Cacao

 I eat a lot of cacao and cocoa compared to people but of course, never with a sweetener, made for the purpose of sweetening, by people.

Lately, I have been eating lots of Maxx bars and Rx bars and thinking about how I would ask them to change them, if they were to ask me for feedback.

The Maxx have little chocolate cuboid morsels that are SO GOOD! I would love to know the ingredients. It has to be cocoa and either egg white or coconut oil or both. So easy to figure out, I suppose, but I'm not so sure I can make them as good as they do.

Anyway, I was  thinking hold the egg whites, put in at least 50% more roasted almonds, and less or no dates. That is regarding the Chocolate, Sea Salt  Maxx. Regarding the Peanut Butter Maxx, I would try less dates and increase the peanut chunk size and portion.

The dates are fine and good but they remain to be chewed long after the choco is gone.

Well, I went and got what I need, and my first idea to try is cacao, chopped dried apricots, roasted almonds (really good ones, not mediocre ones) and coconut oil.

Gonna have a ball, I think!

I have had it with my lifetime of buying mediocre pecans, philberts, brazils, even cashews. And I never suspected I was buying mediocre almonds until after eating them from the store for quite some time, I got some from the food co-op, and they were amazingly superior. I made up my mind: I know where  I can get good nuts, and I refuse to ever buy lesser again, as long as my sources remain.

I really love cocoa milk. Any strength. Cocoa and cold milk. If I could push a button and not have diabetes any more, I would push it in a second but would I go back to having sugar in my cocoa? No. It won't happen. I like it best this way: cocoa and cold milk. Preferably fresh milk, not processed.

Salt?

 When I was young I salted most things. I couldn't stand oatmeal without salt. I salted the crap out of soup that my mom made. I salted my baked potato and butter. I salted my eggs. I salted most things one would normally salt.

Not so much the last 20 years or more. Now only one thing do I salt or add salt to, when cooking or eating: I salt a beef steak when I fry it. Everything else, like the popcorn my wife prepares, which she has to salt, I just really do not notice a difference any more. So I don't use it. Why eat  it if you don't notice the difference? So I don't. 

I don't notice a difference between salted and not salted butter. So I ask h e r to buy unsalted. But she always goes back to getting it salted.

I get my Iodide in the oligo-fructose multivitamin I take  each morning.

My brother for years had a thing against salt, which made him cough. He ended up with a thyroid problem for lack of iodide.

I have no medical or physical reason at all for avoiding salt. Just don't need it or want it except on my steak, which I have about once every 10 years. So far. Watch me start having it every week.

Millet Anew

 It has been a long time, if ever, since I prepared and ate millet the way I do rice - steamed till the water is gone, and the berries just ready to burst, no more, with no other grain or ingredient.  Ten years ago, I was mixing it with other grains and preparing it in a rice cooker, and calling that "grollet."

I have been eating steamed millet for a week or two now, plain, and I like it more than I ever did before.  Much more.  More than rice, depending on my mood and menu.

Breakfast Today

 One 1/2-lb carrot

1/2 C popcorn with lots of butter

1 lb  ricotta

1 Jonathan apple (we scored some good ones this year)

2 Bartlett pears

Glass of apple cider

Glass of milk

4 oz baked chicken 

New Lows

 June 2020, which marked my 4th anniversary since eating sugar for  the last time, I began for the first time recording my blood sugar test results.  I had  always thought  I was one of the few who were in good control but now I was realizing I could do better and should, and that in reality, I didn't even really know how well I was doing.  So I started testing frequently and recording it.  I would test right after each meal and again after things settled, and so forth, striving to keep even my spikes under 150 mg/dL.

I seemed to be doing very well in June, July not quite as good, and then August was a little disappointing.  But I kept at it, and achieved what I felt were mixed results in Sep-Oct.  I had wanted to have my A1C tested at the end of August but the pandemic indirectly discouraged me from going in.  I went in the third week of October, and the result was 6.3, 0.3 higher than my goal had been in June.  I had never been that low before.

Then winter, always the challenge and the killer, came.  Would this winter be different?  Would I be able for the first time to keep the control I enjoyed all summer?  It started out as a Yes on Thanksgiving day.  After the festive feast, I was 117 or something.  I felt I came off victor.  Trouble was, I had not learned yet about how the food in you can keep on giving, and the sugar can climb after you thought it was stable.  

So a little later, not having eaten anything, I spiked the first of many winter spikes through January.  This winter was no doubt better than most but I was still searching for my way to a perfect summer-like winter.

Third week of January, I went in for my A1C.  I expected it to be worse than 6.3 but I didn't care how much worse it would be, because it would have little relevance to how I was going to be, once I found the answers and could do as well all year as I had done in June.

Then on February 1, 2021, I had the worst spike of all.  Since June or before, I had not broken 300 mg/dL.  Now I was reading 383.

