The 14-Day No Sugar Diet(35)
? Add the sausage and cook, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes.
? Remove to a plate, cover, and refrigerate.
? Pour the remaining olive oil into the same pot over medium heat.
? Stir in the onion, celery and cabbage.
? Cook, stirring until the vegetables begin to soften, 8 to 10 minutes.
? Add the beans, 4 cans of broth, and tomatoes to the pot. Bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat, skimming off any froth.
? Stir in the Italian seasoning and bay leaf. Partially cover, and cook until the beans are tender, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours depending on the beans. Add more broth if the soup becomes too thick.
? Stir in sausage and pepper. Simmer 2 minutes. Discard bay leaf.
Makes 8 servings.
Per serving: 218 calories, 13 g fat, (4 g saturated), 538 mg sodium, 17 g carbohydrates, 12 g protein, 5 g fiber
CHAPTER
10
Move More Every Day
The No Sugar Diet exercise plan
IF WE STILL toiled in the fields and factories, using our legs and arms to get our work done as our grandparents and great grandparents did, this chapter probably wouldn’t be necessary. But today we sit a lot, way more than our ancestors did, and we walk much less. We plop our butts at our computers, in our cars, and on our couches. And as a result, most of us aren’t burning off the calories we consume, and we gain weight and grow bigger bellies. Diabetes researchers estimate that for every inch your waist circumference expands, you increase your risk of type 2 diabetes by 8 percent.
You can do something pretty powerful to keep that from happening: Move more every day. Several large studies have shown that regular physical activity can have a big impact on your blood sugar. In one Finnish study, people who exercised for about 35 minutes a day dropped their risk of diabetes by 80 percent. That’s huge! What’s more, those people lowered risk even if they didn’t lose any weight. That’s because when you exercise, your body uses insulin more efficiently. Exercising boosts the number of insulin receptors on your cells, which helps insulin move blood sugar into cells where it can be used for fuel.
If you are currently sedentary, adding any kind of physical activity to your day is a step in the right direction. Choose something you like to do and you’ll be more likely to stick to it.
However, for the next two weeks while on the 14-Day No Sugar Diet, we suggest you follow a structured routine that includes aerobic exercise and strength training. We’re including both because the combo punch appears to deliver a powerful blow to diabetes. Aerobic exercise helps insulin do a better job of lowering blood glucose, while strength training (also called resistance training) builds muscle, which provides more storage area for that glucose. Research reported in PLOS Medicine suggests that doing two and a half hours of cardio exercise and at least an hour of strength training per week can lower your risk of type 2 by two thirds. That’s actually very minimal exercise time over the course of a week, so anyone should be able to do it.
Picking up the pace in an aerobic workout seems to make a difference, too. Have you heard of interval training? It’s nothing more than alternating between short bursts of fast, intense movement and slow-paced “rest” segments. Think city driving versus highway driving. This is what an interval-walking workout looks like:
> 5 minute warm-up
easy pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 2 minutes
moderate pace
> 1 minute
fast pace
> 5-minute cool-down
slow easy pace
One advantage of the speed-up/slow-down style of exercise is that it burns more calories than steady-pace exercise does in a shorter period of time. You get more bang for your buck, because it ensures that you truly exert yourself, not just go through the motions.
Another plus: High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) appears to help insulin do its job better. In a Scandinavian study, people with type 2 diabetes did either a moderately intense exercise program or a HIIT plan. After just six sessions over 14 days, the HIIT group improved insulin sensitivity much more than the lower-intensity exercise group did. In fact, the HIIT exercisers showed a return to normal glucose metabolism after just 2 weeks, suggesting that HIIT may actually work as effectively as diabetes medication.
For the No Sugar Diet exercise plan, you will be doing a mixture of HIIT walks, steady-pace walks, and resistance training. The workouts are described later in this chapter. Here’s your exercise schedule for the next 14 days.
Your Move-More Schedule
Week 1
Monday
30-minute HIIT walk
Tuesday
Strength workout