Chicken Tortilla Soup

This soup is a quick and easy full meal, especially if you have leftover chicken on hand from a previous meal.

top: soup without broth as is eaten by my 16 mo old. bottom: garnished
with cheddar cheese and avocado. right: pot full of goodness.

Ingredients:

2 tbs olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs ground cumin
1 tbs smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cayanne pepper (optional, to taste)
28 oz canned diced tomatoes
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, drained (I like to use frozen from our garden)
1 quart chicken stock (I like to make and use stock from the last chicken I roasted)
3-4 cups shredded chicken (or whatever I can manage to pick off the bones of the last chicken I cooked)
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 flour/corn tortilla cut into small strips (optional) OR serve with tortilla chips
*Garnish with fresh lime juice, shredded cheddar and avocado (optional)

-In a large soup pot or dutch oven, heat to medium high, add oil and saute onions and peppers until translucent and add garlic. Then add seasonings and saute for another minute or 2.
-Add in diced tomatoes, rinsed black beans, drained corn and chicken stock. Stir to combine.
-Add in shredded chicken and tortilla strips, stir and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
-Garnish and serve

This meal is SO quick and easy, and a big hit with my family. Enjoy!

Diabetes, Pregnancy and Dietary Restrictions

I like to consider myself a rather healthy person. But the fact of the matter is is that I am addicted to sugar. Always have been. And I never thought anything of it besides it's effect on my waistline until I was near the end of my first pregnancy. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes (also referred to as "diabetes during pregnancy") in my third trimester a little late in the game. I ended up delivering my daughter 2 weeks early at 8 lbs. 6 oz. When I receive the diagnosis I was put on medication. As a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, I believed that I could manage it myself. But it was just too late in the game and, quite frankly, I don't think I had enough willpower to be strict enough with my diet. So I ended up on medication just a week before I delivered. Once you've had gestational diabetes, you are at risk for type 2 diabetes for the rest of your life and also gestational diabetes in any subsequent pregnancies. So here I am in my second pregnancy with high blood sugar, yet again.

My daughter, Caroline, as a newborn in the NICU with high blood sugar
(caused by my GD). She spent 4 days under monitoring.

According to Mayoclinic.org:

Any woman can develop gestational diabetes, but some women are at greater risk. Risk factors for gestational diabetes include:

• Age greater than 25. Women older than age 25 are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.
• Family or personal health history. Your risk of developing gestational diabetes increases if you have prediabetes — slightly elevated blood sugar that may be a precursor to type 2 diabetes — or if a close family member, such as a parent or sibling, has type 2 diabetes. You're also more likely to develop gestational diabetes if you had it during a previous pregnancy, if you delivered a baby who weighed more than 9 pounds (4.1 kilograms), or if you had an unexplained stillbirth.
• Excess weight. You're more likely to develop gestational diabetes if you're significantly overweight with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher.
• Nonwhite race. For reasons that aren't clear, women who are black, Hispanic, American Indian or Asian are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

Once I found out I was pregnant and scheduled my first OB appointment I started checking my blood sugar and realized that it was in fact hi again. At first, my Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) doctor believed it was "pre-diabetes" because it was too early to be GD. But now my OB is saying that it is possible to have GD in your first trimester.  Whatever you want to call it, my blood sugar is too high and needs to be managed in order to maintain a healthy pregnancy. I started back on the medication I took with my previous pregnancy. But after a couple days my blood sugar actually became too low! I was experiencing a lot of jitters and anxiety. This time around I have been able to maintain  healthy blood sugar levels with the diet alone. If only I could muster the strength and energy to exercise, I presume it would be even easier. But for now, the dietary restrictions are managing it. And quite frankly, these are dietary restrictions that I should've been maintaining all along. No added sugar. Low complex carbohydrates balance with protein and healthy fats. Lots of vegetables. So basically, I can't snack on soda and ice cream, but I am able to enjoy a balanced diet. And as I've continued this new diet, I've actually found that I'm able to consume more carbohydrates then I was able to at the beginning. So it seems as though my body is healing!

You see, I strongly believe that most illness is directly caused by an in balance in the body and can be reversed by dietary and lifestyle changes. Diabetes is absolutely one of those diseases. GD is slightly different because it is caused by hormones produced by the placenta. So often times, there is not much you can do about that with diet alone. But I firmly believe that my current diabetic state has been caused by poor diet and pre-disposition because of my previous GD diagnosis. So for now, it is being managed. There's a good chance that later in my pregnancy that diet will no longer cut it. But I intend to maintain a healthier diet to maintain healthy blood sugar levels in the future in order to avoid a life of type two diabetes.