Menu journal – Tuesday 10 Mar.

10 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in meal plan, meals

(late) Breakfast:
Slim Fast chocolate shake (no milk) – (I was fasting until 10 a.m.)
lots and lots of H20

Lunch:
Waldorf salad without potatoes, had some apple slices with it
Small yoghrt
Water

Mid-afternoon:
Assorted nuts (unsalted)
2 high-fiber biscuits (no sugar added)
lots and lots of H20

Dinner:
Mashed mix of brocolli, cauliflower, kidney beans + 2 spoons of mexican rice (just for that added texture ;-p )
Roasted chicken thigh (without skin)
1 glass iced tea (no sugar)

Nightcap:
Small serving of coffee gelatin (without sugar) — i just love coffee flavoured desserts!

Still playing with my Accu-check

10 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in blood glucose level

Started doing blood tests yesterday and today and had some interesting results:

16:30 – 3.4 mmol/L: does this mean i was having a hypoglycemic attack? I was feeling very hungry, light-headed, was shaking and irritated.

After dinner round 21:00 – 6.3 – surprised that it’s lower than 7!

23:30 – 5.4 – why did it decrease, i wonder…

10:00 – 6.4 – this is my fasting bloog glucose level, so I expected it to be lower. But it wasn’t ;-(

16:00 – 5.4 – yey!

23:30 – 7.4 – ouch ;-( but this is not my fasting glucose level, though…

New gadget: blood glucose meter

09 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in blood glucose level, gadget, hypoglycemia

So, here I am trying to type with a ‘defective’ middle finger, while fighting off that tired, sleepy feeling brought about by a hypoglycemic attack.

I’m exaggerating with the finger, of course. Just did my very first self-blood test — well, with some help from Martin. Being the chicken that I am, I couldn’t bring myself to press the lancing device. It didn’t matter that the needle was so thin and my mind reasoned that such a thing couldn’t hurt, but my head was still filled with the memory of the last time my uncle administered a blood test on me using a jurassic lancing device, so the pain was still fresh in mind. Seven minutes had already passed and one strip wasted, but I still couldn’t bear the thought of that needle puncturing my skin. This is from the girl who had a gigantic needle stuck several times in her gums when her wisdom teeth had to be removed. What can I say, I’m scared of injections and airplane ride ;-p . As a young girl, I was totally fearless, though…come to think of it, I was so fearless, it was scary. I never cried, not even winced, when I had injections. Then growing-up happened and half of my mind started extrapolating situations arising from injections, while the other half tried to convince me that my deductive reasoning was defective.

But I digress. Today I decided to procure this Accu-Check Compact Plus device for measuring my blood glucose level. I’ve been wanting to get one for some time so I can monitor my progress: see how my diet is affecting my blood glucose levels and just learn more about how my body functions and reacts based on my food choices and eating behaviour. All the drama about the needle was for nothing, because it didn’t hurt at all. I really like that needle! It did the work without the hurt 😉

I must say, though, the product design is not that good, aside from the fact that it looked like a jurassic mobile phone. The interface is also not that easy to understand at the start, but I guess, it’s not so much that, but the way the instruction manual was written / designed. It was a lot of blah and didn’t realy give clear overviews. But I did like that the strips were made into a ‘rolled tape” so that I just put the whole thing in the gadget and it’s dispensed automatically when I do a blood test. And of course, those teeny-weeny needles.

Anyway, the result was 3.4 mmol/l, which means I was experiencing hypoglycemia. I just had a light lunch (no breakfast coz I slept in late) — a small bowl of soup and some cheese — because I was planning to eat again after doing groceries. When I came back, I wanted to take a blood test before I ate anything so proceeded to fiddle around with the gadget. After a while, we realised that the needles weren’t included in the package so Martin had to go back to the pharmacy. It took him a while to get back home, and I struggled a bit going through the manual so by the time I finally completed the test, I felt that I was about to get the ‘shakes’ (my term for when I experience hypoglycemic symptoms). I was hungry, felt the headache starting, and started to feel irritated.

