Diet V8 Splash® will donate $10 for every person who joins the Stop Diabetes movement, up to $50,000.
This money will go to support crucial diabetes research. It will fund educational outreach to both young and old. And it will continue the fight so nobody’s rights are denied because they have diabetes.
I signed up, why don’t you?
Go here to help: http://stopdiabetes.diabetes.org/
This caused a rush on spring water from all the local supermarkets. It also caused all the local restaurants to stop serving coffee and fountain drinks. Everyone in the area was affected in one way or the other.
But, I was struck with the various ways that people with diabetes would be affected. The first thing was that I had nothing in the house to drink. I don’t drink pure water, I drink tea or crystal light, but both were made with water. I always try to drink things with little or no carbs, mostly so I can eat more. But, since there wasn’t much water to be found anywhere, I didn’t feel it was fair to my family to use up all the water on myself.
Next was bathing/hand washing. The water was supposed to be safe, but not safe if you had any cuts. I figured the holes in my fingers from glucose testing would be considered cuts. Blah!
The boil order is over, so I don’t have to worry about it any more. But I wonder if other people have to deal with this every day…
This has not been a great week for me health-wise. I started the week with a case of food poisoning. I’m guessing that was just enough hit to my immune system to allow me to catch a nasty cold. Blah. I had to dip into my records to find my sick day plan. I should have looked at it sooner, because it didn’t quite match up with my current healthy day plan. Blah again! It took a bit to get it working right. Honestly, looking at my last blood sugar reading, it still needs a bit of tweaking.
Looking for information on how to make your own sick day plan? Talk to your health care team. Also, here are some good links:
Fruit and Vegetables in crates and boxes. (from freeclipartnow.com)
One way I tried to improve my diet/lifestyle (that actually worked) was to join a CSA.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A person gives a a farm a certain amount of money which allows them to buy a share of the farm. Everyone who has a share gets a certain amount of vegetables during the growing season. Usually buying a share also means pledging to do a certain amount of farm work.
My share last year helped in a couple of ways. The variety of vegetables added more lower carb options to my diet. I got some vegetables I would never have thought to buy when I was at the store. Since I already had them, I looked into interesting recipes. But, the CSA even had more. My CSA (like a lot of others) had a weekly newsletter that had interesting recipes. And, I had to work at the farm for a certain number of hours. So, a certain amount of outside exercise was something that I had to do.
If you are interested in signing up for a CSA near you, start looking into it very soon. My CSA sent me an email about sign-ups already. Quite a few CSAs sell all their shares by early February.
Looking for more information?
Here is a list of some Massachusetts CSAs: http://www.foodonthefood.com/food_on_the_food/2009/01/putting-the-loca-in-locavore.html
Here is a list of local farms and CSAs near Marlborough MA: http://marlboroughlocalfood.wetpaint.com/page/Small+Farm
Massachusetts list of CSAs: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/csa.htm
Looking for a CSA in another state in the USA: http://www.localharvest.org/
Soon as the weather gets nice and cold I bring out the slow cooker. There is something great about coming in the house after a cold winter walk to the smell of stew cooking. One site I found especially useful for slow cooker recipes is “The Year of Crockpotting”. This blog came about last year when a woman had a New Years resolution to use her crockpot every day. She posted each recipe on her blog. And yes, she finished the whole year.
Most people would stop at a year, but not “The Crockpot Lady”. She said that she will continue to post this year with tips and other crockpot information.
Her current posting is especially relevant for me. She posted suggestions on how to use her crockpot recipes and have a healthy diet. http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/01/crockpot-diet.html
Are you interested in reading even more on slow cooking? Diabetes Self Management decided to post about slow cookers recently too. Here is a link to their latest blog: http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/Amy_Campbell/Slow_Cookers_A_Must_Have_for_Healthy_Eating
Those two links should give you lots of links for recipes, but it you would prefer to own a book, here are a couple:
Do you use a crockpot/slow cooker? What are your favorite recipes?
Kelloggs just introduced a new label to the side of the box: Diabetes Friendly.
What does that mean?
Cereals
These labels should be showing up on cereal boxes November 2008. (So, could be in stores now.) They might be adding this label to items like snacks soon too.
If you want to know more about this label, please see the Kelloggs page: http://www.kelloggsnutrition.com/live-healthy/diabetes-friendly.html