Meal Planning

Photo by Leanna Myers on Unsplash

 

I really have to get my act together and start living that healthy lifestyle that I keep saying I want, but never actually manage to achieve long term. There's a couple of things that have prompted me to try again, one being a recent medical diagnosis that necessitates a healthy lifestyle for me, and the other is the need to prepare suitable food for my friend who has type 2 diabetes.

Following my own diagnosis of a problem with my liver I initially joined a Facebook group for people with the same condition but it proved to be a bad idea. At that time I didn't really have a clear idea of the changes I needed to make so ended up getting myself completely confused as everyone posting in the group had their own idea of what you were permitted to eat, which was really of no help to me. So  I've spent part of this morning reading through various websites (Diabetes UK, The Liver Trust, and  a couple of American medical websites), and now have a very clear idea of the way forward.

The best approach for me, recommended by every website I've read today, is the Mediterranean diet. I've done a 'version' of this before so know that I can easily adapt it to exclude the foods I am allergic to and still have a wide variety of foods to eat, but I will have to be much stricter with myself this time and do it properly. Coincidentally, it's also one of the meal plan approaches recommended by Diabetes UK, so that simplifies things! I'll probably count calories as well, just to start with anyway.

So I've been busy finding recipes, tweaking ingredients where necessary, and have started compiling a shopping list. I won't be doing much shopping until the kitchen is completed as there just isn't much space in the temporary kitchen set up to store much, but I will try some of the new-to-me recipes before then. Fortunately, quite a few of my favourite recipes/meals follow the principles of the Mediterranean diet, so I'm pleased about that. I also want to start batch cooking again once the kitchen is ready as that helps with the costs and just makes life easier. I'll report back with progress and hopefully some weight loss.