Down to the Nuts and Fruits of it all....

I have chosen to customize my Eating Plan. I am looking at a low Glycemic Index foundation of foods, because I was recently diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome, or Insulin Resistance. This is a sort of pre-diabetic state that you can get into rather easily as you age, particularly if you put on half of another human being's body weight in five years or less. I am taking a diabetic medication called Metformin (Glucophage) to help jump start my body's insulin usage, but the medication will be pretty much useless if I don't combine it with increased exercise and decreased food intake, or at least decreased BAD FOODS intake.

The lower GI foods are compatible with helping to give my body what it needs to regulate the insulin. I am also exploring Detox options. I know that my body is toxic now, and with the thoughts of my father's recent, unexpected death from colon cancer running through my head, I am fiercely determined to turn my unhealthy eating habits around. It is not about the weight loss truly, though I will not be able to measure my success happily unless the weight falls off. (Blood work results will be my concrete measuring stick, but who cares what your cholesterol is, really? what you want to know, what I want to see, are those thin thighs and flat abs of my not so long ago forties. Seriously, I do care what my cholesterol and triglycerides show. They are not good now. I will post them in a later post. When I have summoned up the courage.)

I can eat a wide and brilliantly hued array of fresh veggies. It excites me to think of my options, and depresses me when I remember that I can't cook. I can cook, though, because I can read and I have a library card to check out cookbooks. It is more that I don't want to cook. And that is just one more life change I have to make.

My goals are to stop all Whites: white flour, white pastas, white sugars.

I was in a Fitness Challenge before, in Charleston, SC. (I was, I think, the oldest there and I won the Challenge!) Our trainer was Wendy, a woman in her forties with six pack abs that had men AND women in our group drooling. She loved salty thick pretzels from her native Pennsylvania. She gave them up, along with all Whites. She said the facial puffiness disappeared nearly immediately, and her body became lean and svelte. I have never been svelte. But I have been lean and I liked it. I'm heading back there now.