Amanda McCoy
Bio
I've been a content creator for years and have been writing even longer than that. I've written and published 2 novels and I'm currently working on 2 dark fantasy series, but my specialty is writing helpful and informative articles.
Stories (9)
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Diabetics, Adding Life to Your Steps!
Going on a daily walk can lower your blood sugar and pressure. It can strengthen your legs, your heart, your lungs, and your circulatory system. It can improve your eye sight, relieve stress, and help with weight management. People who continue walking into their old age, tend to live longer and be less sickly. Children who grow up walking with their families tend to feel more connected to their family members and are also less sickly. There is so many reasons to start walking, if you haven't started yet, and so many reasons to continue walking if you have. But, walking the same route day after day, week after week, can become so boring as to almost feel like your putting yourself in a time-out. Particularly during the winter or colder months, with no leaves on the trees and no sunny weather to cheer you on, the long minutes of shuffling down the sidewalk can feel like an eternity. Though nearly every fitness walker has felt that way at one point in their walking journey, your daily constitutional doesn't need to be a drudgery. Your brisk strolls through your neighborhood can be a relaxing respite, it can be your daily adventure, it can be the highlight of the day that you look forward to every morning.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetics, Meet Mashed Cauli-tatoes!
For the longest time after I was diagnosed with diabetes, I missed mashed potatoes. Eating a big, tasty mound of mash potatoes was just too many carbs and calories for my new condition to handle, so I just kind of accepted my unfortunate fate that I would have to live tato-less for the rest of my life. It was a very sad time for me. Maybe it was the Irish in me, but I love some steamy, creamy, fluffy, buttery, gravy moat building mashed potatoes! What Thanksgiving dinner could be complete without some tatoes and gravy? What roasted sausage isn't lonely without it's best bud, mashed spuds? Meat loaf, pot roast, saucy squash, and roasted chicken, they aren't even a meal without their constant companion mashed potatoes. And don't even get me started on Shepard's pie, it's not even a pie without it's tatoey topping! So many dinners ended with me longing for my fluffy edible friend.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Feast
Diabetics, Snack Attacks are Back!
Having diabetes can completely change your relationship with food. It can mean cutting out a lot of foods that you once loved, and it can mean being introduced to new foods that you've never even heard of before. One of the biggest changes for many diabetics living in the US, is cutting back on our beloved snack foods. Potato and tortilla chips that are chocked full of carbs and salt. Snack cakes that are full of bad fats, sugars, and other carbs. Candy that is never packaged in normal, human serving sizes. With all these dangerous temptations around, it might be surprising to hear that snacking is actually okay for a diabetic. There is nothing inherently bad about eating a small meal between meals. In fact, that small meal aka snack can keep your blood sugar levels from dropping too low between meals. It's what you choose to snack on that makes all the difference. With a few smart swap outs, you can snack while cutting carbs, getting more fiber, vitamins and minerals, and avoiding hunger pains or over eating at your next meal. Yes, snacking can help you make healthy choices that would even make your dietitian proud.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetes and A Jiggly Kind of Nostalgia
When I was first diagnosed with diabetes it was a really terrifying moment for me. Both my parents had died young just a few years earlier from complications with diabetes. Watching them wither away and die was a really horrifying experience for me that will probably scar me for the rest of my life. The months and years after my parents deaths, no matter what happened to me, my personal mantra was, "Well, at least I don't have diabetes!". Being diagnosed with first cancer, and then a heart condition, I thought to myself, "It's not so bad, at least I don't have diabetes!". And then one day my doctor sent me an email. To her that email probably meant nothing, just one of many she sent out that day, to me it was like getting a death sentence. I had diabetes. No words could say how terrified I was. I still had vivid memories of what the disease had done to my parents. To say I had food anxieties would be the understatement of the century. For months I ate almost nothing but egg white and spinach salad. I ate it for lunch and dinner every day. Some times even for breakfast too! I was too terrified to eat anything that tasted even remotely sweet. Even carrots or bell peppers were too sweet and completely off the table.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetes and High on Hydration
Water is so important to life of all kinds. The world is made up of about 70% water for a reason. Water washes away toxins, it allows plants to grow and thrive, and is vital for all animals (even humans) bodies to function properly. Though water is considered by many to be the most boring of drinks, it's actually the most drunk beverage around the globe. And though it is so very important for all humans to have enough clean water to drink, it's even more important for people living with diabetes. In fact, dehydration can be quite dangerous for those with diabetes and can happen alarmingly quickly. During one of my diabetic health check-ups, a nurse told me that one of the leading causes of diabetic related ER visits was dehydration. And what was the first treatment that a diabetic is likely to get at the ER? They are almost always put on an IV, especially if their visit involves high blood sugar. Yes, dehydration is so common with diabetics that ER staff are likely to put a person with diabetes on an IV drip even before their test results come back!
