Sunny and warm…..okay but it was sunny. We have made lists on our white board and we got some of it crossed off today. We covered the wood pile for next year. We planned out where the pigs are going to move to next and how we are going to move them. We patched holes where they might decide to go through.
I went up and sat with my sweet neighbor who needs someone to talk to and interact with. I helped her husband figure out her medication. Doctors certainly do over medicate people and especially seniors. Jim and another friend went to pick up hay and alfalfa with our friend’s truck and trailer. Our truck has sprung a leak. Need time to fix it. Thank goodness for good friends and neighbors. I made him some cookies to thank him. (My cookies have very little sugar so I hope he likes them.) We bought 1300 lbs. of alfalfa and 960 lbs. of hay.
Jim helped me exercise today because working outside, I moved a couple of bricks and I have not been exercising like I am supposed to so he ran me through some exercises to help limber up my muscles. I tell people they need to exercise and I got too busy to do it. Well, that changed today and I will continue exercising tomorrow.
We have new animals coming in the early spring. In fact, we may be getting one of them in a couple weeks. We are getting others at the beginning of March. Secrets. No. We just want to make sure it will all work before we tell. We need animals to make our pasture work for us.
Our chickens get to free range after they have laid eggs. Otherwise, we find them all over the yard, tucked away in strange places and then we have to feed them to the pigs because we don’t know how long they have been there. Our eggs are bright orange. They do not even resemble store-bought eggs and our butter is much more yellow than the store-bought butter. Raising animals intentionally equals good food.
Nutritional Information
It might seem like I talk a lot about protein and diabetic diets. No, we are not diabetic. But so many people are or they are prediabetic. What I am sharing today is from Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, an endocrinologist The Schwarzbein Principle. When she finished 9 years of medical school she was assigned to a diabetic clinic. The people she met with told her they hoped she did not prescribe the same information or regiment that the other doctors had. She was nervous because she only knew the ADA diet, American Diabetic Association. What she found after working with these people and having them take their blood sugar 7 times a day and following strictly the ADA diet , that it was the diet that was making them sicker. Let me explain what she explained and it will help you understand why changes have to be made.
Insulin makes a person gain weight because it is a fat storing hormone.
The increased weight caused increased blood pressure.
The mediation prescribed to lower blood pressure makes blood sugar rise.
More insulin was needed, which caused increased cholesterol levels.
They had fatigue and constant hunger.
Diabetic patients on the ADA diet almost always develop heart disease. Heart disease patients on the Heart Diet develop diabetes.
The ADA diet was a low calorie, low fat, high carb, low protein diet. An ADA breakfast was a bowl of shredded wheat with non-fat milk, a banana and a glass of orange juice. Their blood sugar would rise 100 to 200 points after breakfast. (A person’s normal blood sugar would only rise 20 points.) She surmised it could not be the protein because it will eventually turn to sugar for energy but not that quickly. It couldn’t be the fat because they hardly ate any. Carbohydrates were the only nutrient that changed to sugar that quickly. They included, grains, dairy, starches, fruits or sweets. The ADA was giving sugar to diabetics.
She decided to put her patient on a zero-carbohydrate diet. No potatoes, rice, legumes, cereals, breads, fruit, low fat yogurt, milk and sugar. They were to eat low-fat dairy, egg substitutes, mostly fish and chicken and small amounts of red meat. At that time in 1990 she still thought low-fat was better. A week later the first group of patients came back with excellent blood sugar numbers. One lady said she had cheated and since she had permission to eat red meat, she had it every night. The cheaters were eating real eggs, real mayonnaise, real cheese and steak and they had the best blood sugars. These foods had been off limits in the ADA diet.
They lost weight as they ate fat. Their blood pressure went down. Their cholesterol level went down and their blood sugars leveled out. They were able to stop their blood pressure medication, stop their cholesterol lowering mediation and most stopped their diabetic medication.
When Jim had his heart scare in 2008 this is who we followed. He was overweight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure but thankfully not high blood sugar. We stopped processed food, added good fat, ate protein as the center of each meal and snack and added lots of vegetables. Our carbohydrates became complex carbs, such as fruits and starchy vegetables. Jim lost 45 pounds, I lost 20 pounds. Jim’s cholesterol dropped to below normal and his blood pressure become low and he has never had high blood pressure since.
This is why we teach about this way to eat. It works.
Yay, new animals!
I bought grass fed butter from a farmer this weekend. What a difference! It was expensive, so I won’t buy it regularly, but, boy is it treat!
It all sounds wonderful and factual, thanks for the inspiration. One possible caveat if you are still diabetic/insulin resistant for me would be to limit the starchy vegetables and fruits as they tend to have relatively high glycemic indexes and may spike your blood sugar, which should be avoided as much as possible until you get your insulin/sugar under control. It took me 3 months of eating a diet much like yours to get my sugar down and another 2 months to become fat adapted (ketones in my blood and urine). Now I often have limited amounts of starchies as a treat, or as my sole carb allowance for the day. Everyone’s different so whatever works for you,,, staying with the diet is more important than being strict.