Summer

I have not blogged for a bit and to be honest even starting this post is a struggle.

 I have had a huge diet change and many personal challenges that I am dealing with daily. So when I comes to blogging, a pretty personal snapshot into my life, I am at a tricky spot. How much do I share? And how can I keep blogging if I don't share? My blog is real me and it's tricky to just take my heart out of it and pretend things are just going on like normal. Also, I rarely bake anymore and we are eating some pretty weird meals lately. The other night we had baked tilapia, Gary had potatoes, but I had creamed cabbage and raw carrots. Weird.

 Anyways, I have decided to share a bit and then maybe post meals I eat and maybe also steer away from food a bit and find other things I can write about.

 Basically, for health reasons, I have been instructed to follow a low glycemic diet. Which allows me to eat almost all vegetables, fruit, and protein but no sugars and very specific carbohydrates. I can not eat any potatoes, rice, refined grains(rolled oats, flours, etc), and no sugars. The trickier it is for my body to extract the energy, the better.

 The glycemic index measures how long it takes for the sugars from the food to spike your blood sugar levels. All food is rated somewhere on the glycemic index any where from 1 to 100. "low" glycemic foods fall below the 55 mark. There is also a calculation to figure out glycemic load, but it is kinda tricky and I have not totally figured it out yet. Luckily for me, there are a huge amounts of online resources and lists of foods and their glycemic indexes online. I check different things almost daily.

 A typical daily meal plan looks kinda like this

7:30 Breakfast: 1 cup low-fat unsweetened yogurt, 2 tbsp holy crap chia seed cereal with whole buckwheat and hemp, 1 cup berries, 2 tbsp flax meal. 500ml Water.

10:30 Snack: apple slices with cheese/ natural peanut butter/ small handful of nuts. Water.

12:00 lunch: 1 slice Whole grain rye bread( soo heavy, but rye is the lowest glycemic grain), 2 slices natural ham, cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 avocado spread on the bread topped with egg, ham and cheese. Tomato, raw veg with hummus. Water.

2:30 snack: puffed quinoa cereal (treat!!) with milk. Pear. 5 almonds. Water

6:30 dinner: chicken bbqed, Green salad topped with hummus or Taziki instead of dressing. Roasted zucchini and broccoli. Water.

Later dessert?? Yogurt with no sugar added granola(super treat!) that same quinoa cereal, no sugar added ice cream with fruit and seeds. Usually if I had A sweeter 2:30 snack, I would not have a desserty choice.

 I also drink a lot of water. I try for 2l a day. Today it was probably only 1L, but yesterday I drank 3. I peeded a lot. I do drink coffee too. Iced usually, with cream and agave syrup to sweeten it a bit.

If you know anything about the low glycemic diet and have helpful tips, please share them! I am learning and experimenting and can use all the help I can get.

My heart is totally not in the kitchen like it has been. I don't feel the same passion for cooking or baking. Or, actually I do, but it's hidden by my frustration with not being able to enjoy any of it myself. How do you cook and bake and make wholesome meals and just cook without potatoes or flour or sugar or pasta or rice or bread? I used to just open my fridge and pantry, pull things out and make a pretty respectable meal. Now I have to plan and make salads and soak beans all day or whole grain cereals over night. Low glycemic food is not convenience food. You can't just throw together a supper. Unless its eggs. I am sick of eggs.