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Know your numbers?

YSI
Diabetes is a numbers game and it is all about eating/drinking carbohydrates aka CARBS.

What are CARBS? Yes, traditional white table sugar is CARBS, but so is  flour, rice, potatoes, fruit, and corn to name a few.  You are in more danger from flour, rice, and potatoes than you are from a teaspoon full of sugar!!!

Can you imagine eating a cup of sugar, teaspoon full by teaspoon full?  Yuck.
Now, imagine you are eating/drinking a cup of rice or potatoes or pasta or bread or applesauce or soda pop. Yummy?  Danger Danger Will Robinson!  Now you are beginning to understand CARBS.

What are NET CARBS? Simple: Total CARBS minus fiber CARBS equals NET CARBS. Since fiber CARBS do not affect your glucose readings NET CARBS is more accurate for keeping track of intake.

How do I know how many NET CARBS are in a food? Personally, I like caloriekingdotcom for looking up foods but you can also use a paperback book of foods w/nutritional analysis or read those government analysis labels on packaged goods.

Decide on your personal goal for total daily intake of NET CARBS.  Since we are all sizes and shapes you will have to experiment with your body using your meter to compare food intake to results.

Personally, I realized I had consumed over 300 CARBS one day, one very normal day. The next day I decided on 50 NET CARBS per day. It was hard at first but I soon realized that I could eat all the meat, real butter, real cream, nuts, real eggs, etc I wanted.

Exactly two months later I lost 20 lbs and you would not believe what happened to my blood lab results.
Not only did I DRAMATICALLY lower my blood glucose, I also DRAMATICALLY lowered my cholesterol/triglycerides/ldl. Who knew...you don't need those dangerous cholesterol drugs to do this!

I guess the hospital cafeteria did not understand why putting rice in every soup, and pizza or pasta as a main entree was bad for us... (not to mention the 500% markup...)

More humerous yet was the hospital dietician who served us orzo during a diabetes intervention program as a suggested good meal-the physical therapist had to point out to the dietician that orzo is pasta...


My super secret weapon?:

Flaxseedmeal aka Flaxseedflour aka Flax seeds ground into a flour aka meal.  (I prefer golden-the dark brown tasted bitter to me.) Sorry, whole seeds, or flaxseed oil won't help.  Flaxseedmeal literally vacuums your blood. (I do not recommend it for children.)

I would put a heaping tablespoon of this into my morning oatmeal packet 5 days a week. I found I could start taking it only a few days before my drs appts and still dramatically affect my lab results.

There are many many more food tricks-I could write a book
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