About Diabetes:

In order to successfully overcome diabetes and its effects one must understand what diabetes is.  Diabetes Mellitus or sugar diabetes is a condition defined by a set of symptoms, most commonly, higher than normal levels of sugar in the blood and excretion of sugar in urine.  The condition was originally discovered by the symptom of sweet fruity smell of the urine.  These symptoms can occur for a variety of causes like; pancreas not producing insulin, liver producing too much sugar, master hormones not giving proper messages to liver or pancreas, cells not being able to utilize sugars,  too much fat in and around cells inhibiting usage of sugar by the cells, pregnancy, etc.  Some pregnant women become diabetic during pregnancy but become normal after delivery.  This is known as gestational diabetes.  This has led to an interesting theory about the growth of fetus in the womb, which leads to pressure on the pancreas causing it to not function properly, thereby leading some people to believe that putting on weight around the abdomen puts pressure on pancreas causing it to malfunction.  Whatever the reasons may be, treatment of diabetes is essentially the same; diet, exercise, drugs and insulin. 

Diabetes can be controlled and type II diabetes can even be reversed by diet and exercise.  There are many doctors who conduct training for reversing type II diabetes through vegan diets and exercise.  I intend to prove that Type I diabetes can also be reversed.  I’ll talk more about that in the future when it happens. 

I know from personal experience how my sugar levels vary based on perceived stress and other situations.  You see, I measure my sugar levels at least five times a day.  I have to do so in order to compute the amount of insulin I need to inject before eating.  This gives me an insight into how my body reacts to different situations.  What I have found out is that when I am going through situations that my mind thinks are stressful then my sugar levels stay high and do not come down easily.  One of those stressful situations used to be attending my office in Maryland.  But having recognized it as a stressor, I have “changed” my mind about attending the office in Maryland and have successfully reversed the outcome.  On the other hand, situations that I perceive to be joyous tend to drop my sugar levels, sometimes they drop too much.  One of those situations is holding a very young baby in my hands.  Another one happens every time when my friends Haren and Raksha visit us.

Quiz#3:  What do you think would happen if Haren and Raksha were to move in with us, or we babysat a young baby every day?

My Daily Breakfast:

I have been eating identical breakfasts for the last two years, 90% of the time.  It is not possible to get these items while I am traveling, which accounts for the remaining 10% of the time.  My breakfast, as shown in the picture below, consists of two slices of Ezekiel bread toasted and smothered with almond butter, plus three cups of masala tea.

Carb Count:

Toast 15g X 2 = 30g

2 fl. Oz. milk in tea = 4g
2 Tbsp almond butter = 6g
Total = 40g

Ezekiel brand of bread is made from sprouted grains without first converting the grains into flour.  I don’t know how they do it but apparently they follow the method described in the Bible, Ezekiel 4:9.  The bread does taste different from the other breads you might be used to but soon the taste will grow on you.  More importantly, it gives you chewing satisfaction and fills up your stomach.  It comes with the added benefit of going to heaven.  There goes my dream of going to hell!  If you did nothing else but replaced all your daily grain consumption with this brand of bread, you will lose weight.  I guarantee it.  This bread is available in three or four varieties and is available at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Safeway, and possibly at other places too.  Almond butter is available at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

 

For those of you who are curious, here is my mother’s not-so-secret recipe of masala for tea.

Mix these ingredients in the following proportion by weight:
Ground cardamom:      1
Ground cinnamon:       2
Ground cloves:            2
Ground ginger:            5
Ground black pepper:   5
Total:                        15

I have found that the readymade tea masala or their individual ingredients acquired from Indian grocery stores are of poor quality.  I generally buy organic ingredients from Whole Foods and the tea masala turns out to be amazingly good.  We use up about a pound of tea masala every two months.

