I was having tuna on leaf lettuce and then I sprinkled it heavy with ginger and garlic.  Winner!

Today I had a fish sandwich but I skipped the lettuce and fat spread.  All I put on the bread was pink wild-caught salmon from a can and a ton of black olives from a can.  NUM!

Sandwich Truck with a Lift Kit

I was complaining how well cranberries stick to peanut butter so that when making a butter, peanut butter and cranberry (open face) sandwich, you can't very well move them around and arrange them after they land on there, without pulling up divots and leaving bare patches of bread.  I finished making one and tried to pick it up.  With a laugh, as often happens, it leapt from my hands onto a dirty floor, landing face down, of course.  Awwwww.  But wait - it was like huge glass tractor wheels keeping the whole thing perfectly clean, robustly intact, and up off the floor!  I could have played hockey with it!  All i had to do was pick it up and of course, nothing stuck to the frozen cranberries, and nothing stuck to the floor!

Mmmmmm, so good.

BLT

There are times when a chef happens upon a dish that does not only taste great, it tastes like it was meant to be - the bacon, tomato and lettuce sandwich is a good example of this.

I had such a dish just now.

Grollet, heavy on the millet, lighter on the wheat and barley, amaranth about the same, and instead of actual "wheat," kamut.  Contrary to the usual, include a dash of sesame seed.  As usual, soak and sprout one day before steaming in the rice cooker.  Right when it finishes steaming, put a glob of it into a bowl with milk and raisins.

Cake and Eat It Too - wait - "Cake"?

I enjoy all of the after effects from my eating well more than I ever enjoyed eating, and I enjoy eating well too.

Nothing New

I'm never hungry, eating the way I do.  One of the most telling and important indications of a person's diabetic tendency is hunger.  If you aren't hungry and do not have a tendency to overeat, it's a good sign.  Otherwise, better check your blood sugar.

I am not hungry because I get the insulin I need.  Artificially.  And of secondary yet very significant importance, I eat only high-value food.

Without insulin, 'super food only' would do me no good.  Insulin enables digestion, including that of sugars.  Without it, you have more than excess sugar that can't get digested, but also every other vitamin and nutrient.  Thus hunger.  Starvation is a better word for it. 

Before I understood it, and before I had enough insulin,  I ate till the needle pegged and then ate a lot more and then threw up every night.  The feeling of starvation never left, it was constant throughout every day.  For 8 years.

High blood sugar and the damage it does is only one side effect of "Sugar" Diabetes.  The general problem of the disease is seldom discussed.

Most people are Type II though, and I am pretty much Type I, I think.  My doctors were never interested in determining it for certain.  I don't know if it's exactly the same experience with hunger for Type II folks.  I expect it is though.  Type I is inadequate insulin, Type II is insulin resistance, so I would expect the effect to be similar, except that in the case of Type II, the person can reduce their resistance through exercise and diet.  A Type I person can exercise till the cows come home and eat perfectly and they will still starve and suffer sugar damage as much as if they had stayed home on the couch, to the degree that they are insulin deficient.

So based on just my experience, I am certain I am at least predominantly Type I.  Which makes sense because I never lived the life they say causes Type II.

The rare times that my sugar doesn't want to come down, I suspect are times when I am temporarily more Type II than usual, due to lack of exercise or whatever.  I take shot after shot after shot, and it does no good till I get back to normal.  Happens like once a year or whatever.

People notice that the body works overtime to accommodate less-than-perfect discipline, and not when they have had good discipline for a while.  When they've been disciplined and then suddenly fall off the wagon, they hit the road and the rocks a lot harder than when they have been less-than-perfect for a while, and do the same things.  Catches the system off-guard.  I notice it myself.

Milestone

I made a change a couple of weeks ago and have procrastinated posting it here.  I thought I better do it without delay now, in case it helps somebody.

I have practiced what I preach in this blog to varying degrees of strictness throughout my life.  Everybody who says "I will never eat ice cream again!" are going to have it again sometime, right?  So why not just be strict when you're strict, and have some ice cream sometimes, and then get strict again?

Well, I have been no different.

I have told myself stuff like, "Well, Buddy...I guess this is it.  This is how it's going to be from now on, I guess."  thinking that I was going to eat a certain ideal way from that moment till I die, and never have a sugar spike again.

But you know how it goes.  I have eaten lots of cake and ice cream since such moments.

But on the other hand, when I look at the advantages and disadvantages of perfect abstainance and having sugar that one time,  at least at the point where I am now, I am finding it easier to see that I really don't want to eat sugar ever again, if I can help it.

And as a 4-year-old, after my parents told me about it, I made up my mind I would never touch tobacco or alcohol.  Nothing would ever make me, and as it turned out, nothing would ever even tempt me.  I made a simple decision.  I was completely serious.  I never changed, I never wavered.

I wish they had explained a few other things to me at the time.  I could have included those as well.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I finally made up my mind in the same way as I did when I was 4 years old, that I will never eat sugar.

And knowing the protests and urgings and naggings I would receive regarding my decision, I said, "And I don't even need a reason."

And as an ammendment, I also included all the little mystery ingredients akin to sugar that one finds in packaged and commercially prepared foods.  For example, here is a short list of things I will never in my future put into my mouth:

Splenda
Every other sugar substitute, good and bad
High Fructose Corn Syrup (redundancy is allowed here)
MSG
GMO
Guar Gum
Locust Bean Gum
Mono and Diglycerides
Xanthan Gum
Dextrose
Carrageenan
Dough conditioners
Nitrates
Cheap oils

You get the idea.  I am free!

I am free of processed (mystery) food.  Sugar is obviously included because it is a processed food.

I do not consider processed honey (taken from the comb) worthy of including, nor pure white flour and pasta.  I'll still eat those.

Obviously, I would still be eating fruit, which I have always enjoyed far more than any man-made treat.

I explained all this to a friend.  His response was, "You have to eat sugar!"

I said to him Fine, I will grant you that I am an idiot, nevertheless explained how I didn't need to tell him why, but in all of ensuing eternity, I would not eat sugar, and I didn't need a reason - it just isn't happening.   He seemed to get the message.

Less than an hour later, he was trying to get me to eat a store-bought granola bar and he kept trying to get me to drink Gatorade.  Do you know how many teaspoons of sugar are in an individual sized bottle of Gatorade?  He did not seem to know.  I thought to myself, this must be among the 7 wonders of the world - how a person can hear and put on that they are conversing, without listening.