AHHHHHH! Only Two Days Left After Today!!! We’re Almost There!!!
And, once again, it’s my Friday – my treat day! Woohoo! Tonight, we have the pleasure of hosting my nephew and his girlfriend for dinner. He’s a big strapping young man that I LOVE to feed! Ha! I can’t stuff him with enough! Lol
And since we’ve done really good all week, tonight is my night to splurge a little. Now, what delectable morsel shall I stuff into my face tonight, you might ask? Well… Let me tell you… No wait – better yet, let me show you….
See?! See what I mean?! I have been gearing towards THAT bad boy all week!! Made making good choices easy! Ha!
But let’s not go overboard… I am actually making a really container-friendly dish for dinner, with added breads and stuff for guests. I can happily eat away our nutritious meal, in the right portion for me, without ever looking or feeling like I’m missing out. Smart, eh? ;o) I’ve also worked out the rest of my portions throughout the day so that I can sample from all the containers in tonight’s meal, making it very satisfying.
(That’s what’s so great about this meal plan! The foods I include are family AND guest friendly! And no one has to know that you’ve counted the whole thing out!!)
And then, for dessert… Well… We shouldn’t talk about it too much… This is a healthy living post, after all! Ha!
Insulin Resistance
I want to touch on this topic a little before we end off our 21 Days of awesomeness. This is a term that I happened upon a few years ago. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early 30s when I woke up one day and had a centre tire under my boobs – for no good reason at all! It’s not like I ordered it online and it suddenly arrived! Or I thought –“Hey! You know what’s missing in my life? A centre under-boob tire!”
I was so frustrated because we were exercising and trying to eat right, cutting out a lot of junk in our lives… And while my hubby was losing weight, I wake up with a tire. WTH?!
After my doctor did a slew of tests and announced his findings, I started doing some digging. Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot of resources that I could find specifically for PCOS, but I did happen upon an article about insulin resistance, and that it is one of the most commonly known precursors to Type 2 Diabetes. The article labeled it an ‘epidemic’, citing that our generation of fast food and fad diets has created this monster where we are starving ourselves of good eating, and just pushing more and more crap into our bodies, for which our inner workings just were not meant to handle.
The Insulin Resistance Diet Concept
This was a great book that I found, and I strongly recommend it for some light reading if you want to really add to your knowledge of what happens when we feed our bodies. The author is Cathy Wilson, and I recommend that you take a few minutes to read her little bio here.
You’ll be hooked after just a few lines. She is a power house of a woman, with lots of accolades behind her name, but the one thing I really love about this particular book is the way that she puts it out there in a way you can actually understand and relate to. Real life explanations, versus cryptic, scientific mumbo jumbo.
What Is Insulin Resistance?
Here’s how Cathy lays it out for you in the very first chapter:
“If you want to get technically correct, it’s a physiological condition where body cells don’t respond normally to insulin. It’s not that your body stops making insulin, but rather the insulin it does produce gets ignored or not enough is absorbed for use. This leads ultimately to hyperglycaemia or too much sugar in the blood stream. A chain reaction happens whereby the pancreas continues to make more insulin because of the break in this natural chain of events. If undetected, this will often lead to the development of Type II Diabetes.”
She goes on to say:
“Insulin resistance is the start of the body not dealing very well with sugar. Think of it as a signal something needs attention now. Your body uses glucose for energy.”
Basically, when you eat food, your blood sugar rises. Insulin is released into the blood in an attempt to get your cells to take in glucose for energy. Insulin resistance is what happens when the body’s cells stop responding properly, stop processing the glucose, which means that energy is not being produced properly, which leads to an excess build up of insulin in the blood. It really is a chain reaction.
Signs And Symptoms
According to Wikipedia, here are some of the signs and symptoms of insulin resistance:
- Brain fogginess and inability to focus
- High blood sugar
- Intestinal bloating – most intestinal gas is produced from carbohydrates in the diet, mostly those that humans cannot digest and absorb
- Sleepiness, especially after meals
- Weight gain, fat storage, difficulty losing weight – for most people, excess weight is from high fat storage; the fat in IR is generally stored in and around abdominal organs in both males and females; it is currently suspected that hormones produced in that fat are a precipitating cause of insulin resistance
- Increased blood triglyceride levels
- Increased blood pressure; many people with hypertension are either diabetic or pre-diabetic and have elevated insulin levels due to insulin resistance; one of insulin’s effects is to control arterial wall tension throughout the body
- Increased pro-inflammatory cytokines associated with cardiovascular disease
- Depression: due to the deranged metabolism resulting from insulin resistance, psychological effects, including depression, are not uncommon
- Acanthosis nigricans
- Increased hunger
For me, one of the triggers, and how I found the article that mentioned it to begin with, was that I started to develop (very quickly!) a whole series of skin tags around my neck and chest area. It was almost literally overnight, I felt.
But Cathy’s book on the Insulin Resistant Diet really helped me to understand the importance for increased proteins, decreased or outright removal of processed sugars and a good overall balance. And, let me tell you, after just a few months on her recommendations, all of those new skin tags had disappeared on their own. I found my plumbing was working better, I had more energy, and I just felt an overall benefit to my health. I owe a lot to that book.
Insulin Resistance And The 21 Day Fix
Well, here’s the good thing… (The GREAT thing, really)… The 21 Day Fix is all about the removal of refined sugars, processed foods… Just the overall concept of getting back to nature… What our bodies were intended to do.
And for someone like me, with PCOS, and a weight issue that I’ve yo-yo’d with my whole life, this has been my God-send. Finally, a system that allows me to use common sense and every day techniques to live better, control the lurking insulin resistance issue that I could see in myself, and which will ultimately help me to ward off a whole slew of other health issues.
Buy the book. It’s worth every penny. Read it. Then read it again in 6 months after you’ve been eating well. Your perspectives will change with time, and your health will improve. You’ll see things in yourself, people around you, your foods that really help to focus your energies.
From her first chapter…
“My Thoughts…
The function of insulin is a focal fact in your great long-term health. Insulin resistance is a serious condition that needs to be understood and prevented. If it’s already a reality for you, then it’s critical measures are taken to get control of the situation so your health isn’t in jeopardy. After all, it’s the most important asset you own.”
Refer to the 21 Day Fix Meal Plan for a complete outline of today’s food!
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