However I am not thrilled that as a direct result of my body healing inside and now absorbing calories and nutrients it had previously given me a "free pass" on, I gained weight (which is very common among people with celiac disease if they are not given proper counseling) and my body is now pre-diabetic. In addition, my cholesterol is now considered high.
So I asked my doctor for help in getting this all under control and corrected before it becomes problematic. She went to bat for me with our insurance company and secured services for me with a registered dietitian who is knowledgeable about celiac disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol. I met with the doctor and the dietitian this week and am armed with a notebook, a food log, and some specific targets for my daily nutritional composition.
I'm taking pictures of some of my meals to supplement the documentation of my food log in case we need to troubleshoot anything along the way. I don't want to get into a rut of if it's Monday, it must be chicken night - so maybe you all could offer suggestions for foods to try to change things up along the way.
So here we go.
Wednesday's lunch was at Sonny's BBQ. I ordered the Lunch Special which was sliced pork, plain baked potato, and a side garden salad with their fat free honey mustard dressing. I looked up calories, carbs, and protein before going. The dietitian told me that potatoes are not my friend so when I have one at a restaurant, cut it in half to have the right amount of carbs for the meal. My husband was with me so he ordered a side salad and a side of baked beans for his lunch since I was giving him half of my potato. Here's what else I learned - sauces will use up your carbs allotment in no time, so use them sparingly!
Wednesday evening dinner needed to be something quick because we attend Bible classes. I had not had time to go shopping during the day, so I had to use what we had in the house, plus make something that the family might eat as well. For dinner, I put a homemade BBQ sauce over some cooked ground beef I had in the freezer to make a pseudo-sloppy-Joe. Frozen broccoli florets in the steam bag filled out my plate. Again, the sauce added additional carbs to the meal besides those that were in the broccoli. I used a smaller plate and you can see that half is filled with vegetables.
Thursday was my younger son's 18th birthday, so I wanted to bake him a cake and make him dinner while he was at band rehearsal. I can't eat the cake because of the gluten, so no worries about having to figure out how to balance the calorie and carb-load that would bring. Dinner was grilled chicken cutlets (on the George Foreman grill, super easy and fast), boiled carrots, and the leftover steamed broccoli from Wednesday.
Friday night lights - yep, I spend many a Friday night at the local high school football stadium in support of my son's marching band (he's one of the drum majors), so that meant dinner had to be early and quick. So salad and some of the leftover BBQ ground beef from Wednesday made a good-enough dinner to get me out the door. I used Ken's Lite Honey Mustard dressing on the iceberg lettuce with grape tomatoes. Normally I get the romaine lettuce in the pre-torn bags but the iceberg was on sale and cheaper by the head. This tided me over until we got home at nearly 11 PM.
Saturdays are typically the one day a week that we go out for a meal as a family, but the younger boy's day was filled with volunteer work. So instead of going out, we ate at home. For lunch I made a chef's salad with iceberg lettuce, grape tomatoes, sliced ham, and honey mustard dressing. I added some sunflower seeds for crunch since no croutons are allowed!
Saturday evening dinner: baked chicken, Uncle Ben's Ready Rice, and broccoli florets. It might look plain, but it tasted delicious!
I have a couple of books checked out from the library with recipes and meal suggestions that I hope will offer some variety. But in the meanwhile, I'll keep working at this to improve my health.
