Day 34

I had to look up malted barley. After making a most excellent vegetable soup from nutritious Farmers' Market produce, I ate a bowl with some yummy dark, chewy bread and butter. Then I ate more bread and butter, and more, and more.... This happened last night. It's like night and day, the difference between my eating habits during the day and during the evening. And what happened to my meditation plans?

So I finally stopped eating (the bread was all gone), grabbed my mandala book and crayons, and put in a CD on changing behavior. The speaker said pick a behavior you want to change, and identify what keeps you from doing that. I want to stop eating when I have had enough. One of the things that keeps me from doing that is having tempting food around. If the bread and butter is sitting right in front of me, it is so easy to keep breaking off chunks.

So I looked up malted barley, the second ingredient in this bread, and found that the process of malting breaks down grains into simple sugars. Something like that. This bread seems to be a trigger for me! At least when I eat it at night. During the day, I can make a sandwich with it and be fine. Interesting observation -- it makes a difference what type of food I eat at different times of the day. No one but an emotional (over)eater would get this!!

The good news is, my blood sugar was 103 before bed, and 93 at 4:30am. That is so awesome for a diabetic!! (and did I mention the freshly toasted pumpkin seeds I also ate?) One more thing before I bore anyone to death -- breakfast is so important!! Eating late makes me full in the morning so I don't eat until late, and my body's food balance gets out of whack. This morning I ate oatmeal and peanut butter. I bet I won't have a problem with eating too much tonight.