The last couple years have been tough. Through my challenging time, I had a personal experience of how prediabetes symptoms feel – I don’t recommend it. For me, it was the wake-up call I needed to refocus on lifestyle.
One indicator of how life is going generally is my eating – for years I had it together, surfing life’s ups and downs while my relationship with food was stable and happy. It helped that I work at a yoga center famous for its healthful food, and that I’ve studied nutrition for almost 30 years (still fascinated!). Being an “expert” actually heightens the misery – I’m sure many of you know of what I speak.
Over the past two years, when I realized several of those big life fears (I watched the love of my life die, quick and gruesome…then…he came back to life! wait, wha?), the place that slipped was eating (of course!). In my despair, movement-related self-care was also just too hard to keep up. I moved a little but not enough – and I just could not find the joy I always felt with dance, movement and fitness.
Through this time, my A1c crept up. While I know in great detail how to address it (hello, moderating carbohydrates and moving more) it hasn’t been easy. My progress until now has been rather slow. One thing that I’ve experienced (I think) is how someone feels when their blood sugar is on what I call the blood sugar roller-coaster, giving you prediabetes symptoms. It is a profound feeling and impacted nearly every moment of my day, and has a set of unhelpful thoughts attached.
Prediabetes Symptoms
While many people with prediabetes do not have symptoms, here are a few that can happen.
Fatigue. First, you’re tired. Really tired and unmotivated. It’s hard to comprehend a reason to get up and out of bed, and why-botherism is right there, pretty much all the time. There are moments of light, but mostly grey. Tired and unmotivated.
Unwellness. Then, you feel sort of crummy. Most of the time. Low energy and achy deep inside for no real reason.
Increase Thirst & Urination. I’ve always been a water drinker and didn’t notice this one, but some folks do.
Weird things begin to happen physically – blurred vision, skin things, digestive things, that have never happened before and don’t help with moving forward.
Cravings. For me, eating my favorite comfort/trigger foods (starch for me – mashed potatoes) became a heightened experience. I got trapped in a familiar cycle of emotional eating – stress, think of mash potatoes – eat mashed potatoes, overeat mashed potatoes – wish I hadn’t eaten mashed potatoes as I feel over-full.
Gather helpers. My counselor/therapist – weekly through the worst of it, gave me someone to get into the muck with – to go deep deep into my fears and feel them, honor them. I could never have moved on or begun to release my fears around losing my dude without her.
Find yourself a good dietitian. Every town has at least one excellent dietitian – that’s is the right fit for your personality and pocketbook. More dietitians take health insurance, and more dietitians also offer premium services like custom fitness routines, custom meal plans, and seriously regular meetings.
What is Prediabetes Anyway?
Prediabetes is when you begin to have problems with your blood sugar but you are not quite to the place of having a diagnosis of diabetes. It is action time, my friend.
Specifically, by the numbers, prediabetes is when:
A1c (a measure of blood sugar over several months) between 5.7 -6.4%
A fasting blood glucose of between 100-124 mg/dL
There are other indicators, like an oral glucose tolerance test, blood lipid levels that can also point to your risk of having prediabetes.
Why do I say it is action time? Because you can change it.
Update – My Story
At times, progress seemed a game of inches – sort of exasperating. It does, as you might imagine, heighten the excitement to also be an expert in the field. That’s where self-compassion comes in. Then, as I tried to show up for my own life, and my family’s life, over and over day after day, it began to slowly shift. I had a great leap forward – normal labs! Now, I’m feeling better, eating better. My mindset is better and I’m heading in the right direction. I just show up, over and over, and participate in my own life (I wasn’t for a while). Recovery is one step forward, one step back. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back and I do my best to notice and celebrate that.
Everyone, when it comes to health and well-being, has both unique challenges and resources. I am not recovering without support and friends. I have support from the medical community – I live in the great state of MA – a place that attempts to provide care for all – and that care for me (and my husband) has been nothing less than life-saving. I have access to mental health and physical health care.
Take Your Next Step
As part of my healing and hopefully helping, I am now in private practice – both telehealth and face-to-face in Great Barrington, MA. Find out more about my personal lifestyle coaching.
Tell Me
What’s your story? What are the challenges and resources you have to heal your life? I want to know!