It’s quite useful for me to have felt these symptoms and see it translated in numbers. It gave me a better understanding of what exactly was happening to me. Later tonight, after dinner, I will do another blood test. Tomorrow morning, before I have breakfast (12 hours after I eat my last meal tonight), I’ll also take another blood test. This way I have my baseline for hypoglycemic situations, after meals and fasting. I’m also thinking of getting the Accu-check software so that I can easily monitor all related statistics on my computer.

Ok, stopping now. Still feeling tired and I need to nibble again on something. ;-/

Thinking of meal plan

09 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in meal plan, meals

Yey, didn’t give in to temptation yesterday 😉
Not sure yet what to have for brunch…maybe last night’s left-overs?
For dinner, it’s roasted chicken with mexian rice for Martin and brocolli and cauliflower for me.

Still have to get groceries for the week and plan my meals. Thinkng of chili con carne but using ‘Quorn’ instead (meat substitue, mushroom-based – yum!). Martin likes that, too so I don’t have to cook different meals. For lunch, will probably alternate between brocolli/pumpkin soup and shrimp salad with swet chili. Need to get nuts and cherry tomatoes to nibble on. And new batch of those yoghurt with plants sterol thingy ;-p

Will wait for the rain to stop though (if that ever happens).

One of those moments…

09 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in challenge, hunger

Almost 2 a.m. and starting to feel hungry. Not really hungry, it’s more a psychological thing, I know. It’s like, i’m not gonna think of strawberry shortcake — and pwned! I just did. I want to go scan the fridge and the food closet until my brain picks something that would ‘satisfy’ the yearning. It’s like trying to stop smoking, but I swear, stopping with smoking seemed a whole lot easier than preventing myself on nibbling on dinner left-overs or anything for that matter ;-p

Ok, will just go drink warm water and do the 10-minute rule. It’s my way of dissolving the yearning. I put off whatever plans I have for raiding the fridge for another 10 minutes. Then I immerse mysef in some other activity, like blogging at 2 in the morning or trying to finish book 4 of Boudica 😉

Cross your fingers. Let me conceive that image of strawberry shortcake without drooling. Be calm, oh tummy. Thou shall not binge.

Sunday meal

08 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in diet, food, meals

It’s almost 12 noon and still haven’t eaten anything yet. Well, I woke up just an hour ago, so I guess that’s ok. One thing I’m beginning to learn about diabetes is that a regular eating schedule is a lot better than skipping meals, as the latter will mess up my insuline levels (or something like that ;-p ), and that it will actually help me in losing weight.

I’ve been on a no-carbs diet for 2 weeks now (ala-South beach) and for a bout 2 weeks before that, was already starting to cut down on my carbs intake. The ironic thing with me going on diet is that I actually eat regularly (5-6x), unlike when I’m not on a diet, I tend to not eat at all during the day. The last 2.5 years saw me being obssessed with finishing my work that I kept putting off eating (even peeing!) until it’s almost the end of the day. I’m at work around 8 and aside from a coffee or juice in the morning and nibbling on cheese, I only got to eat around 4 or 5. And then it would be just cup-a-soup or a peanut butter sandwich. I rarely went out to get lunch. This bad habbit made me get hypoglycemia attacks and it also made me gain weight. Since my energy level went down consistently during the day, by the time I reached the station I’d feel the ‘shakes’ coming on (hypoglemic attack) so I often ended buying pizza slices or those fried snacks. Night time saw me feeling all tired and thinking I needed some sort of reward, so I tended to eat lots more than what I’d usually eat. Also, it was an important ritual for me to have a good dinner since it was the only meal during the week that I got to share with Martin, my husband.

Now I’m trying to turn things around. Have two objectives until May (which is when I’ll be doing another blood test to determine if I go on medication or not): lower my glucose and cholesterol level, and try to lose weight responsibly while I’m at it ;-). Friends keep telling me it’s not about losing weight per se, and I totally get that, but I just wanted to jump-start my system, so I decided to adapt South beach diet for the last 2 weeks. Meaning no bad carbs (bad carbs = good stuff like pizza, pasta, rice, bread, potatoes… sigh), loads of veggies and protein. I also make sure to eliminate fat in my dishes — just the bad sort, though, so I’m ok to eat nuts and salmon and all those other sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

Ok, ’nuff said for now. Gotta go make breakfast, or brunch in this case. It’s quite challenging to hold on to planning and making my meals. This last week wasn’t planned well enough so the statisfaction level I got wasn’t as high as the previous week. But I’ll be getting groceries tomorrow, so will make sure I know what I’m gonna cook for this week to get all the right stuff and not end up with some boring meal at work.

