Let me just start out by saying, "DAMN"! This is not easy! I decided to live as if, and to eat as if I were a diabetic. I'm doing this to hopefully find empathy for several of my friends (and unrelated relatives who were/are married into the family). I was wrong when I thought I could call out five or six people who I knew were diabetic. Seems a great deal more of my followers, friends, and acquaintances are either diabetic or prediabetic. It's really scary how many people don't know if they are, and they won't get checked for fear that they are. If you feel that you could be prediabetic, and you don't check, you could be making the condition so much worse than it needs to be.
My ex-sister-in-law, I'll call her a friend, says she is also prediabetic, but she has never really done much about it. She said she lives her life as she wants to. I'm not going to cut her down, God knows we've done enough of that over the past 34 years that we've known one another. (We're a lot closer than most, and are truly more like real sisters) I'll call her Donna, but that's not her name. Donna is overweight, and she knows it. She doesn't exercise as she should because she works ten and twelve-hour shifts at least four days a week, and it's just not fun to do all that needed exercise. I do get it. I do understand. However, I want her around for a long long time and if that means she needs to eat better and exercise, I'm going to wrestle her to the ground and make it happen. (You'd have to know to know. It's not really going to happen.)
Donna and I are going to go out to dinner this evening and we decided to go to Olive Garden. I called the restaurant to ask if they had vinaigrette salad dressing, and they do not. They have a Balsamic Vinegar that they can bring to me, which is good. I went on their website to find their menu and was surprised (and delighted) to find that they really do break down everything they offer in terms of nutritional value. That would (and is) a great help for anyone who is thinking of eating there if they have to watch calories, carbs, sugar, fats, and/or sodium. It's awesome. You can preplan your choice so that when you arrive you can tell the waiter what you want without having to look at the menu. Maybe we should be doing that anyway so that we don't have to wait at the table staring at the menu. I wonder how many restaurants actually have their full menu listed and with all the stats?
The best choices are not always the choices you want. I had already told myself and Donna that I would be ordering the soup and salad. It's "endless" at Olive Garden, but I don't need endless. One bowl is 16 oz and that's two servings. One salad is plenty and if it has Balsamic vinegar on it I'm good. I may sprinkle a bit of olive oil on it as well. One breadstick has 140 calories and only 1 sugar. I'm good. The sodium content is a bit high but not so much that it is out of the ballpark or out of range of what my goals and expectations are. Olive Garden would be a good place for people to go if they're trying to keep all the numbers straight and in order. I think I would find myself going to the same restaurants really, and maybe only branching out to others once I've checked their entire menu. It's just not that easy to get them to post it. You can't count on one portion one day being the same as it is another day from restaurant to restaurant.
When people in the UK (or other parts of the world) think of American food, one of the first things they think of is portion sizes. We do tend to overload the plates here in America. We think it's good hospitality I suppose. Having an eye out for numbers such as carbs, sugars, calories, and fats now, I think maybe I could double-think that practice. I personally, don't eat much, and my personal portions are smaller than most. I have been eating smaller portions for about two years now, and have dramatically lost weight and girth because of it. I'm not going to jump on top of a box and shout it, but it does need to be mentioned. If you are wanting to be a more health-conscious eater, you'll need to first consider what you are currently eating, and the sizes or portions of those foods. EVERYONE loves ice cream, but we don't need to eat a full tub of it in one sitting.
That's about it. I didn't have too much to add to today's blog other than I think about what I need to think about. I plan and preplan. If you know me, you know my plans always have plans and my checklists start with making a checklist to make that checklist. I've always been an overthinker, and sometimes it pans out for me! In this case, it did. I can walk into Olive Garden and order exactly what I want while Donna oogles over the menu and then orders exactly what she thought she would order in the first place. I've known the woman for 34 years, she hasn't changed much, but I love her! I literally wrote in my divorce decree that I get her! (She laughed.)
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