Below are a couple of recent posts from http://diabetes.about.com/
Notice, how they are all about fat. The first one is about portion sized and used muffins as an example, comparing a small homemade muffin with a big muffin from a coffee shop. All they compare is calories & fat. What about the white flour and sugar??? That is what jacks up blood sugar, NOT FAT!! If you subtract the fat calories from the total for the homemade muffin, that still leaves over 100 calories, most from carbs, probably 20g of refined carbs. If you subtract the fat calories from the total for the big muffin, you still get over 200 calories and probably on the order of 45g of refined carbs.

The next one is about adding more produce to your diet. I agree that non-starchy vegetables and low sugar fruits are good, but the post goes downhill quickly. They talk about slicing fruit for your whole grain cereal or oatmeal. NEWSFLASH, whole grain cereal and oatmeal jack up my blood sugar!! Then, look at some of the recipes they link to:

Cranberry Almond Oatmeal from your Diabetes Guide
Pumpkin Oatmeal from our Low Fat Cooking Guide
Pretty Pasta from your Diabetes Guide
Low Fat Sweet Potato and Apple Soup from our Low Fat Cooking Guide
Low Fat Zucchini and Tomato Gratin from our Low Fat Cooking Guide

Nice low fat stuff, but mostly high in starch. Just cut the fat and you'll control your diabetes -- yeah right. Fat DOESN'T raise blood sugar, starch does and sugar does!! The low fat lie is so ingrained in diabetes treatment that they are just making things worse for diabetics. I try to keep up with diabetes info and keep running into this crap!!!! AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!

I also like the last sentence, "Just remember that some vegetables are starchy and should be counted as carbs, such as corn, some winter squashes, potatoes, peas, and legumes such as kidney beans, pinto beans, etc." It's not just a matter of counting starchy vegetables, use your glucose meter to see how each one affects your blood sugar. If it jacks up your blood sugar, don't eat it!! What could be more common sense?????


Hit a Home Run with Portion Sizes
When you're trying to eat right, nothing can sabotage your efforts faster than servings that are too big. When you're eating out, it's really difficult to find normal size portions.

For instance... muffins. When I was a child, a muffin was a small 2" x 3" affair which may or may not have contained blueberries. Simple and straightforward.

According to Calorie-count Plus, a homemade blueberry muffin that weighs 57 grams is 162 calories and 6.2 grams of fat. These days, if you buy a muffin, you will notice that it is a much bigger muffin. More muffin equals more calories. A 135 gram blueberry muffin at a well-known coffee shop, is 470 calories and 24 grams of fat.

See the problem?

Portions are getting larger, which means that the calories we consume are also growing, almost without us even realizing it.

How do we combat ever-expanding portions? By having a few good reference points available that help us to see when we're holding a normal size portion or something that could easily satisfy a family of four.

Luckily, baseballs haven't changed in size since I was a kid. A baseball is a good tangible item to gauge portion sizes. 1 baseball equals 1 cup. 1/2 baseball equals 1/2 cup.

So, one baseball is equivalent to a normal apple. One baseball is a one-serving baked potato. 1/2 baseball is a serving of rice, pasta, mashed potatoes or ice cream. Think in terms of how many baseballs in each serving, and you will quickly see how large some servings really are.

And if your next muffin is bigger than a baseball, find someone to split it with.

Photo of muffins courtesy of Simon Jauncey/Getty Images

Photo of baseballs courtesy of Grant Faint/Getty Images

Sunday September 2, 2007 | permalink | comments (0)
Autumn Means a Seasonal Rainbow of Produce
Maintaining a healthy weight is a number one priority when you have diabetes. Now is the time to increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables. They're high in vitamins and fiber and low in calories.


How can you make the most of all these choices and put more produce in your diet?

Start with breakfast. Peaches, plums and nectarines are in full swing. Slice some for your whole-grain cereal or oatmeal, or just bite into one as an accompaniment to your well-balanced breakfast.

Cranberry Almond Oatmeal from your Diabetes Guide
Pumpkin Oatmeal from our Low Fat Cooking Guide
Lunch? Thick tomato slices on toasted whole grain or rye bread, with just a smear of reduced fat mayo, makes a great sandwich. A few leaves of romaine lettuce and a thin slice of sweet onion makes it even greater. Add a little low-fat ham or turkey bacon, and you've reached sandwich heaven.

When dinnertime arrives, put together a fresh salad with dark green lettuces, tomatoes, peppers in a variety of colors, carrot slices, virtually any vegetable that you like. Sprinkle it with a little olive oil and lemon juice, and some fresh ground black pepper.

