Week 2 of our journey: Breakfast

We are in week 2 of a 4 week program. The food we have tasted at the classes has been great. I get all Phil. One evening we tasted a sample of Overnight Oatmeal and Cashew Waffles. I was so excited I came home and wanted to make it for the oatmeal for us to have in the morning.

Breakfast in our house is a big deal. We are both believers in a good breakfast. That is where our similarities end. Phil could eat the same huge bowl of cereal with milk, two pieces of toast with butter and jam, and coffee every day. This routine is periodically broken with pancakes or fried eggs. He is a simple eater, but his breakfast is loaded with calories.

I, on the other hand, love (and I do mean love) bacon, potatoes, french toast, and sourdough toast. No shortage of bad actors there! I will usually have an egg with my bacon and potatoes, but that is only for show. I don't drink milk, don't like cold food in winter, eat pancakes only because Phil makes them, and have many other specific breakfast idiosyncrasies. Thankfully, I know better than to eat my favorite breakfast daily, so mix it up with hot oatmeal, cream of rice, smoothies in the summer, and even cereal with almond milk, and anything that strikes my fancy.

So how do we exchange our high glycemic breakfast for a low glycemic, hearty, and tasty meal? Changing our breakfast is proving to be a big challenge. Not so much for me, because I have eaten vegan in the past and love vegan breakfasts. But we do like to eat breakfast together, so exchanging eggs for tofu, cows milk for almond milk and losing the syrup and jam will prove to be challenging if I don't want to make two different meals every day.

When making dietary and lifestyle changes we want to sustain, I need to be thoughtful about my family's desires, and their needs. We both have a family history of heart disease and diabetes, so eliminating all animal products would be the best case scenario, but I have decided to do it in phases. Breakfast, being the most important "comfort"meal, I have decided to make changes myself and allow Phil to change in small steps.

Step one: Oatmeal. He will eat oatmeal if I make it. The overnight oatmeal is yummy, but makes a large amount. He is not ready for this recipe, as it has lots of stuff in it.

Step two: Try to get him to change from cows milk to almond or rice milk.

Step three: Introduce Scrambled tofu, Soyriso, paired with roasted potatoes with veges, and start adding fruit to breakfast.

When considering lowering the glycemic index, the goal is reducing bread, cereal. pancakes and other flour products. The Cashew Waffles were a wonderful alternative. I will see if he likes them.

Diabetes in Our Faces: Day 1 of my family's journey to veganism.

I believe that all things happen for a reason and we need to heed the signs. One day I saw of Facebook that one of my cousins was struggling with her health and it was very serious. She has diabetes and, like a few of our family members, has lost limbs, some eye sight, and was beginning to lose kidney function as a result of the disease. Thankfully, she is getting better, but will still fight daily for her life. 

The same week we heard the news of Cora’s illness, I received an email to join the class Diabetes Undone, presented by our local Seventh Day Adventist church and a group of health professional expert in reversing diabetes through lifestyle change. This group of experts promotes an evidence-based vegan diet, exercise, and spiritual well being program that has been shown to allow the body to heal itself. It really struck home that if I could again subscribe to this lifestyle, I may just protect my family and myself from the ravages of diabetes. 

As part of this class, we are shown how to prepare a vegan entrée, side dish, dessert, or snack. We are given a sample to eat, which is key, because most people who understand the value of the vegan diet have real fears about the taste of the foods. I was bound and determined to make some changes in our diet, so, together my husband and I decided we would eat one vegan meal a day.

That was on Friday. Saturday morning we had pancakes. He was proud he had cooked a vegan meal. Well… it was a start. He was on a roll right up until he slathered his pancakes with butter. But, it was a start. To make a very long story short, eating a diet designed to reduce the pouring of sugar into our blood requires more than simply not eating meat or dairy. Actually not eating meat or dairy may not directly affect blood sugar, but in a secondary fashion, can make a huge difference. Processed flour, sugar, corn syrup, potato, in fact any processed food tends to break down into glucose very quickly and enters the bloodstream, elevating the blood sugar. As it turns out, the more complex, or as I like to say, unprocessed, the carbohydrates are when you eat them, the longer they take to digest, and the slower the glucose enters the bloodstream. That is the key. 

Admittedly, you can eat several small meals that meat that criteria throughout the day, and supply your tissues with glucose in small doses and all would be good with the world (your body). But, and this is a big but, who can do that? We work, sleep, exercise, and have been trained to eat three meals a day. 