To make masala tea we use 90% water, 10% milk and a quarter tsp of masala mix.  We boil the liquid mix and add tea leaves towards the end when the liquid just starts boiling.  Boiling the tea for too long releases acids from the tea leaves and makes the tea taste bitter.  Adding more tea leaves instead of boiling it too much gives a better color to the final outcome and it tastes better too.  Any type of tea leaves can be used; Lipton’s or Tetley.  We like to use a brand called Wagh-Bakri.

Health Benefits:

We always hear about health benefits of not being overweight.  So we try to lose weight by jogging or eating fat-free foods or dieting for a few days, and eventually we give it all up because it seems like too much work for a little bit of benefit that is not apparent to us.  I know that because that is how I was.  After ending up in the hospital, I decided to follow the regimen and my health actually improved significantly.

I recently applied for life insurance, and the doctor who did my physical exam commented, “You are essentially a healthy person with only one problem, Type 1 Diabetes.  Most people your age have a long list of health issues.”

In the interest of showing you tangible benefits of losing weight, I have decided to share some of my medical data in this blog.  In the table below, “before” and “after” numbers speak for themselves.

	Before	Normal	After
Weight	255 lbs	--	187 lbs
Blood Pressure	125/85	120/80	110/65
Cholesterol	238	<200	179
Cholesterol (non-HDL)	169	--	93
HDL (good Cholesterol)	69	>40	86
LDL (bad cholesterol)	144	<100	81
Triglycerides	123	<150	62

It is significant to note that the above results were achieved without taking any drugs, whether prescription or over-the-counter type.  After being diagnosed as a diabetic, I was asked to start taking statin drugs for lowering cholesterol and a daily dose of baby aspirin.  I refused because I am averse to taking any kind of drugs.  However, I do take shots of insulin, which in my opinion is a pharmaceutical but not a drug.  I do have to take insulin because my pancreas does not produce any, at least for now.

Salads and Dressings:

You may find it hard to believe but I used to eat salads in India.  We used to call it Kachumber.  While growing up, a good amount Kachumber was a part of our daily meals.  Our Kachumber used to generally consist of finely chopped romaine lettuce (called “salid” in Bombay), onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  Occasionally and when available, we’d add shredded kohlrabi (called “alkool” in Bombay).  Typically salt was added to Kachumber, which would release the juices from the raw salad and make it moist.  Kachumber was eaten along with the rest of the meal.

When I came to America, I noticed a few strange things.  First, the salad was served separately as the first course of a meal.  Second, the lettuce in the salad was torn into large pieces and was not chopped.  Third, the salad was mostly consisting of lettuce with an occasional piece of tomato or cucumber thrown in.  This was not the salad I was used to.  To make matters worse, I was asked what kind of dressing I wanted.  Dressing?  Why would I need dressing?  I didn’t have a wound that needed to be dressed!

Next thing I knew was that there was a variety of salad dressings available with exotic names like Thousand Island, Russian, French and Green Goddess.  I fell in love with a goddess, the green kind that is.  When FTC (Federal Trade Commission) ruled that all the ingredients must be listed on all food products, I learned of an ingredient called anchovies in Green Goddess.  Although I wanted to believe it so badly, it sounded fishy to me that the government would conspire to add anchovies in my favorite dressing just to wean me off Green Goddess.  My being a vegetarian overtook my desire for a great taste and I fell out of love with the Goddess.  I still miss her.

When I see people at restaurants douse their salads with half a pint of salad dressing, it scares me.  Everything they gain by eating salad is lost by eating that dressing.  Over the last ten years, everything I have read about natural foods has taught me that ALL commercially available salad dressings are bad.  The ones that tout to be low-fat or fat-free are particularly bad because of the sugars and other junk that they put in them to make them palatable.  For the last 10 or more years we have been adding two ingredients to our salads, flax oil and sea salt.  That’s it.  We prefer hi-lignan flax oil and when flax oil is not available we use olive oil (EVOO when possible).  When we are eating at a restaurant I always ask them not to add dressing to my salad.  Most restaurants will serve you olive oil on the side if you ask them.  When that is not available we ask for dressing on the side and occasionally dip our forks in it.  I actually prefer to eat my salad without any dressing, like a good Indian boy that I am.

