Since being diagnosed with Diabetes type 2, I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to figure out what I FEEL like eating...what I CAN eat and what I SHOULD NOT eat. My god, I never use to think so much about food this way. I became very discouraged about eating food in general over the last few months because I've basically felt extremely nauseated since April. The great news is that my weight has continued to go down instead of UP but the bad news is, its not going down fast enough to get rid of this frustrating disease.
I went to my doctor yesterday because I've felt the problem with the nausea is the metformin that he has me taking. I've done enough reading and spoken to quite a few people inside of a diabetes forum to know that metformin has side affects that can be dangerous to some people. Since I've always been hypersensitive to medications, the culprit in my book was the metformin. The downside is that now I'm only taking glipizide and my sugar is staying high which if it stays high for too long, the high sugar levels will begin to cause organ damage...can cause me to become blind and I don't even want to think about the other issues such as kidney disease. But next week, my doctor is going to try and come up with some other medication which sort of reminds me of back in 1994 when I became ill in Germany and no one could figure out why! Instead, they filled me full of medication which caused my sysem to become toxic. So I can't tell you how hard I'm trying to get this damned weight off to get rid of this diabetes situation! I had to do something about this food situation immediately. I haven't felt much like eating but people with diabetes are suppose to eat three meals a day and for me...that's a near impossibility just because I only eat when I feel hungry. I've never been a person who sits around all day thinking about food....or eating constantly. I am not even a snacker which makes it even harder for me because diabetics should snack in between their meals.
I went to several websites and couldn't find any real salads that I liked or had any desire to try. I did, however, see a photo of what's called "Mediterranean Chicken Salad". It looked good until I read the ingredients. So, I decided to create my own salad!
I call it: Balsamic Vinaigrette Chicken Salad
(I snapped a photo of the salad I made which is enough for four people. Since my husband doesn't eat salad, I can cover this plate after eating a bowl and will have three more "salad meals" for the next couple of days.)
Ingredients are enough for 4 people:
1 cup diced cooked chicken; 12 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half; 1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into small pieces; 1 finely chopped green onion; 1 small head of lettuce; 1 cup of baby spinech leaves; 1/2 cup almonds; 1/2 yellow pepper finely chopped; 1 small granny smith apple chopped in small pieces.
Procedure:
In a medium sized bowl, add cucumbers, yellow pepper, chopped green onion, almonds, chopped lettuce, apple, tomatoes, chicken, spinach leaves. Mix well. You can top with feta cheese or parsley.
Tips:
I purchased a small package of chicken thighs and baked in the oven at 450 degrees until cooked. I drained the juices after the chicken was well cooked and then I allowed the chicken to cool and then removed the skin. ( I added some celery seasoning and lightly spinkled the chicken with pepper before cooking. )
Once the chicken was cooled, I then diced the chicken meat and mixed into the salad in a medium sized bowl. I then added Balsamic Vinaigrette (approx. 1 tablespoon) and topped the salad with chicken and almonds.
THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS and very filling! The time it took me to mix the salad together was approx. 30 minutes. Cooking time was approx. 2 hours for the chicken. But to save time for the next salad, you can always cook a few more pieces of chicken....refrigerate...and then you'll already have chicken for your next salad. This salad was a complete meal for me. It gave me healthy colors as well as protein.
I use "NEWMAN'S OWN Balsamic Vinaigrette brand because it has only 3g of total carbs; 9g of total fat and only 1g of sugar. There are zero grams of cholesterol and the total calories are only 90!
This is a very healthy salad! The sugar grams will be slightly increased from the granny smith apple but you can always measure the total pieces of apple you want in your salad to keep the sugar grams low. I found this to be very enjoyable and I drank decaffinated, unsweetened Luzianne tea with lemon and I was still full several hours later!
Now you can do some other things to reve it up and color it up! You can add some black beans! Red, green AND yellow peppers (if you can afford all three! *grin*) or you can even add some spanish corn (corn with red peppers) if you like to eat corn cold. If you are NOT diabetic, you can even add some cooked noodles mixed with some lite mayo but if you ARE diabetic and you want to add some cooked noodles...mix it with a little bit of yogurt. The main thing is that you can add or change some of your ingredients so long as you remember to keep the carbs and sugar grams low!
Bon appetit!
Author: Dee Gerrish
