Adult onset diabetes has afflicted several members of my family, most notably my father. He was diagnosed with diabetes in his early 60’s, an age that I am rapidly approaching. If I wish to avoid his fate, I recently realized that I need to change my eating habits. Let me rephrase that: I have been fully aware that I need to make changes to my eating habits for a long time. What I finally realized is that if I don’t start making changes now, I will eventually have to make these changes when I eventually become diabetic.
I recently had my blood sugar level checked by my primary care physician. Even though I hadn’t made many changes to my diet yet, I was still not pre-diabetic. The doc thinks that spending spring, summer and fall bicycling has kept my blood sugar in the normal range.
But that is not good enough. I need to completely change the way I approach food. But making wholesale changes to my eating regimen all at once would be self-defeating. Instead, the first change I have made is to drastically reduce the amount of soda I drink. Notice I said reduce. I have tried to quit soda completely in the past, and failed every single time. So I allow myself to have 6-7 ounces of Pepsi a week. That way I don’t feel deprived. There are 41 grams of sugar in one Pepsi, and I was drinking two a day. So I’ve gone from 574 grams of sugar a week to just 18-21 grams by doing this one small change. To put that in an even more stark perspective, that is the difference between consuming 2 pounds vs. 65 pounds of sugar in a single year!
I am now slowly reducing my sugar intake in other ways. I no longer have a sugary dessert every evening. Instead, if I must have dessert I save it for the weekend and only eat it after dinner. While the effects to my waistline haven’t made themselves apparent so far, I know if I continue to change my nutrition plan to a more healthful one, the changes will eventually make themselves known. Especially once bicycling season starts.