So I pulled out all the stops.  All the tricks from my bag.  Lined up all the guns.  I had achieved the ability to never again eat sugar, now I was ready to permanently institute my evening fast.  From then on, I would finish my eating for the day between 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm, even if it meant skipping supper or only having a light snack.  From then on, my sugar would be settled by bedtime, and I would not have to worry anymore about checking my sugar and meteing out a bed-time shot of fast-acting insulin to get me trajected (hopefully) through the night.  There would be many benefits.

My sugar would be lower and more stable during the night.  This could be huge for my A1C.  Imagine, night after night, suppose I was sleeping along for 7 hours at 102 mg/dL instead of 117 mg/dL, what effect that could have on my A1C.

So I started doing it along with all the other tricks I know.  It was easy.  I felt content evenings.  I was waking up with sugars like 105 mg/dL.  It was great.  Now I really really didn't care what my last A1C result would turn out to be.

The doctor's office just called.  5.8.

5.0, here we come.

Since the 383 spike a week ago, I have not really spiked at all.  I got up to 165 a couple of times is all - and that was right after meals.  My wake-up sugars were 110, 131, 105, 101, 122, 146, 130.  Which could be better, and hopefully will be, but as an entire week's record, at this stage, coming off many weeks of crazy spikes, ain't bad at all.  As a statistic, I count bad days.  Defined as days I broke through 180 mg/dL at least once.  Ain't had a bad day since last Monday, when I spiked at not only 383 mg/dL, but 240 mg/dL just hours before.

Just so you know, I normally would be using Lantus as well as humalog but it was keeping me from strenuous abilities during the day.  I needed a way to maintain at night that would not prevent me from charging up a big hill on my bicycle, lifting heavy logs, or participating in wrestling during the day.  So that's why, above, I speak of getting through the night some other way.  You should also know that over the past 6 months, I have put on more weight and muscle than I had done since when I was 19 years old, which was my former record.  So you need not suspect that I am just starving myself, or anything like that.  I am 6 ft tall and weigh 160 lb, whereas, through my 20s, 30s, 40s, I was 140 lb.  In my 50s, I was closer to 160 lb, at least the late 50s, when I started working out and wrestling again.

An unrelated note, that I may not have mentioned, so I will just tack it on here - a lot of know-it-all people who think they can advise me on everything diabetes because they read an article or two, or because their grampa had diabetes, have insisted to me that I have type II diabetes.  Well, my doctor confirmed I am type I.  He also confirmed something I have come to realize - it isn't always a clear and definite case of type I or II.

Teeccino

I might as well tell you about a beverage I have really been enjoying.  My base is fresh whole cow's milk, so if you only have junk from the store, and you try this, your results may vary.

I mix pure cocoa powder into just  a little bit of milk till I have a smooth paste, then add the rest of the milk and finish mixing but also add like I dunno maybe a 1/4 ts of Teeccino brand Hazelnut Medium Roast granules and let them start working.

This is all done cold.

Then you drink it.  It's really good.

You don't worry about the grounds of Teeccino.  You just chew em and enjoy em because unlike coffee grounds or any other kind of whatever, they are tender and delicious.

The unadulterated milk and the Teeccino combine to sweeten the cocoa to the perfect degree.

I do a similar thing with herbal teas in general, usually with tea bags, where I just let them work cold, and I often do it with milk but other times water.  Peppermint tea in cold milk may be my favorite of those.

18L20

For breakfast today, I cooked down some baby kale (about 2 C) with a little butter and onion in a small fry pan we use to scramble eggs, added a little cayenne, scrambled in 2 eggs, and served mixed with plain sesame seeds roasted in the same pan.

My son had thinned his garden kale and saved what he pulled.  I had separated the above-ground portions from the roots and dirt clods and grit.

The kale didn't actually 'cook down' but remained gnuarley and snarly (kept its height and springiness), and when I scrambled in the eggs, they disappeared!  They appeared largely to be gone but I found that the mess required longer cooking than I normally would observe, because raw egg kept forming in the pan.

Anyway, that was after the customary raw carrot, and with a nice drink of water.  Quite different and quite good.

I am now pretty much lock stock and barrel about not eating carbs other than the carrot and seeds before Noon.  Sugar just jumps otherwise.  But in the pm, I usually get away with eating all the fruit and grain and what not I want.

By the way, I have never had A1C results < 6.5 or so; I am shooting now to break the 6.0 floor barrier.  Have actively and carefully controlled my sugar this past month more than ever before, and had a pretty easy time of it.  I have been getting about 3-5 undesirable level spikes per week, with a maximum of 229.  Undesirable level is defined as > 150.  I test pronto, any time I am not absolutely certain it's good, and record the number in a spreadsheet.  So the spreadsheet does not show test results according to a consistent schedule but rather shows the general times during the day and the results of all 'peaks.'  My average peak for June was 122; for July, it is running 135 right now.  But this says nothing about the fact that I am testing pronto like never before and correcting quickly the climbing levels that do occur, and it says nothing about what my average level is, only the average peak (sometimes when I am not certain, and I test, it can be quite low, and that is why the average "peak" is so low).