Ana's Journal We would like to welcome Ana who is diabetic and about to embark on a raw food diet -she will be sharing her experiences with you. Please remember this is Ana's personal choice of diet , as always please read our terms and conditions and visit a doctor before considering embarking on any major change of diet. If any of you would like us to pass on messages to Ana please email us at info@bigmatters.co.uk and we will forward your comments Thank you to Ana from Big Matters and all those who will be with you along the coming months.

November 2007

To eat raw or not to eat raw that is the question!

As a diabetic who is overweight I am always being told by health professionals and other interested parties that I should loose weight. I would love to lose weight but it is not as easy as it may seem. When you are constantly tired and your mind is sluggish from the moment you wake to the moment to fall asleep; you have no energy to plan and think about what you are eating. Often times my eating patterns are habitual purely for the reason it does not take any effort from me to think about what I am eating. It is not easy to find the balance between eating well and the few minutes in the day when I feel energised. To be honest food planning is the last thing on my mind at that moment!

Many of you I am sure will agree with me when I say I am tired of being tired and overweight. But what can we do about it?

Health professionals recommend that we eat a balanced diet, with plenty of fruit, vegetables and starchy carbohydrates. Diabetes UK, which can be found at www.diabetes.org.uk, suggests three regular meals a day. This I find is not possible when at work, the hours that I am able to eat is dictated by the work that I do and often because of the energy exerted in the morning I begin to feel sick, tired and shaky by lunch. At which point I do not want to eat but have to make myself, otherwise I would not be able to eat until I return home in the evening.

What can I do about it?

My choice is to explore a raw diet starting with juicing, and the benefits that I can gain from eating a higher percentage of my food raw rather than cooked. From the material that I have read about eating raw one of the main differences between juicing and cooked food is the speed essential nutrients are absorbed by our bodies. During cooking vegetables loose some of their life giving nutrients into the water they are being cooked in. What is left is absorbed by our bodies at different rates and this is dependent on what foods we eat together in one meal. As diabetics we are all aware how important it is for our food to be slowly absorbed by our bodies so that our blood glucose levels are kept in balance. The question is how do I replace one meal with a green juice safely and keep my glucose levels balanced? The answer to this is what I hope to bring to you in the next entry of this journal. See you next time.

September 2007

‘You are diabetic’ when the nurse told me this I wasn’t surprised or shocked. I really didn’t feel anything. My sister is diabetic and for years I have had little episodes of feeling weak, shaky and sleeping for ever increasing long periods during the day. I fully expected to be told this but what I learnt and how I reacted during my first year was a surprise.

I like to know things, why things happen and what if anything I can do to help myself. I have been diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic for a little over a year. The first thing I did was hit the books. It was scary! The illness’ I could get, the problems with sight, feet, loss of limbs etc and even reactions to the tablets sent me down the road of ignoring it. If I believe I don’t have it then maybe it will go away! After all being tired, dizzy and generally unwell had been my life for the past two years. I had grown accustomed to this life.

For the first six months this is how I chose to ‘deal’ with the news. As I look back now I was not ‘dealing with it’ at all. In fact, I was grieving. I was grieving the loss of my health and the loss of being able to eat what I wanted. As a chocoholic this was a huge loss.

The following six months was not much better. When we are first diagnosed we are encouraged to try and control our diabetes by diet alone. I was fortunate to have a Doctors surgery that supported my desire to know more about the illness and my choice to test my blood on a regular basis with a monitor. Some surgeries will try to discourage you from buying a monitor because the strips are costly. I found that by testing my blood sugars when I was feeling extremely tired or shaky helped me to recognise which foods in my diet caused which reactions. Not all the foods I ate and reacted too had obvious sugar in them. I found it very difficult to avoid these foods in particular, especially with being in a stressful work environment and not having any energy left to think about what I was eating. Habits are so hard to break!

A year on and I am now on Metformin. Time will tell whether they are helping or not. Currently I still need sleep during the day. When I explain to non-diabetics that this sleep is not like normal sleep they do not understand. I call it ‘the sleep of the dead’ because when I am asleep I do not hear anything, I don’t change positions, and I am not sure that I even dream. At first all I needed was a quick half an hour now I need at least three hours. When I wake I feel disorientated, my brain is sluggish and sometimes I feel sick and a little unsteady on my feet. It certainly is not restful!
It is time to take my control back. Words are so easy to say, but action however is harder. While experimenting with my diet I found that juicing and eating raw improved the way I felt after meals. I had more energy and didn’t react in the same way. Over the next few months I will share my experience of changing my diet to eating Raw and how this affects my mind and body.

Ana