#surprised i got the snack box under 200 calories

[chisaharu-chiha]

Finally went to the store and bought some healthy things I like to snack on. 💪 🐇 🍓 🥒 🥕 🍅 🥨 🥬

[turkeyfeet8-blog]

The Epic Travel Salad

  When I saw the number, I couldn’t believe it: 29 hours. It was undoubtedly going to be one of the longest travel days of my life. I’ve been to Bali twice before, but always from Copenhagen, which is about half the distance from Toronto. I almost gave it a second thought since spending that amount of time sitting upright just felt like it might end me, but the retreats were booked, and there was no backing out!

I knew what would get me through, and that was food. Lots and lots of delicious, nourishing, consciously-created food. I always always make a point of preparing meals for traveling, since eating mini, microwaved mystery munch seriously kills my vibe. Plus, the amount of calories in one of those airplane trays is barely enough to get me through one romcom and you know that I’m watching at least five in a row.

When you’re about to face any length of time on an airplane, there are a few things to take into consideration. First, fill your snack pack with foods that are hydrating: cucumbers, romaine, bell peppers, carrots, apples, oranges, celery, berries, grapes, and melon. Depending on where you’re traveling to, it can help to have the fruits and veggies already prepared or sliced, since some countries won’t let you bring in whole fruits and veg, but they will let you bring them in if they look ready to eat. It sounds nonsensical, but it works!

I love having huge vegetable salads with lentils and / or whole grains to keep me full too, since I have a tendency to stress-eat when I’m in transit and will totally mow down a bag of chips if they’re put in front of me (okay, sometimes I also eat those chips, and that is okay too, but I notice that it always prolongs my jetlag). For other filling munchies, I like my almond flour cookies, nuts like pistachios or walnuts, and granola – especially crossing so many timezones, which requires breakfast-y things. Veggie sticks are also nice, light fare that keep my crunch cravings under control.

As you can see from the photo, I bring my food in reusable containers, use washable wooden cutlery and a straw, all of which are convenient to have once I’m at my destination to use for my own cooking and storage. I also always have my 800-ml water bottle with me when I travel. I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but it begs repeating: jetlag is exacerbated by dehydration, and drinking about half a liter (16 oz.) per hour of flight will make such an immense difference, you may never experience jetlag again. I used to suffer terribly from exhaustion for days post-travel (which really ruined my trip when it was a short one), and now it’s no big deal. I arrive, wait until a mildly appropriate time to go to bed, and wake up feeling about as normal as one could hope to. Yes, you’ll have to make friends with the flight attendants, since they are the keepers of the water, but go visit them at the back of the plane every so often for a refill, treat them like humans, and you’d be amazed at how accommodating and helpful they are. Make sure you fill your bottle before landing as well, since you never know how long it will take for you to get through customs, baggage claim and the taxi line. It always pays to have hydration close at hand.

Avoid the plane food if you can, since it is overly salted and often has added sugar. Our taste buds are actually less receptive at high altitudes, due to low air pressure, low humidity, and high levels of white noise. Yup – that is an actual thing. The way our brains interpret flavour signals is impaired, therefore, things taste different, so airlines pump up the levels of salt and sugar in their food to make them taste the way they would at ground level. If you ate that travel-sized “chicken or pasta” at your dining room table you’d be surprised at how exaggerated the flavours were.

  Why is this the most epic travel salad? Because it’s got All. The. Things. Rich, hearty beets, protein-rich and satiating lentils, so it’s filling, but it’s not going to leave you feeling stuffed. And because of that whole flavours-being-less-powerful-at-high-altitudes thing, I endeavoured to add as many potent tastes as possible. Lemon, pomegranate, parsley, cumin seeds, and olives are like flavour fireworks that you can safely ignite at 30,000 feet. There is a Middle Eastern vibe going on for sure, and the multitude of textures tick every single box. You don’t want your mouth getting bored while you’re hurtling through the sky, and this combination will ensure that each bite is a surprise party.

Olives that come without their pits are often mushy and less flavourful, so I always opt to remove them myself, or leave them in until I eat them. The problem with leaving the pits in the olives in this situation, is finding a place to put them on your teeny table real estate (the airsick bag is a great option, just sayin’…and yes, I’ve really thought of everything). If you do want to remove them beforehand, it’s easiest to do so by smashing the olive with the flat side of a knife blade, then simply pulling the pit out. You can roughly chop the olives from there.

