To my fellow diabetics

[Dolomite_supafly]

I'll tell you the weirdest thing I have found. when my blood sugar is high I crave lemons, can't get enough of them, I have eaten them until my lips were sore from the acid in them before. I asked my Dr about it and he said it was the first time he had ever heard of it.

Lemons, and anything acidic, reduces your blood sugar so that might be it.

[Dolomite`s Breezy]

Okra is one of the finest meals you can eat if done correctly.

I will chalk  this up to a temporary bout of insanity.. next you will tell me that  black eyed peas and cornbread is good:) yuck..lol

[dralarms]

I will chalk  this up to a temporary bout of insanity.. next you will tell me that  black eyed peas and cornbread is good:) yuck..lol

Cornbread yes, black eyed peas NASTY.

[A.J. Holst]

Okra picked from the garden, processed and immediately, lightly dusted with my wife's secret coating and lovingly dropped into the fry daddy with fresh oil...

Great thread for general eating healthy tips...eat in moderation, be aware of when you eat, tasty healthy alternatives, reduce the amount of processed foods in your life and treat yourself to a reward from time to time.

[TNWNGR]

I will chalk  this up to a temporary bout of insanity.. next you will tell me that  black eyed peas and cornbread is good:) yuck..lol

Try it lightly fried or stir fried and you'll find out its really tasty. It's also good sliced up in soups and chowders. If you can find some freeze whole or large cut veggies you'll like those too.

[Dolomite`s Breezy]

Okra got to many carbs for me..  But I will try the okra water in the next few days..

[john455]

Some good eating is Okra and green tomatoes cut thin lightly coated with egg whites and corn meal then fried till golden brown. just don't drop any, your tounge will pull itself out of your mouth to get to it lol.

Edited July 12, 2015 by john455

[Oh Shoot]

Okra got to many carbs for me..  But I will try the okra water in the next few days..

 

Jeez, 4 net grams per cup ain't bad unless you're going for constant Atkins induction phase levels or something.

 

'Course, if one fries it in batter, you probably at least triple that.

 

- OS

Edited July 12, 2015 by Oh Shoot

[Trekbike]

But I will try the okra water in the next few days..

 

From what I remember the guy at work said you get the best results from fresh, not frozen, and it will take some period of time for it to start helping.   I'll ask him tomorrow to get you a better idea on the time.    

 

He also said the next morning the okra is slimy/snotty looking when you pick it out so he said he looks away when doing it.  LOL.   I think he said the water is not real tasty so he drinks it quickly.    Good luck.   

[Ron_TN]

I threw all my drugs away 40 year ago... I took pills for..... sugar type 2......high blood pressure.....colestrol....and was 100 lbs. overweight.  Ya'all need to change your diet and MOVE ......excercise......WALK!  Tennessians are in BAD health we eat too much garbage.   There are good carbs and bad carbs...do some reading and find out you CAN get off the meds I did and so did millions of others.   The man told me a simple statement ...."you are what you eat"  I'm 80 now and still med FREE.  These things are worse then arsenic....SUGAR,,,WHITE FLOUR...FRIED FOODS and one of the worse is FAST FOODS.   Check your sugar after a couple of BIG MACS and FRIES.  You,ll be high like takin 2 shots of Jack

[Ron_TN]

I am on 850mg of Metformin 2x a day.. I love it , it doesnt have side effects and its been around for ages .I heard bad things about  Victoza and I will not take it.

I lost 50lbs in 6 month and  cut my A1C down to half with eating less that 50mgs of carbs a day..

You should not eat spaghettis  .. to many carbs=sugar spike:)

No CAKE.. :)

I should also mention..I would not have been able to do this without my husband at all..he cooks , he measures and he is THE best all around Nurse :)

Your on the right track....wheight loss......diet .....and walking.......walking and walking. Keep it up and you'll be throwing those meds down the toilet. 

Edited July 13, 2015 by Ron_TN

[Dolomite_supafly]

She, Oma Sourkraut, HATES exercise which is not bad because the vast majority of exercises I cannot do. And when she does do a lot her blood sugar jumps ~40 points and she starts feeling like crap. But we do try to get out and do SOMETHING at least twice a week. Normally we go to the stables where she boards her horse and end up walking a mile or two but the longer we walk or the hotter it is the higher her sugar gets. She has checked her sugar and it be ~120 and, without eating anything, have it climb to 180+ from the stress her body is under from heat, stress or exercise. I am not saying for others to not exercise but for her we have found other ways to keep her numbers regulated without relying on exercise.

 

Jeez, 4 net grams per cup ain't bad unless you're going for constant Atkins induction phase levels or something.