If you live in New England, this has been a chilly – OK freezing – spring. Our minds are thinking of fresh herbs and lightening up, but our palates crave warmth. It’s an excellent time for a fresh curry. Here’s a favorite: Pork Tenderloin Cauliflower Curry. You have here a one skillet meal, my friends, that takes about twenty minutes.
My beloved husband has, over the past year or so, become quite a connoisseur of quality food for less $. Do you know how sexy that is for a dietitian? Quite. I have become a student of his method of finding excellent quality food deals locally. It involves knowing when the local shopper’s guide comes out and knowing what’s on special. In last week’s supermarket circular, there was a two-for-one offer of pork tenderloins (and organic chicken breasts, by the way). Who knew?
Pork tenderloin is a lean and healthful meat, particularly when raised as nature intended – on a small farm with love and a varied diet. Here’s what I did with half of a pork tenderloin. This Pork Tenderloin Cauliflower Curry recipe is easy to modify. You may of course eliminate the pork and sub tofu or beans for a vegan curry. Chicken and shrimp are also easy substitutes.
Pork tenderloin is a lean and healthful meat, particularly when raised as nature intended – on a small farm with love and a varied diet
Course Dinner, Lunch, Main Course
Keyword cauliflower, Curry, Pork Tenderloin
Equipment
Large Skillet
Ingredients
1/2lbPork Tenderloinsliced into bite-sized pieces
2TbspSesame oil
1small head cauliflowercut into bite-sized florets
1cupasparagussnapped into bite-sized pieces
12ozcan coconut milk
2Tbspred curry paste
2Tbspchopped Thai or regular basil
Instructions
Coat the bottom of a large skillet over medium-high heat with sesame oil, add pork pieces and sear, turning, for about 4 minutes.
Turn head down to medium. Add cauliflower and saute for 4 minutes.
Add asparagus, coconut milk (give the can a good shake before you open it)
Stir in curry paste and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Slice into one of the pork pieces to make sure it is cooked through – no pink on the inside. When pork is cooked through, the cauliflower is soft, and asparagus is bright and al-dente (still has some firmness), top with basil and serve as is or over brown rice or another grain.
I never met a mushroom I didn’t like, and I’ve had the pleasure of quite a few. It’s what inspired me to create my Hungarian-inspired Mushroom Soup Recipe.
If you ever get the chance, take a mushroom walk with the Boston Mycological Club(or your local club). They are a perfect collection of culinary, botany and sensation-seeking enthusiasts. When I went, we found baskets full of colorful beauties, then using field guides and spore patterns (the definitive method to differentiate friend or foe from a safe-to-eat perspective), we identified, divided up and took home our bounties for happy times of all sorts.
Gathering mushrooms from the wild is getting ever more popular, but I don’t do it because even though I’ve had some experience with my mycological friends, every year even expert mushroom collectors eat the wrong fungi and that’s it – they can kill you. There are such a phenomenal range of cultivated mushrooms now available, I suggest sticking with and enjoying that.
I love the mushrooms, dill, and sour cream that frame Hungarian mushroom soup. If you can find a good local organic grass-fed sour cream, then by all means, use that (grass-fed dairy has a more favorable lipid profile as well as being easier on the earth relative to its mass-market cousins). If you are dairy-free, you can substitute a bit of soy milk plus an extra squeeze of lemon to approximate the tang you’ll miss from yogurt or sour cream.
Here I’ve aimed to boost the nutrient density by loading up on herbs – both dill and parsley, as well as other vegetables, and lightened it up with yogurt rather than sour cream. I found that when I used this quantity of herbs, I needed to blend the finished product – herbs are so delicate that when they are cooked like this in a soup, they need to be blended or finely, finely chopped or their texture just isn’t what you want it to be.
I love the mushrooms, dill, and sour cream that frame Hungarian mushroom soup. If you can find a good local organic grass-fed sour cream, then by all means, use that (grass-fed dairy has a more favorable lipid profile as well as being easier on the earth relative to its mass-market cousins). If you are dairy-free, you can substitute a bit of soy milk plus an extra squeeze of lemon to approximate the tang you'll miss from yogurt or sour cream.
