Trim Healthy Mama Plan by Pearl Barrett

fruits like mango, pineapple, grapes, and watermelon are best kept to one-cup servings. If you have severe insulin resistance or any pre- or full-blownType 2 diabetes, it may be best if you steer away from the higher-glycemic fruits at first (or use only half servings of them) and stick to more medium-glycemic fruits like apples, peaches, and cherries until your blood sugars are better stabilized. Bananas are a high-sugar fruit that are too often overeaten, but it is a myth that they cannot be eaten on THM. We simply suggest sticking with half a large banana (or one small) in an E meal or snack.
    We don’t want you doing a bunch of carb counting because it leads only to needless obsessions and robs you of the joy in your journey. The suggested portions of starch and fruit in our E list of approved foods are already given in safe helping sizes so you won’t need to think too much about it. It’s no fun doing math in your head at every meal. Staying close to these safe portion boundaries of glucose fuel will keep you from the dangerous fat-storing troll that waits on the other side of the carb-limit fence. This doesn’t mean you’ll be hungry or your plate will look woefully meager; your carb fuel is just one part of the yummy whole picture on your plate. Just like with S meals, you’ll be adding other Fuel Pull options such as non-starchy veggies and lean meat, dairy, or egg whites.
    Let’s compare a Trim Healthy Mama E meal to one eaten in dangerous Trollville outside the fenced safety of the limits we advise. Imagine that breakfast we mentioned earlier of a generous bowl of oatmeal with added fruit or berries and a dollop of Greek yogurt. Your blood sugar should still be within safe and healthy limits after a filling thirty- to forty-five-gram carb meal like this. Compare that to a common evening meal that contains a baked potato of around sixty carbs, a white dinner roll (or two) of around twenty-five carbs each, and a sugar-laden dessert around eighty carbs. Put the three together, as many people do, and you have well over a hundred carbs in just one meal. Now that’s out of conTROLL! No wonder the epidemic of obesity is still raging.
WHERE’S THEFAT?
    Fat takes a backseat in an E meal but it is not banished. You can add one little pat—a teaspoon. Okay, we know how much peanut butter we personally have been able to fit on a teaspoon in our lives; there are Guinness World Records to break on that one, right? We mean a
flat
(level) teaspoon. (Check out Chapter 10 , “Just the Numbers,” if you are a numbers person and think in numbers versus visual amounts.)
    This optional teaspoon of fat is added for three reasons:
    1. Fat helps you absorb vital fat-soluble vitamins and minerals from your meal. A fat-free meal sounds awful and is less nutritious.
    2. Fat (along with all important protein) gentles down the speed with which glucose is absorbed into your bloodstream. The gentler the rise of your blood sugar, the safer the meal (especially for those with diabetic issues).
    3. It is a more balanced approach to not completely remove a full macronutrient (like fat) from a meal. Your hormones appreciate this. This little pat of fat is not enough to cause a tandem-fueling effect.
    Is this teaspoon of added fat mandatory? No, especially if your protein source has a lean but still existing amount of fat, as does salmon or lean dairy (such as 1% cottage cheese). Some of the grains that we encourage, like oatmeal and quinoa, also naturally contain their own small amount of fat, so you don’t have to concern yourself with always adding more.
    But this also doesn’t mean that if your protein source or grain does contain a little bit of fat you must deny yourself that teaspoon of oil on your salad or coconut oil to sauté your salmon. You’re still likely to be in safe waters adding the small amount we advise. Here’s a little practical advice to make your salads more succulent inE meals: Use an extra-virgin olive oil