Mantra: I will not eat any commercially prepared salad dressing ever again.

These days, raw salads form 50% of our lunches and dinners.  Our salads are the Kachumber kind, chopped finely enough so that I can eat it with a spoon or with a piece of roti.  We add a generous quantity of flax oil and sea salt.  I love to have baby spinach and red onions in my salads.  Other ingredients we use often are Persian or English cucumbers, avocados, vine ripened tomatoes, and sprouts.  As far as possible, we use organically grown ingredients.

Salad Bars:

I used to love eating at all-you-can-eat salad bars.  I never lost weight eating food from salad bars and may have actually gained some.  Why is that?  Salad bars serve a lot of items, which for the purposes of this conversation are non-salads.  They are chicken salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, pasta salad, croutons, peas, chick peas, all kinds of beans, boiled eggs, all kinds of cheeses, fruits, dried fruit (cranberry, raisins), cooked vegetables, crispy noodles, bread slices, bread-rolls, and so on.  You get the picture.  These are all non-salads and should be avoided.

Repeat after me:

·         I will never eat a scone or a muffin again.

·         I will eat no more than 170g of carbs every day.

·         I will walk 30 to 60 minutes every day, no excuses.

·         I will never eat from a buffet at an Indian restaurant.

·         I will not eat commercially prepared cereal ever again.

·         I will not eat any commercially prepared salad dressing ever again.

·         I will wait at least three to four hours after dinner before lying down to go to sleep.

Sugars

I am back in San Diego and can devote some time for writing the blog.  It is next to impossible for me to write the blog while I am in DC.

Sugar is the least complex form of carbohydrate.  There are many misconceptions about different types of sweeteners that I would like to clear up.  One of them is about honey.  Many people use honey in their tea instead of sugar because “honey is better for you”.  Honey may be better for you for other reasons like helping with a sore throat.  But honey is still carbohydrate; in fact a more densely packed carbohydrate.  A lot of people are switching to sugar substitutes like agave nectar.  Again agave nectar is carbohydrate.  It may be good for you for other reasons but for the purposes of reducing weight and getting healthier it is no different than sugar.  A tablespoon of sugar is 15g of carbs and other forms of sugar substitutes are also about the same carb value.  I used to eat a lot of brown sugar because I had believed that “it was better for me”.  It may have been better in the sense that it did not have some of the trace chemicals associated with bleaching the sugar to making it look white, but the carb content of brown or white sugar is exactly the same.  When I ended up in the hospital I decided to give up sugar completely.  I decided not use any of the chemical sweeteners because I am also averse to putting chemicals and non-foods in my mouth.  Now I eat and drink everything without any sugar or sweeteners with one exception, my daily dose of homemade chai.  I use one packet of Stevia in three cups of homemade chai twice a day.  One packet of Stevia-in-the-raw has less than 1g of carbs, and it is not an artificial chemical. 

Chemical sweeteners like saccharine (Sweet and Low), aspartame (Equal), or sucralose (Splenda) have all been linked to possible adverse health effects like cancers, neurological disorders, skin problems, depression, etc.  So why take a chance?  It was easy for me to give up sugar, cold turkey.  It may or may not be easy for you to do so.  If it is not easy for you then slowly, over a period of days or weeks, start reducing the amount of sugar you put in anything and eventually you’ll arrive at zero quantity of sugar.  The good news is that you will start tasting the real taste of food and eventually will start disliking sugary sweetness.

If you are diabetic or are trying to reduce your weight, is it OK to eat ice-cream made with Splenda for dessert?  The answer is:  Yes and No.

No, because substituting Splenda for sugar does not take away the carbs you are going to ingest from milk, cream or fruits included in the ice-cream.

