I'm a huge fan of Fajitas!

The only thing is I can't eat tortillas at this point on my diet. So I went out and looked over some recipes and found one that I modified from Hungry Girl. Here it is:

Some other important stuff...

I’m a huge fan of tea and water.  Right now I’m drinking at least 1.5 liters of water a day. This is important to help keep flushing out my kidneys. This is something my body needs extra because of the diabetes. I never thought I'd be diabetic. I believe my diabetes came to be because of hormonal imbalances that ran unchecked for years. Just about everything that is affecting me physically can be found to be connected to these imbalanced hormones.

The other thing I want to mention is about exercise. I live in a place that temperatures reach up over 110 degrees over the summer.  Anything over 85 degrees causes me to retreat into my house and not come out until fall unless I absolutely have to. So going for a walk here is very difficult. Mostly I find my exercise through doing little things around the house the gym or if I’m lucky and its nice out I’ll go for a walk where there is shade.  I have a handy little machine called a Wii that I use occasionally to help me keep moving.  That’s all I do for exercise at this point. I’m going to mention sleep here because it’s very important to healing one’s body. Make sure you are getting enough sleep and that if you snore that you get checked out for sleep apnea because sleep apnea can kill you.  Scary right? 

I"m not going to pull any punches in this blog. I"m also making it totally public. I"m not doing this for money or fame or exposure. I've just found as I've gotten older that its better to be completely honest and forthright than to hide behind fears and expectations. I'll leave all the judgement to something greater than me and just focus on what I think is important which is being open and out there and no mater what anyone else says to be true to my feelings on any given subject. 

Welcome to my kitchen!

What started me doing a kitchen blog is my exploration into the world of food. That sounds so cliché but it's true! I'm 40 years old and for most of my life I've cooked like a single person. Eating out of boxes, microwaves and fast foods is what made up my everyday eating habits. What little training I had was when I was a kid and teenager and not because my mom didn’t try. I just wasn’t into cooking all that much. My focus was on trying to figure out who I was where I was going and what I wanted.  Well that was half a life time ago and here I am 40 years old and having a love affair with food. I’m what people call a foodie. I think that food should taste good and to share food is a celebration of life. 

My main focus about food these days have been all the health benefits I can gain from it. A couple years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes 2. I didn’t do much to change my eating habits and that combined with the medications the doctors put me on pushed my weight up over 330lbs. That’s a lot of weight to put on my little 5’4” frame of bones. As you might suspect, I found myself very unhealthy, in pain, and sick a lot. I felt lost and unable to change anything about my body and I was sinking into despair. But I’m a stubborn woman and I dug in my heels and said NO MORE! So I started reviewing my medications and what I was eating. I checked in with friends and family members to see what they were doing to lose weight or get healthy and then I made some personal choices to change. I wanted to find a diet that would work for me. I didn’t want to be hungry and I didn’t want to hate food. Food to me is a interconnection with others. A celebration a reason to be social it was a way to communicate with higher powers a way to enjoy life. So my drive is to not give those things up while committing to a healthier me. After all I want to live life as fully as I can while enjoying life. What would life be if I couldn’t enjoy it? 

Knowing that I had to find something to improve my life I started reviewing diets and how they made me feel about eating and food. For a while there I thought I’d try to go back on the Atkins diet or the South Beach diet but neither of those had worked for me in the past. They didn’t work because I found myself craving things and needing things that I was unable to get. I thought about trying the HGC diet and I looked into maybe getting surgery. I thought about going back on weight watchers too. Last year I was listening to NPR and heard an interview with a French Doctor. He spoke about a diet plan that he had put together and worked on for the last 20 or so years. He was bringing it to the USA and wanted to tell people about it. From time to time I kept hearing about it and then one of my friends went on it. She gave me information and shared about another of her friends who was doing it and I decided that this diet was for me. For one thing I craved protein. It’s been a constant in my life for the last 10 years or so. I don’t really ever crave sweets or sugars. Very occasionally I find I want some fruit or tortilla chips or potatoes or fresh bread but for the most part I d say my cravings ran toward meat.  This craving has a lot to do why I chose Dr. Dukan’s Diet. It’s a low fat high protein low carb diet. It’s not difficult to follow and I don’t feel like I’m denying myself very much. I’m also finding a joy in trying new recipes. Cooking has become more of an adventure and I’m really interested in learning more about food.

So on with the adventure!