Help me, I'm insulin-resistant

Cow-food isn’t protein-rich, unless your idea of cow-food includes beans. Given the reputation cow emissions already have, I don’t think frijoles are such a good idea for the moos…

If it’s “protein-rich”, it should include lots of meat, fish and beans. Low-carbs: careful with potatoes, bread, rice and pasta. Beans include carbs as well as proteins, specially when they’re in the form of tacos, burritos and similar inventions.

I don’t know if you live with other people… here are some easy fish recipes; the first one isn’t good for a single person, the rest are. I usually give fish recipes because here in Spain we eat fish as a main dish about 3-4 times a week and in other places it’s more unusual; whenever I’ve lived abroad I’ve been teaching people to cook fish left and right, which I always find kind of funny since to me it’s such a basic staple.

Lazy Salmon: you need a spine-less salmon. No remark on the salmon’s moral strength, it simply should have been cleaned and the spine taken out, leaving the two halves still connected (“like a book”). An oven pan large enough to fit the salmon. Some cooking oil (I use olive, but corn or sunfolwer are also ok) - if I catch you using butter I’ll buy a little black book just so I can write your name in it!
Empty the oven except for a central tray; set it at top temperature; while it heats, pour a little bit of oil into the oven pan, salt the inside of the salmon very slightly (less salt than you think you’d need), close the salmon and place it in the pan. When the oven is hot, lower the temperature to whichever its manual says you should use for chicken (Spanish ovens don’t list temperature, they have settings by numbers) and place the oven pan inside. With the fish, of course :wink: After about half an hour (may be more if the fish was big), the kitchen will start smelling like cooked salmon. Open the oven and open the fish to see whether it’s really cooked: it should all be light pink; pay special attention to the line where the two halves meet. If there’s a bit of dark there, it’s still raw.
When it’s done, just serve. It can be eaten with no sauce or with any fish-appropiate sauce. Squeezing a bit of lemon on it is also good.

Note that very little oil should be used: its purpose is to keep the fish from sticking to the pan, not to let it swim. Dead fishes don’t need to swim.
Notsolazy salmon: after salting the salmon, place peeled shrimp inside. You can also put some slices of lemon on top of the salmon, or squeeze a lemon on it before putting it in the oven.

Salmon for one: stick one unsalted slice of salmon in microwave. Nuke. Add salt (may also add herbs or lemon juice or whatever) after it’s cooked. Works for white fish sold in slices, too, or for flat fishes.

Fried flat fishes: use oil, not butter. Salt the fishes slightly. Place flour on a dish; flour each side of the fishes lightly but throughly. Fry (oil should be very hot, not very deep), turning them over at least once. To make sure they’re fried, stick a fork at the spine and look at the meat: it should be white-white, no off-white or transparentish-white.

According to BMI charts, I should be at 20lb less than the point where my periods disappear, so I worry more about elasticity, strength and “solidity”. Just sayin’.

BMI charts are good as a general guide, but aren’t particularly accurate on an individual basis - when I was a size 8 (US size 6), I weighed over 170lbs. Most of that was muscle as I was an athelete at the time, but my BMI was firmly in the ‘overweight’ range. I’m a heavyweight, regardless of my size. Right now, I’m in the very definitely obese section, which I am, but most people (including healthcare professionals) guess my weight at a good 50lbs less than it is and my BMI lower than it is. So I don’t have much faith in BMI charts generally! Trust your own instincts and do what makes you feel better as what works for the majority of people may not have the slightest effect on you.

I’m now IR due to an endocrinology issue that I’m trying to deal with. A low GI diet gives me much more energy than I had before, and is pretty easy to get to grips with. Have a look on Google to find some diet sheets but the basics are easy to remember: No sugar, empty out all the sugar from your house and look for hidden sugar in pre-prepared foods; go easy on fruit, which you’d think was a healthy food but is pretty high GI; only eat bread with ‘bits’ in as grains are more important than the colour of the bread itself; basmati rice is ok, long grain is not; wholemeal pasta cooked al dente is ok occasionally but avoid white carbs like regular pasta where possible; beware breakfast cereals as they’re usually high GI and have high hidden sugar, and exchange for No Sugar wholewheat cereals; new potatoes cooked and eaten in their skins are ok, anything else is not; sweet potatoes are lower GI than regular potatoes and can be cooked in the same way most of the time; green veggies are your friends, root veggies are not. The main thing to remember is that you want foods that are difficult for your gut to disgest, as it’ll take longer and keep your blood sugar level. Food with bits in is good! Oatmeal is verrrrrrrrry good as long as it’s not ‘quick’ microwave oatmeal. Fruit juice is verrrrry bad as it’s easy to digest and packed with fructose.

Eat something small before exercising to prevent your blood sugar crashing, I’ve passed out a couple of times because of that and I’m not even high IR. I found some ‘funsize’ sugar-free museli bars and share one of them with hubby, so get one bite of sugar-free museli. It stops me getting the shakes or dizzy and enables me to exercise longer and in more comfort.

I had ulcers I didn’t even know about until I had an endoscopy! Did you get a picture of yours? My biggest one looked like an angry planet.

Vitamin B12 (Riboflavin) is supposed to be good for mopping up extra glucose. I’ve only just found that out and have been on supplements for a week, so can’t report on whether that’s true or not. Metformin (Glucophage) works for many people. It made me feel like an 80 year old woman and gives some people gastric problems, so might not be an idea until your ulcer’s sorted out. A teaspoon of cinnamon per day is also supposed to be good for IR but didn’t seem to make a difference for me. I’m still including cinnamon in a lot of my diet, though. Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine are also supposed to be effective (I’ve looked into everything!) but are out of my price range. Might be something you can consider, though, and I’d always rather try alternatives to medication if possible. Tai Chi definitely helped me keep my energy levels up and I felt a lot better in terms of IR, but unfortunately Tai Chi’s a migrane trigger for me so I had to give it up.

Take your lunch to work as grabbing a sandwich is no good. Eat small amounts and often - I take a box with veggies and tuna or wholewheat pasta salad in, and try to eat half at 11am and again at 2pm if I can fit it in with work. Try to go for a quick walk at lunchtime to give your system a small boost. Walking is very beneficial to people with IR or diabetes II so try to fit it into your lifestyle on a daily basis if possible. I walk to meetings around town for work rather than take a cab, I walk at lunchtime, and I walk my doggies in the evenings. Although they’re ugly, a pair of Crocs make walking soooo much more comfortable: http://www.crocs.com/home.jsp

And lastly, don’t panic! IR is easily managed as long as you’re dedicated to making some lifestyle changes. It only takes a week or two to develop new habits and then it’s pain free from there on. Enjoy a healthier diet and feel smug about the amount of exercising you’re getting compared to other people.

Sugar-free choc chip cookies as an occasional(!) treat:
http://store.drsoda.com/pefasufrco.html