Yes, as long as you count the amount of carbs from other ingredients in the ice-cream towards your total carb consumption for the meal.

FATS:

I have been asked to supply some recipes for losing weight.  Losing weight is not about recipes, it is about getting healthier.  As you get healthier your weight will automatically come down to your ideal level, whatever that number is.  I can supply some recipes we use but unless those recipes suit you or unless you are able to modify them to your tastes and needs, they  would be useless.  In order for you to be able to modify those recipes, you need to understand the basics of why those recipes are designed the way they are.  That is why I am spending more time discussing the background material so that you are armed with the logic of the whole thing.

For many years we were told that we should be eating according to the “food pyramid”, which meant eating a lot of grains.  Now Michelle Obama has been talking about “MyPlate”, which looks surprisingly similar to the plate I have described previously.  However both, Food Pyramid and MyPlate, recommend eating low-fat foods.  My experience in losing weight is exactly the opposite.  I was able to reduce my weight without eating any low-fat foods and by actually eating a lot of high-fat foods.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to state that typically we do use low-fat milk (1%) that is because we are so used to 1% milk and whole milk simply doesn’t taste good to us anymore.  Apart from that we do not eat or drink any low-fat items.  We consume large quantities of peanut butter, almond butter, peanut oil, flax seed oil, olive oil, organic butter, Mayo, “half and half”, cheeses, walnuts, almonds, pistachio nuts, and avocados regularly.  I finish a one-pound jar of almond butter in ten days only from eating my breakfast.  We prefer almond butter to peanut butter simply because almond butter is a lot easier on your digestive system than peanut butter.  As a side note, almond butter is more expensive than peanut butter, however very good quality pure almond butter can be purchased from Trader Joe’s at a great price.

So how did I lose 70 pounds while eating foods that were not low-fat or fat-free?  Here is my theory, and I am sticking to it.  When we eat fat-free or low-fat foods, we give the body the message that there is scarcity of fats.  Along with fat-free foods most people eat a lot of carbs, which then get converted into glucose or eat proteins, which also eventually get converted into glucose.  One of the functions of insulin is to take the extra glucose in the blood stream that is not being used by the cells as energy and convert it into storage for future energy in the form of fat.  So guess what happens, you gain weight. 

On the other hand when you eat low-carb foods along with regular fats, the body gets the message that there is an abundance of fat and there is no need to store it.  Besides, eating less carbs insures that no excess glucose is available in the blood stream for conversion into fat.  Now if you only eat just the minimum amount of carbs and also exercise, then your body will need more energy for its use than it takes in.  It will get that additional energy by burning the stored fat since the body has already been told that there is no of scarcity of fat.   Ergo, you lose weight

My mantra:  I will not eat any fat-free or low-fat foods ever again.

Answer to Quiz#2:

I did receive several answers to the quiz and they were correct answers.  All those items listed have the same amount of carbs, approximately 15g each.  You can use this basic list to count carbs.  Alternatively, some people like to simplify the counting by calling 15g of carbs as equal to one serving of carbs.

Formula: 15g carbs = 1 serving of carbs

So, in order to decide what to make for a 60g dinner you can simplify the process by converting 60g of carbs into 4 servings of carbs.  Now, all you have to do is pick 4 items from the list.

·         A cup of milk

·         Half an orange

·         Half an apple

·         Half a banana

·         A third cup of white rice

·         A third cup of brown rice

·         A quarter cup of granola

·         A third cup of daal

·         A third cup of sambar

·         Three cups of raw greens

·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables

·         A third cup of corn

·         A quarter cup of baked potato

·         A quarter cup of french-fries

·         On tablespoon of sugar

·         One roti (chapatti) 8” diameter

·         A regular slice of bread

·         Half an English muffin

·         One fourth of a bagel

As an example, if you pick the following four items then you have balanced a meal of 60g or 4 carb servings that will satisfy you:

