A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Fruit Basket;  Part II:  A New Hope

…and by “fruit basket”, I mean “fruit basket” this time.

I’m the type to jump to conclusions, project into the future, and expect the worst.  Pessimism? Nah… I call it ‘realism’. Think about it – then if things turn out better than expected, it’s like an added bonus and something to celebrate.  Well that’s the way I see it at least.  Better to be prepared.

Had a nutritionist appointment at Island Health and Fitness on Friday.  They showed me my numbers from my glucose test, which weren’t all THAT bad to tell you the truth.  The only issue which blasted me into this vortex of healthy eating was the “1 hour” measure of my blood glucose, which had shot up and peaked far above normal.

Much to my surprise (and knee-jerk paranoid preparation), they did not take away my cookies… my peanut clusters… my ice cream.  No, as a matter of fact, I ended up taking them away from myself.

I was put on a variation of the “Consistent Carbohydrate Diet”, which is endorsed by the American Cancer Society, and has me eating 6 small meals a day at 2.5 hr intervals, and not going above 30mg of carbohydrates at any of these feedings.  It doesn’t really cut anything out of my diet per se, but being that even a small apple has 15g of carbs, you can imagine that a cookie has substantially more.

That said, there’s a lot of looking up carb counts, calculating, measuring, actually going by portion sizes (Pssshhhh!!  Who ever paid attention to that before???).  When a serving size of cereal is merely a 1/2cup, you tend to see the pattern – that you wanna get more ‘bang for your buck’ when it comes to carbs per meal, so you tend toward lower-carb choices so that you can EAT more.  Bye bye chocolate peanut clusters.

The other piece of this puzzle is monitoring my blood glucose level, which involves a handy little glucometer, and to break that down even further – that means I have to prick my finger.  4 times a day.  I was a little worried about this part, but it turns out it’s  not that painful, and it’s actually kinda ‘fun’ to see what your reading is going to be.  Like a slot machine without the payout.  C’mon, cherries!!!!

In my tendency toward obsessive-compulsive behavior, I used this weekend to sit down and plan my foods out for each day, even going so far as to create a spreadsheet that will plot my glucose readings onto a chart each day.  I fully expect the nutritionist to stamp a gold star onto my forehead at my next appointment.

So here I am 2.5 days into this new nutritional regime and here are my observations:

–         my healthy snacks taste sweeter than I ever imagined.  I’m beginning to appreciate that apple that I’ll have later in the day.

–         eating 6 equally-dispersed meals a day is really HARD.  By the final snack of the day, I’m sick of food!

–         my first glass of milk in years went down hard.  Nope, I still don’t really like milk.

–         My Anthony is a very very patient man for putting up with my obsessive eccentricities.

My blood glucose has been within the recommended range each time I checked but once (the first time I used the meter, and I was in LOW blood sugar range).  All in all this is a good experience, and Baby seems to be very happy with the results.  <kick> <kick> <kick>