one positive and good thing the county hospital did for me when i was battling it out with the auto-immune disease i’m challenged by (relapsing polychondritis), was to send me to their dietitian
anyone who’s been on high-dosage prednisone knows that immediate (ridiculously quick) and extreme weight-gain in the face (“moon face”), back of neck and abdomen is par for the course
that diet is so SMART! it’s a perfect science and it’s very organized – and that’s exactly what i needed
i still chuckle when i remember my first visit to the Nutrition Dept. when the lady gave me my plan, she handed me 4 plates and big box of rubber-duckie-kinda foods of all sorts, painted up to look like the real thing
she told me to make a days worth of meals by referring to the exchanges on my list and then choose from all the different foods, creating my menu
then she left me alone, promising to return to discuss my choices. for me, one of the most organized people on the planet, it was a chop-chop project and i went to work, bent on fulfilling the task
some of the foods in the box i didn’t even recognize and when she came back, i picked up this one sliver of green shaped like a boat and asked her what it was – turns out it was 1/8th of an avocado and that little, dinky slice would take up ONE WHOLE HALF of my total allotment of only 2 oil exchanges for that entire meal – “holy god, forget it, then!” and it threw it back in the box and swore off avocados if they were gonna be that picky
thus, my diabetic exchange program adventure began and it turned out I could never even eat all the exchanges allotted to me in my daily plan – I was totally satisfied each meal and big hooray for food being off my mind in-between meals
i loved that i got to have a good snack in the evening – that’s what really made it smart and do-able for me because i’ve always been one of those people who gets hungry before bed
along with my PT program, exercising in the pool 3 times/wk with alternate days of walking, this diet helped me lose 100 lbs and i was able to get off the drug i was taking, glucophage, for prednisone-induced, adult-onset diabetes 2
truth is, i don’t need to be on prednisone to be off-balance with my eating habits – i’ve been challenged in this department my whole life
so i really appreciate a system that gathers and divides my ideal daily caloric intake into exchanges (carbs/protein/fruit/dairy/
i had fun with it and kept track of my exchanges with different-colored index cards and envelope pockets that i moved them around in
on saturdays i would “cheat” and eat the veggies and fruit exchanges in the day, saving up all my dairy, fat and carb exchanges, so i could and have 2 whole pieces of stuffed-crust pizza for our movie nite – now, that made it really smart!!!
and so, it worked for me. i big-time changed my mind and made the commitment, weaving the discipline of it into the reality of my life, even allowing myself a treat – all staying within the boundaries of the diabetic exchange program, complying with the basic and tested formula and holding to it
victory!
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