·         Three cups of raw greens

·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables

·         A cup of milk

·         Half an orange

Then, you can improve upon it by making minor modifications:

·         Three cups of raw salad

·         One cup of cooked green vegetables (Cabbage or cauliflower)

·         Half a cup of cooked okra

·         Half a cup of milk

·         Half a roti

·         Half an orange

By the way, if you want to eat one full roti, then your total goes up to 67g and that is perfectly OK.  Just make sure that your daily total stays around 170g.  You can also make thin Gujarati style rotis that are 10g each and your dinner will look like this:

·         Three cups of raw salad

·         One cup of cooked green vegetables (Cabbage or cauliflower)

·         Half a cup of cooked okra

·         Half a cup of milk (or yogurt)

·         Two Guajarati rotis

·         Half an orange

This totals of about 70g.

You can receive from your local PBS station, “Incredible Health”, a program by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD.  I have not purchased the program but I have recently seen parts of it on KPBS in San Diego.  I realized that I had been following essentially the same technique.  My blog is equivalent of “Cliff Notes” of that program.

So look at your lunch or dinner plate as if it is the head of Mickey Mouse.  One large circle with two small circles representing ears at 10 O’clock and 2 O’clock positions.  Think of one ear as a position for your half glass of milk or equivalent yogurt.  Look at the second ear as the location of your half a piece of fruit (orange, apple, or banana).  Look at the big circle (face) as your 10” dinner plate.  Always fill half the plate with raw salad.  (I will have a detailed discussion on salads and dressings another time.)  Fill one quarter plate with whatever grains you want to eat, one roti or a slice of bread.  Fill the last quarter with meat or chicken (I can’t believe I wrote that!) or as I do, with a cup of cooked vegetables.  There you have it, a dinner of 60g to 65g carbs.

Here are some very important pointers:

1.   Serve yourself completely before you start to eat.

2.   Do not leave any serving bowls on the dinner table.

3.   Your dinner plate should look full and colorful.

4.   Your immediate reaction upon looking at your dinner plate should be; “Oh my God I won’t be able to eat all this food!”

5.   Do not get up hungry.

You must feel satisfied at the end of the meal, and you will feel satisfied if you follow these pointers.

For the first six months I was making detailed notes of everything I ate on a spreadsheet.  I was adding up carbs, fat, proteins, and calories for each meal and each day.  I was measuring everything I ate.  After a while I was very comfortable with the whole process and did not have to enter data in the spreadsheet.  I have simplified the process so that you don’t have to create a spreadsheet.

Quiz#2:

What is the one thing that is common among the following items, apart from the fact that they are all food items?

·         A cup of milk

·         Half an orange

·         Half an apple

·         Half a banana

·         A third cup of white rice

·         A third cup of brown rice

·         A quarter cup of granola

·         A third cup of daal

·         A third cup of sambar

·         Three cups of raw greens

·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables

·         A third cup of corn

·         A quarter cup of baked potato

·         A quarter cup of french-fries

·         On tablespoon of sugar

·         One roti (chapatti) 8” diameter

·         A regular slice of bread

·         Half an English muffin

·         One fourth of a bagel

Enough clues! 
Please enter your answer by going to the comment section of the blog.
I will give the correct answer in tomorrow’s blog.

Why Exercise?

As you regularly limit your carb intake to 170g, you’ll start losing weight.  And you’ll feel good about it, initially.  Soon, you’ll find out that you are getting tired and feeling less energetic.  Pretty soon you’ll decide that without eating more food you are going to continue to feel less energetic.  So you’ll eat more carbs and the next thing you know you’ve gained weight.  Solution?  Exercise. 

This is how it works.  When you reduce your intake of carbs, your body creates glucose from your muscles.  This makes you feel weak.  You lose weight but not the bulge around your waist and are disappointed.  Losing weight from your muscle mass has a couple of other problems too.  One, the muscles burn more sugar than other tissues.  So if you reduce muscle mass then you’ll actually slow down the process of weight reduction.  Two, your heart is made mostly of muscles.  You don’t want to weaken your heart.

