What happened to February? It was good to talk to you now that I've come out of my work productivity cave. I was especially happy to hear that things have been going so well with the books I found for you and mom. I tried very hard to find books that would give you information in plain language and not overwhelm you with too much information or long, dry chapters. I think the set I came up with for you does a decent job of this.
I've seen a lot of books about diabetes and they tend to go over the same basic information about what happens with the disease and the guidelines of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) for treating it. If you take a look at the guidelines, you'll see why it's so important that there are books that translate them into something that resembles English. Every year they update the guidelines based on new research that has come out so that they are based on the most up-to-date information.
Here are the books that I think do the best job of giving you practical information about what you need to actually do with the information. You might notice that three of them have the ADA logo, which means they are published by the ADA and you can purchase them directly from their website. All of the books can be ordered from Amazon.com and that is where you'll find the most customer reviews for books. Since books are expensive, it's always a good idea to give them a try before you buy them by checking them out at the public library. If your branch doesn't have them, talk to someone at the circulation desk to find out how to request it from other libraries in the library system. Usually you can check out a book from your local library even if the local library doesn't have it--you'll just have to wait a while for it to come in.
I know you like your meat and potatoes. Usually when we think of health food we come up with images of twigs and tofu or, worse, the Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 1970s. Fortunately, nobody is asking you to like tofu or kale and even Weight Watchers has long abandoned those crazy, gross recipes. I think these books do a good job of showing you ways that you can eat foods that will taste good to you and make you feel like you've actually eaten a meal.
What Do I Eat Now?: A Step-by-Step Guide to Eating Right with Type 2 Diabetes by Patti Geil and Tami A. Ross cuts directly through the guidelines to give you the information about the part of diabetes care that is giving you the most stress. It's an easy read because it's broken up into chunks and they pull out the parts that you'll refer to in the future into tables and charts. If they just did the tables and charts or just the text, I don't think it would be nearly as useful. Of all of the practical guides I've read in doing my research, this is really the most useful that I've found.
Next, there's The 4 Ingredient Diabetes Cookbook by Nancy Hughes. The recipes really do have very few ingredients (occasionally 5 or 6 ingredients due to spices, but mostly just 4) and very few steps in meal preparation. When one of the reviewers wrote that the recipes were too simple for them, I figured this was a good cookbook for people who aren't used to cooking things from scratch.
Then there's One Pot Meals for People with Diabetes by Ruth Glick and Nancy Baggett. This book is full of the sorts of recipes where you throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot and let it cook--a real time-saver when you think about the amount of clean-up that comes with cooking from scratch. The ingredients are also pretty basic and you can do a lot of the food prep ahead of time so it's easy to pull a healthy meal together without having to think about it too much. I know cooking a complicated dinner is not what you want to deal with after you've been at work all day.
Finally, there's The CalorieKing Calorie, Fat, & Carbohydrate Counter by Allan Borushek. This is a tool that any person who is trying to eat lower fat, lower carb, etc. should have because it is a fairly comprehensive listing of nutritional values for not just raw ingredients that you'll cook, but for food that you buy already cooked. It's hard to get an accurate count for restaurant foods or something at a potluck, but this guide can give you a rough estimate. It's a small book so you can take it with you wherever you go. For folks who prefer to access it online or through a smart phone app, the CalorieKing website has other options, including an online weight loss program. You can get the nutritional counts for free on the website, even if you don't subscribe.
I am glad that you and mom have been giving these a go and I look forward to hearing which ones actually work for you. Please let me know if any of these are dead wrong for what you need so I can keep looking.
Love,
Mel
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