Course Dinner, Lunch
Equipment
Heavy Soup Pot
Ingredients
1 - 16ozpackage organic mushrooms
2Tbspolive oil
3large carrots
1/2yellow onionsliced & cubed
1/2medium yellow turnippeeled and sliced
2cupsorganic chicken or vegetable stock
about 1 cup fresh dillchopped
about 1/2 cup fresh parsleychopped
2Tbsporganic grass-fed yogurt or sour cream
Instructions
In a heavy soup pot over medium heat, sauté onions in olive oil until translucent.
Slice carrots, and clean and slice mushrooms, and slice turnip, discarding any waxy covering it may have. Add these veggies to the pot and sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
Add stock and simmer 45-60 minutes.
Meanwhile, chop herbs.
Add herbs and yogurt or sour cream.
If necessary, cool and run through a blender for a smooth and creamy texture.
Quality food and produce – organics, artisanal, delicious – is more widely available than ever before. Yet when I check out from my whole foods grocery – especially when I’m preparing for a special holiday or family dinner, I imagine my father (a rural farmer cash-on-the-barrel sort of guy) fainting dead away at the grand total. Yipes! The price of high-quality (like organic grass-fed) meat or dairy, and fresh produce can take your breath away. You can eat well for less.
It takes some time and effort, but once you get into the swing of the practice, it’s just how you do it. The nutrition and taste benefits are very worth the effort.
If you feel the desire to eat high-quality food, but you aren’t independently wealthy, here are 7 ideas to help you eat well on a budget:
1. Try mindful eating.
Many Americans simply eat too much – be it healthy food or not. But just how much is enough? We’re designed to know. Mindful eating can help you find out how much food fills you up and gives you energy throughout the day. In fact, mindful eating is a practice that can help you turn down the external messages about what and how much to eat, and to tune in more deeply to your internal guidance system.
You can experiment by becoming a little more aware of the portion sizes you eat, and use mindful eating to help you experiment with just how much is enough. It’s a real sweet spot – adequate without over nor under-doing eating. It’s a practice for sure, and we humans by nature seem to over- or under-do it. So, if you struggle with this, you are not alone! Be patient and keep practicing.
How about an experiment – quality over quantity?
Begin by experimenting with mindfully eating various foods – from treats like designer chips, whole foods take-out, gourmet pizzas and stevia sweetened sodas to more healthful choices like fresh vegetables and fruit, beans, nuts and whole grains. See how different foods make you feel, and how much seems to be enough to satisfy and give you energy through the day (I know, easier said than done). Eating lightly (and for some, passing on snacking) can be both healthful and cost-effective. The practice of mindful eating is a great place to begin to explore just what eating lightly means for you.
2. Enjoy plants.
If you have more than one serving of animal protein each day, you may be healthier and more frugal to look to plant-based protein to replace some of the meat and dairy you’re eating. Need some ideas on a delicious way to focus on plant fare? Check out my recipe page, and my friend The Veggie Queen, who dedicates her working life to helping you enjoy more plants easily.
3. Consider a CSA or community food CO-OP.
Cut out the middleman and ensure the freshest local produce makes it into your kitchen all season long through a direct relationship with a local farm. To get stared check out Local Harvest. They will tell you how to get into the mindset, prepare to join, and help find your nearest community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms and CO-OPs.
4. The bulk food aisle (or discount website) is your friend.
Get a break on nuts, spices, whole grains and just about everything beyond fresh produce. If you don’t live near a grocery store that offers bulk staples, of course the internet marketplace is there wherever you are. The Spruce has a good article on their favorite online grocery sites.
5. Browse your market’s circular.
If you are so inclined to browse your supermarket’s circular, you really can shave a lot off your weekly food costs. My husband (astonishingly) does this as a practice – he plans our shopping around the meat and seafood that is on sale – and he is truly amazing at it. The deals he gets are phenomenal! You do have to be aware that items on sale might not be the most healthful, so you need to practice discretion here.
6. Organic online coupons? Yep.
Check out All Natural Savings – a gal dedicated to online couponing – to get you started. Whole Foods also has a weekly deals and sales page. So many ways to use them to eat well for less.