 

'Course, if one fries it in batter, you probably at least triple that.

 

- OS

 

We, both of us, try to stay under 8 carbs per meal but most times it is closer to 10 by the time we add a few things we really like. Any more than that and her blood sugar is climbing up there, even if it is good carbs. She wakes up with a reading of ~130-140, by lunch it is ~110, after lunch ~120 and then dinner is generally a bit lower. We have a good long record of her numbers and we try different foods, a serving size, to see if she can tolerate them.

 

We eat a lot of salads with a meat protein, either lean red meat or chicken, 72 grams of Romaine lettuce and a serving size of protein then a serving size of salad dressing with vinegar added to extend the dressing. I add mushrooms and she adds cucumbers along with some nuts. And when we first started out we would look at the portion and think to ourselves that is not enough but eventually we realized it was plenty and that it was our eyes telling us it should be more, not our stomachs. Our treat that we normally do once a week is a local Chinese buffet. Yes, we do eat more than we should there but we are ALWAYS aware of WHAT it is we are eating. For snacks we do cheese sticks, nuts, boiled eggs, those muffins and home made beef jerky. But like everything else it must be a serving size.

 

Not following the recommended serving sizes is the biggest reason why people are having the problems we hear about and gain so much weight. Americans, me included, no longer eat until full. That is because food tastes so good we would often continue to eat until the food on our plate was gone even though we were already full. And Americans no longer work, physically, for the food they eat. If every American would walk for 20-30 minutes before they ate most Americans would not be overweight.

 

She LOVES peas but those things really, really spike her blood sugar. Anything that is pickled seems to not affect her as much as a non pickled version. I have also figured out a recipe for chocolate/bacon muffins that is carb neutral. Even before we started adding fiber each regular sized muffin was only a carb, and good carbs at that. She would check her blood sugar then eat three and check again an hour or two later with zero increase in her numbers so I know they are not spiking her sugar. They are not as sweet enough for most people to eat them but for us they are a great little dessert.

 

Oh, a GREAT little snack that is also pretty decent for you is the Vienna Sausages for babies. They look, feel and taste identical to the grown up versions but the child version is a lot better for you but remember only eat a serving size. She has even tried eating baby food to see if she can have some of the things she likes but so far it seems baby food, other than the sausages, is out. Something else she has started using is one of those vaporizers they sell for smokers but she doesn't use any nicotine. They make liquids that taste identical to most sweets and has no affect on her sugar levels. She can get her fix for sweets now and it has helped her immensely in getting through the day.

 

Her blood sugar really spikes from her waking up. We have tested her blood sugar throughout the night trying to figure out why it is so high. At bed it would be ~110, at midnight 100-110, at 2am it is 90-100 and at 4 am it is 80-90. Then, because her body is "turning on" it begins to climb again at about 4am and quits at about 9am when it is 130-140. Even if she stays awake from 4 am on her numbers start climbing even though she is not eating anything. Then we spend the day fighting her morning numbers. If we could figure out a way to prevent the morning sugar from being so high I think we can keep the rest of her numbers well into the normal range. We have tried peanut butter with crackers at night, peanut butter only as well as plenty of other foods trying to keep her numbers up throughout the night so her body doesn't feel it needs to turn on as she wakes up. But what it does is add the increases from eating at night to her morning numbers. If she eats something the night before that should increase her blood sugar then her morning numbers will be significantly higher.

 

In the beginning I kept logs of everything she ate and I recommend that for any new diabetic or anyone dieting because it helps you see exactly what you are eating. I weighed the food and kept a log of how many carbs, calories and fiber each meal had. I have menus from the first 2-3 months and I continue to refer to them when I cook. And because I kept so many detailed records I was able to figure out what works for her and what doesn't. It also showed me where her threshold was for her numbers to increase. I realize it all depends on the type of carb but 8 grams is about the limit for her blood sugar to remain even, not raise or lower, after a meal. It is not just about what you have eaten in the last 2-3 hours. We can see a significant increase in her overall numbers in the days following a day of high numbers.

 

I can count on one hand the times she ate something she isn't supposed to eat. And by eat I mean a BITE and not the who thing. One of the things she REALLY liked was sushi rolls but that is now a thing of the past, at least for now.

 

She is still loosing weight everyday and I am so proud of her. She is doing so much better than I ever could and even though she has diabetes now she is MUCH healthier than she was 6-8 months ago. And as a side benefit I am also a lot healthier because of it. I try not to eat things she cannot eat, at least not in front of her, but because we are often tied at the hip most times I cannot.

