paris, on vacation he probably ate at nice restaurants which had healthier food than what he was typically eating at home and I know you've been to Paris so you know they are much better than us with portion control.

Finally, people tend to move more on vacation. For my patients who go visit friends and family in the Caribbean, they are on the go to see their friends. In Paris, its a walking city so he may not take his car or chose to walk to places close by rather than driving long distances.

Most people don't go on vacation and just sit in their hotel room the whole day but at home they could just sit in a cubicle the whole day, drive home and sit in front of the television set.

What I would recommend is he do a healthy diary for a couple weeks in London and then do a health diary the next time he travels to Paris for vacation and see if he can identify specifically what he is doing differently. For the health diary, write down how much sleep, rate the sleep on a scale of 1 to 5, what was eaten and at what time of the day (don't forget the wine), how much walking (maybe a pedometer would help to quantify that), and for stress again use a 1-5 scale. After he gets home he can review his health diary. This might give him some insight into habits that he might try to change at home to achieve better glucose control.

Karl said...

Noni,

Tiny sandwiches are a good choice. I am a bread lover from the buttery French pastry to the chewy loaf. However, two donuts a week and two bagels in addition to your regular calories can pack on the pounds.

When I worked in an normal office (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth)I got those little loaves of party rye and would make a couple of cheese or peanut butter or tuna sandwiches to have with my tea. I thought myself very British at the time. However I did stay lean.

I fully understand the craving for 'something to have with coffee'. I am having coffee right now and want a cracker very badly, so by planning ahead and having those few bites maybe you can resist the baked goods.

If you MUST have something sweet in the morning make your own chocolate glaze and have it on a graham cracker, the graham is whole wheat and a touch of chocolate is better than a large glazed cruller.