Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Something to Hummus about!

When I was pregnant with my children – all three of them- I had gestational diabetes. For the first one it was diet controlled, the second it was needles and needles of insulin – seven times a day-, and the third it was diet controlled again. What I’ve found though is that I still have issues with maintaining my blood sugar. If I forget to eat, or eat the wrong combination of proteins and carbs I will have a hypoglycemic episode then all hell breaks loose and I will eat everything in site to quell the shakes, and it is intense. I feel like I look like a junkie out of control. It is the most awful feeling.

Thankfully, since this disorder has become a lifestyle, the dips happen infrequently, only 3-4 times a year, and I live day to day without having to really think about it any more. But most often, when I think about protein in my diet, the options are always so fatty which makes a low fat diet impossible. Nuts are fatty too, but it’s the good fatty stuff so I allow myself a handful once in a while. Meat however, is crucial to my diet. We balance chicken, lean pork and lean beef almost evenly and then we will occasionally substitute in fish (love it) and tofu (learned thru trial and error to make it correctly and now love it too!). Cottage cheese is relatively low fat and high in protein as is yogurt. And then legumes, like chickpeas, today's feature protein!