Rabbit Food

This is my sixth month of writing this blog. Weighing in weekly to mull over my life as a person who has diabetes and will have it, I presume, until I die, I've written on all kinds of emotional and physical issues, on traveling nightmares and triumphs, on loved ones, on what works for me and what doesn't, and when all else fails, what inspires me to keep loving my life and moving forward anyway. So I'm going to take a risk today and write on a topic that -- as important as it is -- most of us agree is not something we would ordinarily talk about in polite society: the trip we all make (or want to make) to the bathroom.

Diabetics who want to manage their condition think a lot about what and how much we put into our mouths. We compute how long it has been since we ate with the rigor of a tech whiz. We check our blood glucose level before we eat and even when we're thinking about eating. Just yesterday, I drove away from the Baskin Robbins store without going in because I checked my BG after I parked and realized that, while I was low enough to have a scoop of ice cream at 4 pm, it would prevent me from having dinner until 7 and I didn't want to wait that long. Many of  us have the food thing down to a science, whether we're happy about it or not.

On the other hand, unfortunately, few of us understand very much about what happens after we digest our food. And it's just as crucial as the eating part.

We really should be more in tune. Doctors, nurse educators, dietitians, and commercials on television present a fair amount of hype on "dietary fiber," but it goes over our heads like jets on their way to somewhere we're not going. And the results are both painful and predictable.

This is peculiar when you consider that we start learning about bowel movements when we're still in diapers and somebody's trying to teach us that there are alternatives to pooping in our pants. Maybe that's part of the problem. We learn to be ashamed of the presence of our poop, so we pretend it's non-existent or at least will take care of itself. The difficulty -- and it can definitely become one -- is that neither of those ideas is true.

It's crucial to our health to move our bowels everyday. And in order to do that adequately, we need to eat enough fiber and drink enough water and, if we do both of these daily, we will not be as likely to need Metamucil or stool softeners or laxatives or any of the other products they sell us to take the place of what our body needs and isn't getting. Whole grains and beans and oatmeal are full of fiber. Apple skins, nuts, and berries are great (and berries are loaded with anti-oxidents, too, to clean your blood). Potato skins and bran cereal or muffins are good sources of fiber. And vegetables that crunch carry a veritable motherload of nutrients with fiber to spare.

Some of us are routinely forcing down stuff we hate because we haven't made it a habit to make sure our daily diets are full of fiber-rich foods and an adequate intake of water. It doesn't have to be that way. How do I know if I'm getting enough? My poop tells me. If I get enough fiber and water, my bowel movements are soft enough to pass easily, big enough to ensure I'm getting rid of whatever needs to leave my body, and regular enough that my abdomen isn't complaining in one way or the other. When any one of those indicators are sending up a flag, I know immediately that I'm not giving my body what it needs to do better.

How much is enough? The Mayo Clinic says an average woman needs at least 9 cups (2.2 liters) of water or water-based beverages daily, while an average man needs at least 4 cups more (for a total of 3 liters). That's daily. Every day. Diet soda isn't real food and is often loaded with toxic chemicals in the name of "sweeteners." Any drink with sugar or fruit juice in it spikes my blood glucose like I'm trying to go into a coma. So I enjoy a couple of cups of coffee every day, an occasional glass of unsweetened tea or diet soda, and I belt all the rest of the liquid I need as water -- with or without lemon (depending on where I get it).

As for the fiber, I eat all the things on the fiber list above, but my mainstay is dinner salads. Like many people, I used to think salad was iceberg lettuce on a plate with a few tired croutons. Blech! Now, I'm so hooked on dinner salads of my own making, I voluntarily opt for them at least three days a week and if three days go by without one, I start craving one like crazy.

The trick is to load it -- and I do mean load it -- with all my favorite flavors. I came up with my "recipe" a couple of years ago and I did, I will admit, take into consideration what is low in carbohydrates because, by now, I know pineapple is high in grams of carb and berries are not and if I keep the salad low in grams of carb, I can eat more of it and enjoy a dessert afterward, as well.

The salad I ate for lunch today before sitting down to write this was 2 cups of Dole Classic Romaine salad mix (with carrot and red cabbage), half a small ripe avocado chunked, 1/4 of a small Gala apple (with peel) in small chunks, 1 T of chopped walnuts, a little shredded sharp cheddar cheese, a small scoop of chicken salad, and just enough raspberry walnut vinaigrette salad dressing to dampen the lettuce. In one dish, I got three kinds of protein, several vegetables, fruit, nuts, dairy, about a ton of nutrients, and a body-satisfying portion of fiber. It tasted way yummier than Metamucil and, as I happily munched my pecan coconut cookie with my after-lunch cup of coffee, I knew that when I take care of my body, it takes care of me.