Where We Started

Melding two lives is challenging. Before meeting me, my husband lived on sandwiches, chips, store bought cookies, frozen TV dinners, instant coffee, cereal, and milk. During the time I lived alone, especially, I made almost everything from scratch, including sweets, most meals, ate lots of fruit, did not eat sandwiches, and ate out frequently. I think the only eating habit we had in common was that neither of us drank much soda. Phil loves bread and when he was working, he could consume a half loaf of bread a day. I had changed him from white bread to the more whole grain breads and watched his waist start growing. Since he has retired, he eats 1 ½ sandwiched a day rather than 2, but otherwise his bread eating habit has not changed. So I have had to give in and buy lighter, less calorie dense bread. 

Other changes I made to his diet included making most of the cookies he consumes, as I at least know what is in them. He only eats frozen food when I am away (as the old adage goes, while the cat's away…). I buy organic when I can, and we generally eat fruit and vegetables that we grow at home. I think this was one of the ways we have kept our grocery bill down. Buying less fruit gave me room in the budget to buy better lunch meat for my sandwich eater. Phil even noticed that a can of albacore contained more meat than the same size can of tuna, so I now purchase albacore and he eats once can instead of two. 

Phil retired about 7 years ago, I have started the retirement "process" two years ago. When Phil retired, his diet and eating routine changed little other than eating one and a half sandwiches a day rather than two. Me, I began eating more, and fried foods being my favorite, started making more taquitos, tortilla chips, and other cheesy meals. Though my weight has not changed, I knew these eating habits were probably putting me at greater risk of diabetes. Then I heard about Diabetes Undone.

"Deja vu all over again"

                               
I can’t think of a person who doesn’t struggle with nutrition at one time or another. We all know those things that are “bad” for us and what the healthier choice should be. This struggle is one I know well. I come from a family fraught with diabetics and heart disease suffers. I loved going to my grandmother’s house because she always had food cooking on the stove, flour tortillas made with lard coming off the comal, and butter ready to slather on the tortillas

My mother’s aunt lived in a house behind her brother’s store. I really don’t remember what he sold there besides the candy. There were glass containers full of gummy candy, gum balls, jaw breakers that just mesmerized us. When we visited, our first stop was to give our great aunt a kiss, then off we would run to the store to see uncle Tony, my mother’s voice trailing behind us “No candy, kids!....” .

My mother was a registered nurse and learned in school how bad the traditional food she grew up with was for her health. She tried to feed us healthy, nutrition foods. This was a challenge as it is today, but in a different way. Back in “the day” as we lovingly call it now, eating out was a rarity. We never had soda, candy, or junk food at our disposal. My birthday wish each year was to go to the Pail O’ Chicken for fried shrimp and soda. It was the perfect birthday gift. I remember the first time I had a Taco Bell taco as a teenager. I had never seen a fried taco shell. Who knew food could taste so good?

Thankfully, my parents helped create fairly good eating habits among their children. None of us struggle with the heredity-based diseases that plaque other members of our generation and contributed to the deaths of most of our parents and their generation – diabetes and cardiovascular disease. I have struggled with eating properly through the years, but have only been on one “diet”, or put more appropriately, lifestyle change. 

In the mid 1990’s I became vegan, removing all meat and dairy products from my diet. To make a long story short, I loved it. I felt great, lost weight (not that I needed to), and had a ton of energy. The down side included always having to think two or three meals ahead, finding places to eat out, and not being able to donate blood because my iron dropped below the level they wanted. I finally gave up the vegan life style when I met my husband. As the story goes, I had been single several years and during the time I was eating vegan, it was hard to keep a boyfriend. As soon as I took them home and cooked for them I never saw them again. I never made the connection until I met Phil. He was special, and my friends counseled me not to cook for him if I ever wanted to see him again. Indeed, he really is special. He eats anything I cook and never complains. I should have gone with my healthy gut and shared my lifestyle with him. I would not be writing this now. 

We struggle to eat well, as do most families. Eating on the run, fast food choices, late dinners, prepackaged meals, and the ever present junk food end cap displays at the grocery store, really make eating properly a job not for the faint of heart. Thinking ahead, purchasing the proper foods, and having a well-stocked kitchen is expensive and takes planning. So I came up with this idea. I am going to journal our journey from the “white bread, white rice, and bologna” lifestyle to a healthier lifestyle. Not to say that we are bad eaters. One cannot be a vegan for three years and not retain some of the eating habits of the lifestyle.