Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to gain some muscle while achieving better glucose control? I believe you can based on my experience, ie; experimentation on myself ;-)

When doing weight training you go through a lot of "pain". Remember the saying, "no pain, no gain!!"? It’s all good though. I always say, if you are going to take the time out of your busy schedule in order to go to the gym and weight train, you might as well not offset your efforts by eating poorly and basically sabotaging yourself. It is said that 80% of your results come after the gym with what you eat or don’t eat. So you see, it’s a 24/7 effort. A lifestyle. Just like with our diabetes. It goes perfectly with our glucose management. We have to watch what we eat already. What people disregard is their protein intake. Again, all in moderation of course, but when you weight train you should consume at least 40% of your calories from protein. Like with every thing else, the carbs and the fats, some proteins are better (leaner) than others. Therefore choose wisely based on your weight goals and body type. Obviously, we all must consider our kidneys and making sure they are working properly as well. My understanding is that too much protein can stress them. But that is a discussion for you and the doctor.

All I can say is that after you’ve gotten the OK from your doctor to take on moderate weight training in order to tone and boost your metabolism, we must feed the muscle what it needs in order to repair itself, grow, and strengthen. When we weight train, we are actually tearing our muscle fibers up just a bit each time. After some time with the continuous repairing of the fibers, you get a stronger "bigger" muscle.

The best way to eat your protein is to break it down through out the day. I have read different things on how much protein our bodies can consume at a time. It seems like the main consensus is that 30-40 grams per meal is an appropriate amount for best consumption. I weigh about 132 lbs consistently and try to consume 132 gm per day. When I was training for my contest, I counted every protein, carb, and fat gram to make sure I was with in range "most" of the time. Now I just can estimate, and as long as I am above 100 gm a day, I’m satisfied. Obviously, we want as much lean protein as possible. Chicken breast, fish, eggs, and whey protein powders are best. You can find lots of information on the internet on this topic. Interestingly enough, our bodies need a good supply of carbs (good low glycemic carbs of course ;-) in order to absorb the protein and build/repair the muscle, vs. using the protein for energy. We want our energy to come from our carb intake and stored fats, not our muscles/protein.

So we come back to… every thing in moderation!!. Our watchful eye on our carb intake can actually help us build muscle, which in turn, helps us get rid of stored fats. How cool is that? ;-)

Knowledge is power. It helps us take control of our diabetes management. It doesn’t have to be that hard considering we have the tools and the information at our fingertips. The key is persistence!! At least that is what I choose to believe. Hmmm? The power of choice, I am grateful for it!!

Till next time. Bianca (bjcfp@yahoo.com)