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetics, Don't Say Bye Bye to Coconut Pie!
If you're like me, than you love some pie! Apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie! Oooo, some hot peach pie with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream on top! I just love the taste of all that melty, creamy vanilla snuggling up to the sweet, freshness of the peach filling. Nothing makes my mouth water like the thought of a nice slice of pie. Of course, now that I'm a diabetic, me and pie have had to take a step back from each other and rethink our relationship. At first, in the beginning months after my diagnosis, I thought that pie and really all desserts were off the table for me. For good. But as I learned more about my condition, how my personal body reacted to different carbs, and learned more about the vibrant and often tasty world of low carb eating, I learned that desserts in moderation, maybe weren't so bad. In fact, maybe even my beloved pie could make a come back in my life. One of the many pies that worked hard and won it's way back into my heart was coconut pie. But not the old, sugar heavy, no-friend-of-mine coconut pie. This pie had changed its old, bad ways and come back to be a tasty, lighter version of its old self. So if you're missing some coconut pie, and think you can never be friends again, let me introduce you to Coconut Chia Seed Pudding!
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetes and the Big Scary "C"
If you are a diabetic, than you know that the “C” word is a dirty word to us! That’s right, it’s carbs! The tasty things we all love, but that doesn’t love us back anymore. Those springy dinner rolls, those fluffy mashed potatoes, those bouncy cupcakes, those are all carb heavy foods. When your diabetic dietitian tells you that you need to cut down on carbs, it can seem like there's nothing left to eat any more. This feeling can be doubly strong if you're living in the US, where almost everything is carb-a-licious. I remember walking into a grocery store at the beginning of my carb cutting journey and realizing that I couldn't eat 90% of everything being sold in that store. There were whole aisles in which there wasn't a single item on the shelves that was safe for me to eat! At times the task of cutting carbs seemed really over whelming. But with some practice, know-how, and some tasty new recipes, I've found that living with less carbs really isn't so big or scary.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Diabetics, Don't Fear the Foreign
Being a diabetic in the US is becoming more and more common. It's not surprising that the once rare disease is now as American as apple pie, the US is a carb-a-licious country. With our love of breakfast cereals, snack cakes, chips, and soda, it should have surprised no one that we are in the world's top nations for diabetes rates. Rates that are growing every year. Strolling through any national chain grocery store in the US and you will enter a world of carbs, carbs, carbs. In fact, finding something to eat that isn't carb, sugar, or salt laden, can be quite a feat in some stores.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
Welcome To Diabetes! 1
Welcome! This is the very first post in a series dedicated to understanding the difficult and often confusing world of diabetes. I hope I can help others in their journey to living a healthier life with diabetes. By sharing my experiences, my successes, my pitfalls, and some really tasty recipes, maybe diabetes will become something less scary and more approachable for others. Much like the surprisingly common condition diabetes, not every post will be sunshine and rainbows in this series, but I do hope I can keep this a positive place. I hope this can be a place where others can find inspiration to make small and easy changes in their everyday actions that can grow into lasting change for the better in their lives. Diabetes can be very scary and difficult to learn to live with, but with a little extra info and a positive approach, almost anyone can find a new balance in their lives that is both healthier and less scary.
By Amanda McCoyabout a year ago in Longevity