[john455]

One of my biggest battles when I was first diagnosed was Country Time lemonade, I love it in the summer!! It took a long time to finally find a decent sugar free lemonade recipe, none of the mixes were good at all. I finally got the mixture pretty good using Splenda as a sweetener.

[john455]

Another thing we have found is that my wife has the "nose" she can tell when my sugar is high because I smell like fruit to her, some people can smell it on others and some can't. I use to hate it before i realized this is serious because she could always tell if i cheated.

[TNWNGR]

I've known a lot of people over the years who lived with diabetes, some doing well, others not so well. As far as I'm concerned the more modern medicine promotes to know about this disease treatment it continues to change as though with a mind of its own. It's pleasing to see how knowledgeable those so affected here and their family members are, this isn't always the case. Out of curiosity I researched the correlation of okra to diabetic treatment and learned that a powdered extract from its seeds is available in pill form. It actually demonstrated better results but both water & pill dosages of okra can adversely affect some of the medications used with diabetes. Curiously no such problem is evident with those who consume okra as a food item.   

[bvarnell]

Going to look into the Okra thing. Although Okra is about as vile of a food as it gets ,it it helps.. :)

 

 

Snot..Okra is  giants snot :)

 

I think you're confusing okra with oysters on the half shell.

[Omega]

I think you're confusing okra with oysters on the half shell.

Mmmm, love me some oysters.  Where do they fall in on the diabetic index?

[Dolomite_supafly]

Another thing we have found is that my wife has the "nose" she can tell when my sugar is high because I smell like fruit to her, some people can smell it on others and some can't. I use to hate it before i realized this is serious because she could always tell if i cheated.

Plenty of diabetics get arrested for DUI because of this. Erratic behavior and driving along with the odor that most people would confuse for alcohol on the breath makes it easy to happen.

We had one guy who was brought in for public intoxication. He was acting very erratic, confused and non compliant. Officers, being officers, assumed he was just being an angry drunk and whipped his ass then put him in a cell to "sleep it off". When I came on I was told about it so I checked on him but could not wake him up. We had medical respond and they didn't want to do anything because the previous supervisor told medical he was just an angry drunk. I begged them to take his blood sugar and when they got the results they went into high gear. An ambulance was called and the nurses were very worried. Had I not decided to check and had I not known about the diabetic fruity odor that guy would have probably died. Luckily they were able to get him stabilized and he spent a week in the hospital. If I remember correctly his sugar was north of 800 and that was after he laid on the floor for 4-5 hours.

Since then anytime I encountered someone drunk I would at least question them before assuming.

[Dolomite`s Breezy]

Jeez, 4 net grams per cup ain't bad unless you're going for constant Atkins induction phase levels or something.

 

'Course, if one fries it in batter, you probably at least triple that.

 

- OS

I cant stomach  okra cut up or boiled.. so it would have to be battered and fried ..  but yeah, okra itelf is not bad on carbs..  but the snot.. ugh.. 

[Oh Shoot]

I cant stomach  okra cut up or boiled.. so it would have to be battered and fried ..  but yeah, okra itelf is not bad on carbs..  but the snot.. ugh.. 

 

I like it okay cooked any ole way. Traditionally as part of a gumbo is best IMNSHO. I like it pickled too. A bit pricy in stores, but salad bars usually have it pickled, and I always eat a bunch of it when I find myself at one.

 

- OS

[10-Ring]

As a southerner I grew up thinking that the only way to prepare okra was to fry it. My wife sautas it in coconut oil and I've come to like it that way better than fried.

[Glenn]

I have type 2. I take metforman and was on insulin for a while but could never get stable. Switched the insulin to Victoza and
Lost 40 lbs without trying. Unfortunately I have gained some of the weight back but my sugar levels have stayed good. My last a1c was 5.6. Those that are using artificial sweeteners should do some research. They fool the body and can cause sugar fluctuations. New info shows the are bad for you in a lot of ways. The wife and I have quit soda and artificial sweetners completely.

[TNWNGR]

I cant stomach  okra cut up or boiled.. so it would have to be battered and fried ..  but yeah, okra itelf is not bad on carbs..  but the snot.. ugh..

I found a recipe on line for grilling okra that looks interesting. Cut the cap and bottom off, skewer four of them together, lightly butter and season then onto the grill. Reports are it's pretty good.

[john455]

I found a recipe on line for grilling okra that looks interesting. Cut the cap and bottom off, skewer four of them together, lightly butter and season then onto the grill. Reports are it's pretty good.

Yeah I have eaten them like this and they were really good, I like them breaded and fried better but I wouldn't turn down a grilled one either.