When you exercise the exact opposite happens.  Your muscles crave for energy, your brain needs glucose to operate, and the rest of your body wants energy too.  What happens next?  You guessed it, the message goes out to the reserve storage of energy, fat, to convert itself into usable energy in the form of glucose.  The next thing you know is that you are losing that bulge.  Many times, as I found out, you’ll lose the bulge before the weight loss shows up on the bathroom scale!  Also, you’ll feel more energized.

The best exercise you can do is also the simplest.  It does not require any paraphernalia. Walking 30 to 60 minutes a day gives you all the exercise you’ll ever need.  When you walk you make all your big muscles work.  When the muscles have to work they don’t lose mass, instead they grow by consuming energy in the form of sugar.  Now the body has to provide more energy for that expenditure.  Where does the body get the needed extra energy from if you don’t eat it in the form of carbs?  By burning fat. 

The body has its own intelligence.  It will take fat from where it thinks it is most expendable.  In my case, I first lost fat from around my face and neck, and much later from around my tummy.  Also, don’t get discouraged if you lose weight quickly initially and if there is no change for two or three weeks.  The body likes to adjust itself in mysterious ways.  There is no need to solve the mystery.  Just as long as you are losing about a pound a month on an average, then you are doing really well.

I don’t like to exercise.  I did not exercise regularly prior to ending up in the hospital.  Now I walk regularly for 30 to 60 minutes a day.  I get 30 minutes of walking out of the way in the morning.  I do not like the gym scene; heads bobbing up and down on treadmills, smell of sweat, jocks flaunting themselves, CNN blaring away every disaster, FOX news spewing out negativity.  I do not like to walk on treadmills even at home.  Walking on a treadmill is very boring for me.  Most people watch TV while walking on a treadmill.  I am averse to watching news and don’t need to know who got murdered.  I like to walk on the streets of downtown San Diego.  There is always something new and interesting to see every time.  In Gaithersburg, I like to walk around the lake at Washingtonian Rio.  There, I try to walk in the sun if it is cold and at night if it is hot outside.  If it is snowing, we drive to a mall and walk there.  If the roads are icy, then I walk in my apartment for 30 minutes.  If you can’t walk for 30 minutes then walk for 10 minutes three times during the day.  A recent study found that women who walked once every day for 30 minutes received the same benefits as the women who walked three times a day for 10 minutes each.  There are no excuses for not being able to walk.
 
Here is a multiple choice quiz for you.  You are traveling and have to catch a flight.  You reach the airport at least an hour before the flight takes off.  These days you have to reach early for security reasons.  Which of the following three would you do upon reaching the departure gate?
(a)  Settle down comfortably near the entrance of the gate and read a book.
(b)  Go to the Starbucks in the terminal, pick up a cup of latte and a muffin, and relax while enjoying the treat.
(c)  Walk around the terminal building for 30 minutes.

If you don’t know the answer to this question, then go back to the beginning of the blog and read it again.

By the way, it is perfectly OK to do other forms of exercises.  Swimming, jogging, and bicycling are also good.  Here is why walking is the best.  Swimming requires going to a pool.  Jogging is high-impact and can damage your joints.  Bicycling needs a bike.  I used to bike a lot in India and had to be operated upon for pilonidal cyst because of that.  Walking has none of those side effects.  Finally, how fast should you walk?  Answer: at whatever pace that is comfortable for you.

Mantra: I will walk 30 to 60 minutes every day, no excuses.
Repeat after me:

·         I will eat no more than 170g of carbs every day.

·         I will never eat a scone or a muffin again.

·         I will never eat from a buffet at an Indian restaurant.

·         I will never eat commercially prepared cereal ever again.

·         I will wait at least three to four hours after dinner before lying down to go to sleep.