7. Keep it all in perspective.
There’s a certain new math – a longer-term economics we need to consider when we think about the higher cost of clean whole food. That new equation is hidden beneath cheap subsidized corn, sugar, meat and dairy. As a nutritionist for the past 25 years I know that this cheaper refined food is responsible for a world of disease and pain. In my practice I see people improve their health every day through committing to higher quality nutrient-dense, low chemical load food. Most people feel better right away when they move away from the standard American diet and learn to make small choices toward health while enjoying what they eat and feeling great regardless of the number of the scale. The benefits continue to build over time with longer, healthier lives.
When it comes to quality food, no one can eat perfectly all the time unless they have limitless income, their own farm and a small team of vegetable choppers at the ready.
So, do what you can to eat well for less, and let the rest go. Small changes can add up, over time, to transformation.
Gwen Gaillard was the belle of Nantucket’s culinary scene for years. We have a tattered cookbook filled with Gwen’s recipes from her heyday. This carrot soup is one of them, with a little of my own updates and thoughts.
Carrot Soup Ingredients Are So Simple
Carrots, turnips, potatoes and onions are really all this carrot soup consists of. Simplicity. But it packs a grounding sweetness – rooting I should say – of tubers. Perfect for this transitional season of surprising coolness and breeziness, when you get hungry for hearty but don’t want to slide into dough-eating.
We got a beautiful bunch of carrots from the Farmer’s Market in Great Barrington this week, along with a turnip, so it was time to get this one rolling. This carrot soup is a great base for adding a variety of other flavors – toss in an apple, or a thumb-sized piece of ginger, or some spicy peppers for variety. Gwen’s recipe calls for butter, but you can easily make this soup vegan and delicious by simply sautéing the onions in olive oil rather than butter. Easy.
Carrots, turnips, potatoes and onions are really all this soup consists of. Simplicity.
Course Dinner, Lunch, Soup
Equipment
1 Saute' pan
1 Soup pot
Ingredients
1/4large yellow onionsliced
2Tbspbutter
1 1/2lbsfresh carrotsscrubbed and sliced
1large turnipwashed and cubed
2large potatoeswashed and cubed
2quartswater
1tspsalt
1tsppeppercorns
Instructions
Saute the onions in the butter over medium-low heat.
Place the carrots, turnip, and potatoes in a soup pot with water, and simmer over low heat. After a half-hour, add the sautéed onions, salt and pepper.
When vegetables are soft, blend with a hand-blender (or a regular blender if need be).
A chef from Kripalu taught me the egg over veggies trick. It’s quick, easy and satisfying. You can substitute any vegetable for the mushrooms and sweet potatoes in this easy breakfast recipe- try spinach, onions, tomatoes or your favorite blend of vegetables.
Let’s talk about wild mushrooms!
This year, our local farmer’s market has had a bumper crop of really beautiful mushrooms for a really reasonable price. Look at these beauties – oyster mushrooms.
Do you know that mushrooms have characteristics of both plants and animals? They are strange and wonderful little beings, and nutritionally rich in vitamins and minerals (not, however, protein as is often suggested). You can substitute any mushroom for those I use in this recipe.
This dish, while simple, is wonderfully balanced from a protein-carbohydrate-fat perspective, as there are healthful versions of each. Egg protein will keep you satisfied, as will the bit of anti-inflammatory monounsaturated olive oil. Sweet potatoes are a complex fiber-filled carbohydrate and they and the mushrooms are nutrient-dense, filled with vitamins and nutrients.
Here’s a quick weekday breakfast.
Egg "Poached" on Wild Mushrooms and Sweet Potatoes
This recipe is quick, easy and satisfying. You can substitute any vegetable for the mushrooms and sweet potatoes in this easy breakfast recipe- try spinach, onions, tomatoes or your favorite blend of vegetables.
Course Breakfast, Lunch
Servings 1
Equipment
Saute' pan
Ingredients
1egg
1tspolive oil
2/3cupwild mushroomschopped
1/3cupsweet potatocooked (leftover from the weekend!) and cubed
1 1/2tspdried thymeor the fresh or dried herb of your choice
Instructions
Warm olive oil in a small pan and sauté mushrooms and sweet potatoes for 3 or 4 minutes over medium-high heat.
Crack an egg into the pan, sprinkle with herbs, cover and turn down heat to low-medium. Let the egg “poach” in the steam of the vegetables for 3 or 4 minutes.
