So for full disclosure reasons, this is a double thread:
It speaks both to nutrition and also to ‘religion’ to some degree.
Mostly (90%) to the first and only (10%) to the second, this time. For speed reasons, but to acknowledge that “he who leaves God out of the equation fails the exam before taking it.”
Starting here:
He who is not hungry eats nothing bad.
You could perhaps force someone to eat when they are not hungry, but they will fight it, and since fighting isn’t what we want to do exactly, rather stabilizing blood sugar to within healthful levels that technicality doesn’t matter.
So that becomes, “keep patient from being hungry, and he will not eat foods which are not unhealthful (i.e. ‘bad’.)
This is MUCH easier than thinking of the problem as an ‘internal chemistry experiment.’
It becomes, “what’s on the counter?”
Exactly what you already observed, “interestingly” enough.
You said, “I have to have meals prepared.” You were just a little too specific:
- You know you are willing to, so YOU can say you are the one that has to.
- “Meals” and “food” are not really different it’s just a question of respecting the ceremonies and customs and “general ideas of what a ‘meal’ is” that we’re saying (again, not a problem.)
- HelloFresh is among the best and easy approaches to doing exactly what you’re needing to do. I’ve vetted it enough that I can already show you recipes which are quite excellent.
- Meals should be thought of as ‘following a consistent budget.’ Let’s say “between $10–20 apiece” at most. It is *far* more than enough. [In other words, this does not and should not even represent yet another ‘painful financial stress’ — the type we see “everywhere.”]
- Time budget is small, but coordination cost is high if you are the one who will be doing it.
That’s enough of the ‘things to think about’ for now.
Loyal children (which I say not to be disparaging but to be complimentary of you) are those MOST willing to ‘do it themselves.’ They are appreciative of the one(s) who got them where they are and that particularly includes parents. Being respectful of parents is a skill which just plain never ‘gets old.’
Being frustrated by and feeling tested by parents is the thing that gets very tiresome and nearly impossible — just like feeding kids who you just know should eat broccoli and prefer to eat chocolate ice cream.
You are JUST PLAIN NEVER going to take something away from your father (or mother, for the matter) that he isn’t willing to give you: most emphatically including both what goes in AND what comes out of his mouth.
ERGO
Make sure you select for things you know are on the right (i.e. the ‘correct’) side of the nutritional balance beam and against those which are on the wrong side of it. When the potato chips run out, replace them less frequently than you do the apples which run out. Pretty simple.
Vegetables are in basically no reasonable case bad choices.
Legumes are NEVER bad choices, as far as ‘never’ can reasonably be used as a word.
Beverages are a HOT HOT HOT button. 99% of the beverages you can drink are bad to drink, and the 1% that are good are almost all water. DO NOT ALLOW DEHYDRATION TO TAKE PLACE, despite that in 70% of cases — probably higher in LA and ‘under constant air conditioning’ they do.
Alcohol is a no, no, NO.
Tea is almost always a yes.
Coffee is a “do not take this one away from anyone who likes it” beverage. It is not worth it to try to take it away, it is not provably dehydrating.”
Coffee actually promotes fat digestion in cyclic exposure methods thus (*if done properly*) can diminish hunger, make it occur less often, and by extension make it demonstrably EASIER to ‘control’ blood sugar, not harder.
They have arm implants and watches to wear on the wrist which can ‘live monitor’ blood glucose. To save yourself work (though I doubt if a stylish person of your dad’s vague description will wear one) just encourage the implant (virtually unnoticeable, back of arm — triceps area) and then have the watch sitting on a coffee table near where he likes to sit in the evenings so that you can check it and thereby monitor him just so that he doesn’t even have to think about it.
The trick of getting something done is to have it get done without having to think about it. At least that’s the trick for you if you want to get something done and the person who you want to ‘do it for’ wants nothing LESS than one more thing to do.
