Adopting Japanese life style elements

[KevinM1]

If you're doing it purely for the dietary benefits, green tea is always a winner. It doesn't necessarily have to be from Japan. I get mine from a local tea business. Beyond added flavors, it's really no different from what you would find in Japan. And no, I'm not including crap like Arizona "tea" in that, either. That's just sugar water.

            Thank you, I've known Arizona Tea is not healthy at all. What's your advice of cutting back on Soda and Energy drinks?

When I got my diabetes diagnosis, I had to quit cold turkey.  Now, it's primarily water and cranberry juice for my kidneys (hooray stones!).  Other people have also told me that cold turkey was the only way they could kick soda because it's too easy to cheat and fall back into bad habits otherwise.  It sucks for a few days, but you'll feel better off.

Part of the problem with the American diet is that we fetishize crap.  Fast food, bad food, fried food.  Sometimes we rationalize it due to culture (all the fried shit/pies/sugary teas in the south), other times we excuse it as a 'treat' even though we consume far too much of it.  Processed food plays a huge role in it (it's fast, easy, and cheap, and we're lazy fuckers), too.  Combine it all, and we're left with an obesity epidemic.

Diabetes has been simultaneously the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.  I'll likely die from it.  I have, essentially, a late onset Type 1 with obvious genetic factors (just about every male on my mom's side gets it right around when they turn 30), so it isn't one I can conquer with diet and exercise.  I weigh ~140 lbs. and eat far healthier than most Americans, but I just had to have one of my medicines' dosage increased.  But, it has forced me to adopt a much healthier lifestyle because I will get sick if I eat poorly.

The approach that works best for me is to treat vegetables as the main component of any dish, with meat as the condiment/side.  Grains are limited.  I've slowly added fish to my diet (I've never liked seafood, and I still doubt I could stomach anything like clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, etc.).  I've tried baked things with diabetic friendly flours (coconut flour, almond flour, etc.), but the texture is generally all wrong.  A weird mix of too squishy and cardboard.