Brunch for today would be: mushroom and tomato omelette (1 yolk + 3 whites), cottage cheese, yoghurt (with phytosterols) and some nice refreshing water. 😉

Later in the afternoon, one Slim Fast shake. Forgot to get cherry tomatoes and nuts, my usual nibbles ;-(

For dinner: ‘Bistek Tagalog’ (Beef fillet and calf liver marinated in soy sauce and cooked with lots of onions) and sauteed beans. This would’ve been perfect with rice — guaranteed to make you want to eat more rice actually, but I’m substituting rice with the stringbeans. That crunchy taste would do me good.

So why the ‘diabetic hobbit’?

08 Mar 2009 Leave a comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in beginning, hobbit

I keep telling everyone, whether they want to hear it or not, that J.R.R. Tolkien must’ve met Filipinos and eaten with them to have come up with the idea of hobbits. He must’ve experienced a ‘Pinoy fiesta’ and seen first-hand how we love to eat — and talk about food while eating.

I really believe that we, Filipinos, are the original hobbits. 😉 Second breakfasts, or what Pinoys would probably consider as ‘merienda’ (in this case, a morning snack), sound perfectly logical to us. And by breakfast we usually mean fried rice, fried meat/sausage/fish and fried eggs. Of course, if by some great fortune that pancakes or bluberry muffins find their way to our table, we summon the fortitude to give them equal space in our bellies. It is this same fortitude that allows us to make the tough choice for ‘merienda’ between spaghetti, ‘pansit’ (Asian noodles), burger, rice cakes, porridge, lumpia, ‘turon’ (fried banana rolled in brown sugar and tucked in lumpia wrappers). Yes, sandwiches are also acceptable if none of the above can be obtained.

I won’t even try to start with lunch, dinner and dessert — too long for this post — but I think you can already get the irony of the blog title. I come from a genuine line of Pinoy hobbits, a clan of great cooks and trully masterful eaters, who also happened to have diabetes run in their blood. We are genuine carb-lovers — even fanatics, you could say — so isn’t it the greatest irony to be struck with a disease, the boundaries of which, are defined by the food you eat or not eat?

That was one of my first thoughts when my doctor confirmed end Janaury that I was diabetic. I thought it was like telling a hobbit to stay away from food. It’s like telling Americans to disown burger and fries, or telling the Dutch to shy away from liquorice, or Mexicans to stop eating burritos. It was a contradiction in terms other than ‘military intelligence’, but more tragic I thought.

Ok, I know I’m exaggerating. 😉 I know better now after fanatically researching about diabetes that it’s not a death sentence to eating, just to indiscriminate carbs-loading and binging. Uhealthy eating, thus. Still, the irony doesn’t escape me. For one who loves to cook and is uber-crazy about rice, pasta and pizza, I now have to break this habbit; to unlearn my relationship with food and forge a new history with it. And it’s all easier said than done. Especially when your mind thinks you’re 19 and immortal, but your body’s 36, enmeshed in mortality, and acts like a stranger.

A diabetic hobbit: I like it because it’s ironic and also funny. It’s a joke, but not a mean one. It allows me to make fun of myself. It’s just a fact that underlies the conflict I’m experiencing, and my musings on what diabetic hobbits like myself would do to make their journey not only more bearable, but more pleasurable.

I don’t know how to begin…

07 Mar 2009 1 Comment

by Timi Stoop-Alcala in beginning, hobbit

Honestly, I’m not reallly sure what this blog will become. I’ve been diagnosed with Diabetis Type 2 last month, and I just wanted to be able to express my feelings, questions and musings about it in a more tangible way. I’d like to chronicle my day-to-day experiences living with this new ‘label’ attached to me. It’s all very new and I’m in the process of getting to know it better. And I do want to know it, because this one will be keeping me company for the rest of my life I guess. But although I want it to be a quiet companion, I want to be at peace in its presence. From hereon, I hope to chronicle the journeys of this diabetic hobbit.

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