Here is where the endocrine system ‘battle’ occurs. Sorry, it needs to be said:
Your endocrine system (more ‘loosely’ your hormones — your worries and such) will do one of several things with endocrine systems of the people you interact with:
- fight them
- fly from them
- coexist with them
- enhance (i.e. ‘invigorate’) them
Fighting is bad, automatically. Internal stressor and one which CAN KILL YOU. Heart attacks are easy to have in the situation you’re talking about so cortisol and adrenalin need to remain low. About the whole JOB of adrenalin is to make your heart beat harder.
IF YOU FEEL YOURSELF BECOMING UPSET BY YOUR FATHER’S RELUCTANCE TO DO AS YOU UNDERSTAND HIS EATING HABITS MUST BE DONE DISENGAGE WITH HIM AND DO SO IMMEDIATELY WHEN YOU FEEL YOURSELF BECOMING UPSET.
“Braving” a storm which gets more fierce the more bravely you cast your sails against it is the surest way to make sure everyone goes down with the ship. That is just one I never did manage to teach you (or myself) up to now. It’s true, don’t argue it. Take a walk, breath some air, walk into the other room and sit down and look at a picture on the wall, reach up to a random bookshelf and pick a book at random
open it to a random page and put your finger down and read three pages
And I sincerely guarantee that God WILL do ALL the rest. Not just the heavy lifting, but basically all of it. [That one is a long explanation, really. It has to do with the way we feel time passing versus the way it does. Unsurprisingly, adrenalin helps us react fast and reacting fast in a situation which manifestly *does not* need fast reactions — prefers SLOW reactions, as a rule — is the thing you should utterly not do. Walk in a circle for 30 seconds but don’t fight.]
Type 2 diabetes thrives on “well, I ‘just’ didn’t consider food, and now I’m really hungry so I have to get the quickest thing I can find.” Again, it WANTS you to eat fast (and badly, correlated highly if ever two things were correlated highly)
That means, as you said:
- Have it ready
- Make it ‘ready in raw form’ — i.e. eatable like an apple (not, preferably, like a banana) or some nuts. Excellent if he enjoys nuts. Make sure they are there by handfuls. Being overweight is not the serious enemy in the room. Blood sugar instability is.
- Subway sandwiches are a very easy reasonably good choice, and cost $10 at most anywhere you can get them. Tell them ONE strip of mayonnaise or perhaps oil and vinegar. Again, very low sugar.
Cereals are sometimes not horrible but they cannot beat oatmeal. Steel cut is even better. Can actually be microwaved in 8 minutes, toss some fruit and nuts in, and job is done.
V-8 is pretty reasonable, though there is sugar and water is better. Nutrient deficiencies strike older people down in a ‘death of twenty cuts’ sort of way. You start dragging your feet in the nutrient fashion and soon you will be on 8 medications which themselves sap you further, which is a positive ‘negative’ reinforcement loop and leaves you groggy, lower energy, and generally reduces both quality and length of your years.
I go back to budget frequently in my mind because either there is a budget or there isn’t. Thankfully, low and high budgets both make it easier, it’s only when you’re trying to always be between like $30 and $40/day that it becomes hard:
Allow the maximum amount of variability in every category that you reasonably can aside from the one you are trying to control.
That one is so damned true and ZERO point ZERO ZERO percent of people know it is true. They think they can control damn near everything.
It’s sort of the ‘one’ thing that irks God the most. The thing both God and Satan quite frankly get a kick out of.
Which is, as my aside and “cost of penning this piece for you — despite that you are manifestly my friend” the reason why
I am the most entertaining little ant that God and Satan both have ever seen and thus the one that neither of them wants to die. Satan just wants me to live as miserably as possible for as long as possible and God prefers that I have a fun life because I amuse him.
I think God beats Satan in that kind of arm wrestle, and my life proves it because everything is so wonderful I will insert a song that describes it:
Danny Wilson — Mary’s Prayer — YouTube
I love you. My deadline is up, if you need some more pointers, please call.
Oh yeah, one more thing: Do take the time to relax yourself today. The way I can imagine the bridge of your nose crinkles together when you squintingly worry about things makes my day a little longer than even I prefer:
We last as long as we are meant to last and not one instant longer.
