Did You Won a Challenge?

This morning after getting the results of my blood chemistry examination, I was so happy, I won the challenge!

It recorded 102mg/dl for fasting blood sugar. The bordeline or maximum for the normal level is 105 mg/dl. My fasting blood sugar when I had the last blood chem. exam. was 128.0 mg/dl. or I had reduced it from 7.04 to 5.61. The borderline is 5.78 points.

Though this FBS is still not so good because undisciplined eating can make it above the limit again, I am happy because I had proven to myself and to my doctor that I can reverse diabetes through diet and exercise.

Challenging Myself

I had posted about this, and was so sad and challenged when my doctor said that I could not exercise daily. Was so annoyed of what she said, so I religiously did at least 30 minutes to almost one hour of biking and walking (combination) or when I can not walk outside, I use our strider or air walker at home. I also move a lot while inside the home because of so many daily chores.

Discipline Eating

It helped a lot, along with a conscious diet. We avoided too much carbohydrates and totally avoided pork meat in our diet for a month. Our diet consisted of leafy green vegetables, many of it we ate uncooked or made a salad or smoothie; selected fruits that are not so sweet; coffee with stevia as sweetener because we avoided using artificial sweeteners.

Stevia is a plant with sweet leaves and it is relatively good for diabetics. Just research on this. Sometimes we also use coconut sugar, or sugar taken from coconut water. If none, I just drink plain coffee without sugar. Ad totally no soda or softdrink. It is banned in our home.

Alternative Food

Since we Filipinos are fond of eating rice in our main meal, we use brown rice, or unpolished rice which has more fiber and lower glycemic index; or we substitute it with cassava or camote (sweet potato but in moderation). We see to it that we just ate less than a cup of rice, almost 1/2 or 1/4 of it; then as a replacement for rice, we ate whole wheat bread with just a very thin lactose-free cheese, or spread with lots of herbs.

For viands or dish that go with the main meal, we included selected fish, or chicken, but also in moderate amounts to regulate protein intake. Also lots of water all day.

Being on a restricted diet could be so costly too, but we can device ways where we can eat nutritious food at low cost. Just include what is available vegetable in your place, but we preferred green leafy vegetables which has lots of manganese. I read in the net that manganese is needed for the pancreas to produce more insulin. Diabetics can consider including a lot of leafy green vegetables in their meals, and avoid too much starch and protein.

One need not starve himself to achieve a healthy body; he can eat small amounts in a day, but this should be well-monitored. If you will include more vegetables and no red meat like beef or pork, you can get away from some lifestyle disease like diabetes and other complications caused by high blood sugar. And moving a lot everyday helps so much in burning glycogen in the muscles, which if unused (unburned) through activity or movement, will turn into sugar, and excess sugar will go into the blood.

The doctor explained that the cells could not absorb the excess sugar, where will it go? To other organs which could lead to its malfunction and then its degeneration.

I hope you will be inspired with my experience in battling a pre-diabetic stage; and am so thankful if I had not checked m blood sugar early, it might lead to a full blown diabetes, or blood sugar which is so hard to control.

Note: The photo here is my photo of a yellow gumamela flower (hibiscus plant). One of my signature photos along with the red gumamela flower for my avatar.