Working Towards a Diet

OK, I eat out too much. Lunch at TD's deli. Dinner any number of places. I've packed on 15 pounds on my already not so svelte frame since March. Part of that is due to a new medication I take for my diabetes, but the disease just complicates the whole thing. On a good day I have a fine breakfast, and then screw up lunch-submarine sandwiches or fried food or nothing at all, when I'm home for dinner I cook good healthy food, but eat too much. What a mess! There is good news due to the wonders of modern chemistry my A1C blood sugar score is under 7 and my total cholesterol has only jumped from 98 to 113.

So, a need to reform and eat healthy. Research in diet books has led me to the new USDA plate graph that has replaced the old food pyramid, Rick Gallop's The G.I. (Glycemic Index) Diet, and the Eat This, Not That No Diet Diet as sources of ideas. The glycemic index is a measure of the simple versus complex carbohydrates in a food with the idea that a diabetic is better off with the complex variety (and a low limit on all carbs-no more than 60 grams a meal). I've mentioned the Eat This, Not That series before. The idea with their diet is to get between 400-600 calories at breakfast, 300-600 for lunch, and a dinner of 400-700. Two snacks of 150-250 calories would be allowed as well. The idea of multiple small meals is a key to every diabetic diet. The nice thing about the Eat This people is that they give details on ways to eat on the road so I don't have to be home to eat well.

I should be able to cobble together a good diet here if I just pay attention, but what about the social and environmental costs of food. Enter the other books that are suddenly on my reading list: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food; Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet, Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, and Mike Berners-Lee's How Bad are Bananas?. I'm going to try to figure out a diet that is fun to eat, but that doesn't increase my carbon footprint or take up more than my fair share of the resources of the world. The good news is that before I'm reduced to eating local roots and berries I have a lot of reading to do. I think I'll start with the diet and move on to the social responsibility and until I finish the diet books-bring on the fryolator chicken fingers! OK, I'm starting the new diet Monday, I promise!