If you don’t have any black lentils, Du Puy or French lentils work just as well, with green and brown lentils as a passable fallback. I don’t dig these types of lentils in salads since they tend to be water-y and dilute the flavour of the dressing, but if it keeps you from making a special trip to the store, by all means just use them.

And normally I wouldn’t include alliums in a plane salad since your neighbours might give you the stink eye when you pop open your lunch box, but I’ve tempered their potency by pickling them ever-so-slightly. This is done in the same container that you’re going to put your salad in, preceded by mixing up the dressing right in there too. Easy peasy!

I guess I should mention that this salad is not just delicious on a plane – it’s also fabulous enjoyed at ground level. Perfect for road trips, picnics, school or office lunches, just make sure you make it the day before so that all the ingredients are cool. If you travel with this salad on the warm side, it could spoil in transit.

  Maybe it’s a bit strange to have a travel salad as the first post of the year, but I’m a bit tired of the whole “new year, new you” rant. People expect me to talk about cleansing or detoxing in January, and although I’m all for reflecting and re-evaluating one’s lifestyle choices, I’m a bit bored of the narrative saying that the first day of the new year is the time to atone for all our dietary sins. Why do we need a specific day to act as a reason to start treat ourselves well?

If there a New Year’s resolution to pull out of this post, it should be to resolve to make yourself delicious food when you go anywhere. Avoid the overpriced convenience food, no matter how healthy it is, since nothing sold in a package will ever compare to the freshness, or high-vibrational energy of food you’ve lovingly prepared for yourself. Case closed!

If you’d like more travel food recipes, tips, and inspiration, check out my two previous articles here and here.

    Print recipe    

The Epic Travel Salad Makes enough for 2-3 meals

Ingredients: 3/4 cup / 170g dry black / beluga lentils, soaked overnight if possible 2 ½ pounds / 1200g beets 1 shallot, sliced into rings ½ tsp. fine sea salt zest and juice of 1 large organic lemon 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar 1 Tbsp. cumin seeds 1/3 cup / 60g pumpkin seeds 1 tsp. honey (vegans sub with maple syrup) 3 Tbsp. cold-pressed olive oil heaping ½ cup / 80g pomegranate seeds heaping ½ cup / 100g olives, with pits 1 cup / 25g parsley ½ tsp. flaky salt, or more to taste 1 small head romaine lettuce

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F / 200°C. Place whole beets (with the skin on) on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for around 45-60 minutes, until you can easily insert a sharp knife into the center (baking time depends on the size of your beets). Remove from oven, let cool completely, then slip the skins off. Slice into bite-sized batons.

2. While the beets are roasting, cook the lentils. Drain and rinse well (if you’ve soaked them overnight), and place them in a pot, cover with plenty of fresh water, and bring them to a boil. Reduce to simmer, place a lid on the pot, and cook until tender (about 15-20 minutes if you’ve soaked them, a little longer if you haven’t). Salt the lentils a few minutes before they’re done – if you salt them at the beginning of cooking, the skins will be tough and they’ll take longer to soften. Drain and rinse lightly. Set aside.

3. While the lentils are cooking, prepare the dressing. Slice the shallot into very thin rings, then place them in the container that you’re going to use to store the salad. Add the salt and combine them well. Wait about 2 minutes, then add the lemon zest, juice and apple cider vinegar (these ingredients will lightly pickle the shallots, plus act a as a base for your dressing).

4. In a dry skillet over medium heat, toast the cumin seeds until fragrant, set aside to cool. Without washing the pan, toast the pumpkin seeds until fragrant and popping, then set aside to cool.

5. Back to the dressing: whisk in the honey and olive oil. Add the prepared beets, lentils, pomegranate seeds, olives, parsley, toasted cumin seeds, pumpkin seeds and flaky salt. Fold to thoroughly combine. Taste and add more salt if necessary (remember that the ingredients will absorb some salt while marinating, and that it will taste milder in the air).

6. You can either chop the romaine lettuce up and place it on top of the salad (don’t mix it in – it will get totally mushy), or you can leave the head whole and peel off the leaves and use them as little salad boats. If you’re going for the latter, wrap the washed head in beeswax cloth to keep it fresh.

