Low Glycemic Index Eating... is it the secret to longevity?

Yesterday my mom said to me, "Susie, how long do I have to eat lettuce? I don't know if I can take it every day."

I told her that I will do everything that I can to make the food interesting. Every day I create new recipes and try them out on my family. So far, everyone is still alive, no casualties!

I continued on to tell her that I am also studying about Low Glycemic Indexed foods and I had created a recipe to make a low glycemic egg noodle with fenugreek seed powder.

What is Low Glycemic Index?

"GI is a ranking assigned to carbohydrates according to their effect on the body's blood sugar levels. A low GI meal takes longer to digest and releases sugar into the bloodstream more slowly than a high GI meal. High GI foods include white bread, croissants and cornflakes, whereas granary bread, milk and most fruit and vegetables are all classed as low GI foods. " Excerpt taken from the following article - Scientists Discover Why A Low GI Meal Makes You Feel Full

Now that we know what Low and High GI foods are it will be easier to avoid those foods that are considered HIGH GI - "no bread, no pasta, no preservatives."

Let's face it, this diet is really hard to follow even when you have someone making all of your meals for you. I also know that when someone tells any of us "NO" our inner self says, "screw you!" and we say "YES!"

This rebel is the crazy inner voice that talks to us and convinces us that it's OK to eat those tiny little oyster crackers because they are so small. Rat turd is small too and you don't go for that now, do you? See the crazy logic with something being small and OK to eat? Both the processed crackers and the rat turd will both make you sick.

For years I've fought with my weight. I would do great for long stretches and then something would happen, like Christmas parties with lots of sweet treats and next thing I know all my cloths have shrunk at the same time and I'm 35 pounds heavier. How did this happen?

I'll tell you how... I got bored with lettuce. I told myself NO and my rebel inner voice who is afraid of change and just wants life to stay the way it is, got me to eat the tiny little gingerbread cookies. Once I started, it was like a starving animal ravaging food out of a dumpster, I couldn't stop. I lost my self control. This was my cycle my entire life, up and down on a roller coaster.

It was always a bummer to not feel comfortable in my own skin, I'd often say to myself, "Here we go again, back to the drawing bored." With a renewed attitude based on my belief that I will never fail as long as I don't quit, I put on my work out cloths, tied on my running shoes and got to work.

My mom suffers from the same cycle. Only now she's got lots of health issues because of her poor eating habits for the last 70 years. This is my mom's big fear and why she asked me about the lettuce and why I have been trying to figure out a way to still say YES to ourselves with healthy choices.

I find when I am more permissive with myself, I have more control. It is my conscious self making the decision to eat something or not to eat something. I also tend to exercise more when I'm eating low GI foods, I feel healthier and lighter.

So, with this thought in mind I have been working to create low gi treats for my mom and me.

Mom's 100% Italian and loves her pasta. It's probably the thing that made her health so bad over all those years. We didn't have much money. She never cooked fresh vegetables. I thought canned corn was awesome, so did my siblings. She made pasta a lot, it was cheap.

I did make a good egg noodle pasta last night. It was fabulous. My mom had some of my home made chicken soup with my home made egg noodles.

Here are the results:

Ma's blood sugar was 96 at 6p (before dinner), an hour after dinner it was 97, 2 hours after dinner it was 134, this morning it was 114.

What do these numbers mean?

The glucose test 2 hours after a meal - 139 and below is a normal reading, Ma was 134 (a high normal!) after eating the cup of egg noodles.

Morning fasting glucose test was 114 - normal is 99 and below.

I think I've figured out how to make mom foods that she loves so that I can keep her meals interesting and help her to control her blood sugar.