Serve it with corn on the cob*, or baked sweet potatoes*, tender green beans, beets, sauteed zucchini and yellow squash, or any vegetable that catches your eye.

Pretty Pasta from your Diabetes Guide
Low Fat Sweet Potato and Apple Soup from our Low Fat Cooking Guide
Low Fat Zucchini and Tomato Gratin from our Low Fat Cooking Guide
And don't forget the greens, like kale, Swiss chard, turnip greens, mustard greens, escarole, and spinach. Saute some rough cut greens in a little olive oil and garlic till wilted and tender. Or add a few handfuls to a pot of soup or stew. They're full of vitamins and fiber.

"Lite" Greens from our Southern Cooking Guide
Tomato, Kale and White Bean Soup by our Low Fat Cooking Guide
Nothing beats an apple for dessert. Or a pear. Or a slice of melon. They're all ripe and waiting.

*Just remember that some vegetables are starchy and should be counted as carbs, such as corn, some winter squashes, potatoes, peas, and legumes such as kidney beans, pinto beans, etc.

Photo courtesy of Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

Sunday September 2, 2007 | permalink | comments (0)

Yep, that's their template and they're sticking with it!

It kind of makes you want to gag doesn't it. I was listening to the radio last night. Anyone ever heard of the cancerproject.org. I know I haven't. Their spot starts out something like this. "There's a way to help prevent cancer, and it available at your supermarket. Studies show that eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables, blah de blah," then goes on to say you can lose weight and prevent cancer with a healthy vegetarian diet. Say what? All of the studies about fruits and veggies preventing cancer have been disappointing, and last I heard cancer tumors need sugar to grow and thrive. Am I losing it or have you heard the same thing? Not to jack your subject, but it's all the same mentality.

RENEGADEDIABETIC WROTE:

"And if your next muffin is bigger than a baseball, find someone to split it with...."

CHRYSALIS ADDED:

...Or you'll get a muffin top, or, if you're already playing host to one, an even bigger, maybe even GIGANTIC, muffin top hanging over your waistband.

I like the baseball analogy--it correlates well with the "palm of your hand is a serving size" measurement, which, ego, by way of free association, leads to thoughts of catcher's mitts, and what goes in the palm of a catcher's mitt, but a baseball, so, if you're wondering how much you can safely have, it's whatever you can eat out of the pocket of a catcher's mitt. Simple, right? (I can already hear those devious, creaky little wheels turning...softball size, or hardball...?)

Now, about drinking champagne out of ruby slippers--

You guys should see what I can do with ink blots. Sunny? Where are you?

Chrysalis

What they don't teach is that when you lower your fat, you go crazy on the carbs and everything else. Because you main energy source is glucose!

I found adding fat, stabilised my blood sugar. The fat actually has a positive effect in that area.

I also found that you cannot talk to diabetics about this. They are extremely defensive, and especially don't wanna hear anything from someone who is not insulin depedant.

And the forcefully depend, that there is no such thing as pre-diabetes.

*Sigh*

This is a mess that other people created. People with a lot of power. We can do our small bit and try to be helpful, but we can do little to stop this.

Melodie---Dr Mike did a series of posts about the cancer research you are talking about---the focused in on the red meats---even though the it was based on the typical western diet---they zeroed in on the red meat---not a cottin' pickin' thang about all the sugar and other carbs in it---

Red Meat and Colon Cancer

Addendum to the colon cancer and red meat post

More on red meat and colon cancer

This reminds me of people close to me. So many times I hear "honey, that is so fattening". This usually while I'm eating something like bacon or sausage.

They just don't understand low-carb and I get so tired of trying to explain it, over and over and over......

Yeah, I got that from my stepmother when I went home a couple of summers ago after losing weight. You would think after losing close to 200 pounds that you wouldn't STILL get the lecture about what you are eating and drinking, but there she was telling me how everything I was eating was gonna make me fat again.

Um, did you know I ate this way to lose weight? APPARENTLY NOT!

My mom keeps saying things like "well, if you lose weight cutting carbs, wouldn't it be even better if you also ate low fat?"

Maybe I should point her to the Kimkins threads to show where that ends up...

The reason I lose weight on this WOE is because I don't feel like I'm sacrificing or on a diet at all, and so can keep it up for a long time (hopefully, for life this time.)

Even if I lost faster if I lowered my fat- and I don't think I would; I think high fat is the best way to go - I wouldn't be able to eat that way forever which means the weight would just come back, probably with a weakened metabolism as well.

I've blogged about this issue, Karishma:

"Don't Mix Low-Carb With Low-Fat"

I thought about this thread this morning as I enjoyed my DELICIOUS bacon and fried eggs.

YUMMY! You're getting there, Gypsy!