The Wild Heart High Spirit Retreats are starting tomorrow, and I cannot wait to embrace each of the women who have traveled from every corner of the earth to join us here in Bali. We are going to eat the most delicious food, practice yoga, dance, laugh, learn, and celebrate the joy of being alive together! We have one space left for the second week, so if you’re interested in joining us in tropical paradise, please visit our site for more information.

Peace and blessings for an abundant, healthy, vibrant year ahead. Thank you for being here. I love you.

xo, Sarah B

Source: https://www.mynewroots.org/site/2019/01/the-epic-travel-salad/

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Ask D'Mine: "Diabetes-Friendly" Popcorn, BG Targets for Type 1's

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-diabetes-friendly-popcorn-bg-targets-for-type-1s/

Ask D'Mine: "Diabetes-Friendly" Popcorn, BG Targets for Type 1's

Welcome back to our Saturday event, the diabetes advice column Ask D'Mine, hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and community educator Wil Dubois.

This week we're talking food — yay! And also digging into the meaning of glucose targets for people living on insulin — less yay, but certainly important to understand.

Need help navigating life with diabetes? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com

Clara from Indiana, type 2, writes: I heard that popcorn is a good "diabetes-friendly" snack, but I was surprised to see how many carbs it has. I like to have popcorn for lunch, which means I'd sometimes eat about 4 cups. That's minimum 25 carbs! Why do I think that's just too much?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: First off, let's be clear that I don't find the terms "diabetes-friendly" and "snack" to be compatible. Second off, let's be clear that popcorn, diabetes-friendly snack or not, is most definitely not a diabetes-friendly meal! Meals need to have things like protein... and vitamins... and stuff.

But as to how much of anything is too much, consider that to maintain weight, a healthy meal for a woman would be in the 40-50 carb range, while men get to pig out in the 50-60 carb range. If you need to lose weight, a slightly lower carb count per meal is a good idea. Of course, carbs are only part of the story. We gotta talk about calories too. Carbs are a useful tool for understanding how much impact on your blood sugar a given food will have, and can be used as a rough guide for weight. But calories are a far more useful way to understand if what we are eating will keep our weight stable, make it go up, or make it go down. In general, the more carbs the more calories, but not always. Take popcorn for example.

A single serving of popcorn is anywhere between 4 and 5 ½ cups. Those little mini microwave bags are generally in the five-cup range, and yep, you nailed it: they run about 25 carbs. And they traditionally weigh in at 200 calories.

But they don't have to.

The latest and greatest thing in popcorn is the 100-calorie "mini" bag of microwave popcorn. When I first heard about these calorie-skimpy bags, I just assumed the cheap-ass people at Orville Redenbacher's slashed the serving size to two cups to achieve the calorie drop, but I was wrong. Both the 200-calorie and the 100-calorie bags are the same serving size, around five cups. WTF?

What has changed is the oil.

A good old-fashioned 200-calorie bag of microwave popcorn has 15 grams of fat. The new 100-calorie bags only have 2 grams of fat. By reducing the oil / fat content, they slashed the calories. The carbs stayed the same.

Less fat makes them healthier, right?

Not necessarily.

It depends on what you mean/want/need when it comes to the label "healthier."

For you, my type 2 cousin, it may be better to have less fat. But for me and my T1 kin, the higher fat popcorn may be better. No shit. Here's why: fat slows down the absorption of carbs. For those of us dependent on insulin, we often have a hard time matching the speed of carb absorption in our intestines with the speed of our insulin's action. Higher fat meals give us an edge, by slowing down the carb absorption and matching it more closely with the action curve of our modern "fast—acting" insulins.

So if I ate the 100-calorie bag, I'll actually have a steeper, faster excursion into high blood sugar territory than if I ate the 200-calorie bag. That's because they both have the same 25 carbs, but with less fat, the lower calorie bag will pump those carbs into my blood stream much more quickly. If I take more insulin to try to compensate, I'll probably go low a few hours downstream.

Of course most T2s don't have this problem. Y'all have some insulin gettin' mainlined from your pancreases still. You'd have to experiment with a box of each kind of popcorn, a stop watch, and a glucometer, but I'd bet there would be precocious little difference between what the two kinds of popcorn would do to your blood sugar.

Oh the other hand, the majority of T2s struggle with weight, so fewer calories would be better, and because virtually all T2s have a greater risk of heart trouble, cutting the fat content makes the 100-calorie bag a win-win for you.

