One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #7 of 7.*
Carol has diabetes. She is 48 years old, the mother of two and a successful Washington litigator. She does not know what to eat at the dinner she must attend tonight.
She eats out ten times weekly, usually orders chicken Caesar salad, and snacks on cheese, chocolate and energy bars. She often eats the last of her Taco Bell in the front seat of her car before going in for the night.
I tell her that she can beat insulin resistance, which is causing her out of control diabetes. But she has to treat her disease like her best client–conscientiously.
She is to avoid red and processed meat for 12 weeks: the heme iron increases diabetes risk. Ditto, any food with the words High Fructose or Enriched Flour or Sugar or Rice or Corn Syrup on the package.
Tonight, like every night out, she should have two dinner salads with good vinaigrette over 20 minutes with good fish or lean poultry, and drink hot cinnamon tea afterwards. She should pack almonds, high protein cereal, tea bags and string cheese when she travels.
Carol liked knowing what to eat, and practiced it, a lot, with coaching. She now teaches water aerobics in Virginia.
*adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.