But back to your original question, i.e. eating a bag of popcorn for a meal and worrying if it's just too much. Let me end with this thought setting nutritional value and fat aside for the moment, a 200-calorie meal is waaaaaay on the light side, containing only 10% of your daily calorie allowance to maintain your weight. If you are trying to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories of course, but if you only ate three meals of popcorn per day (don't you dare!) you'd be getting 600 calories a day—fewer calories than the folks in Soviet labor camps got. And I think we can all agree that The Soviet Labor Camp Diet is not going to be the next best-selling fad diet any time soon!

Something to think about.

Jean from Minnesota, type 1 for one year, writes:I was curious as to what BG numbers most type 1s aim for? For example, morning fasting numbers -- do most try to keep the BG number under 90? 80? in the 70s?I'm not a control freak, but I think it would motivate me to have a realistic target number, even though I know I won't (can't) meet it all the time.

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: To be honest, there is quite a bit of disagreement about our target numbers, both in the medical community and in the patient communities.

In fact, the two largest diabetes doctors' groups can't even agree on where are numbers should be:

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) Guidelines call for:

A Fasting blood sugar of less than 110 mg/dL

And a two hour post-meal peak below 140 mg/dL.

While...

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) Guidelines call for:

A Fasting blood sugar of between 70-130

And a two hour post-meal peak below 180.

So that's.... ummmmm... quite a difference of opinion.

And these numbers have become something of a moving target themselves over the last few years, with a trend towards personalizing them, at least for various therapies and age groups. Many docs are choosing higher targets for pediatric populations, whose blood sugars do the funky chicken dance with less warning, and for older folks, since the results of the Accord Trial suggest to many that shooting for lower blood sugars may be fatal to older folks. For what it's worth, I also support higher target for older patients as frankly, the older you get, the more likely you are to be done in by heart attacks, strokes, falling down stairs, or getting pecked to death by ducks (hey, it could happen) rather than being done in by your diabetes. Simply put, at some point your risks of garden-variety mortality get so high, it really isn't worth the effort to keep your blood sugars low. Something else will surely do you in before the blood sugar gets the chance.

Many PWDs seek "normal" non-diabetic blood sugars, the rationale being that as close to normal as possible is healthier. But this would mean sub-100 blood sugars. And while it can be done with super-low-carb eating and lots of insulin, I personally don't believe it's safe.

Trying to stuff diabetes back into the box it came in is nearly impossible given today's technology and medicines. And trying too hard to achieve "normal" blood sugars hugely increases the risks of hypoglycemia. Hypos are dangerous; they can kill you very quickly if you go too low, and recent evidence also suggests lows may also damage the heart. To top it off, frequent lows also result in hypoglycemia unawareness, and if you develop that you are at even greater risk of the whole go-really-low-and-die-quickly thing.

Sorry, I didn't intend to scare the pants off you...

In my option, the AACE guidelines are unrealistically inflexible. One thing they don't take into consideration is personal variation. Depending on your therapy, medications, diet, exercise patterns, and lifestyle, your morning numbers could vary quite a bit. That being the case, I like ranges. If your average has to be a little higher to ensure your lowest numbers aren't too low, well that's money in the bank. So chalk one up for the ADA. But at the same time, I feel 70 mg/dL is dangerously thin ice for most T1s. Or anyone else using insulin. You are very close to a hypo at that point.

I like to shoot for a morning target of 115/mg/dL most of the time. I get nervous if I get much below 90, and I get pissed off if I get much above 120. As for after-meal numbers, unless I've been forced to eat tofu and water cress, I'm not sure I've ever seen a 140 after eating. I do think, however, that keeping under 180mg/dL eighty percent of the time is realistic and achievable.

Remember too, that speed of change is nearly as important as degree of change. Slowly changing blood sugars are much easier on your diabetic body than rapidly changing blood sugars.

But no matter what numbers you and your doc settle on, remember these are just targets. Even high-tech predator drones miss their targets and blow up Afghan ice cream trucks now and again. A target is just something to shoot for, to strive for. They're not carved in stone. They're not the unmalleable laws of physics.

So no guilt allowed when you miss a target! At least not when you miss a blood sugar target.

If you just blew up an Afghan ice cream truck, then I think some guilt is called for.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article