Shoes

A little about me as told by my wife...

We are not certain precisely when my husband became a believer. We know that it occurred sometime during our first year of marriage. We also know that it was very hard for him to surrender himself into God's loving care, because of anxieties that my husband had acquired while a child.

During most of his childhood, my husband was poor. He told me that they liked to believe that they were lower middle class, but now he knows that they were just plain poor. He never was sure when he'd have enough clothes, or shoes that fit, or food on the table. As a result of this past, my husband didn't want to live his adult life in want.

Also, now as an adult, my husband was hearing Christians say: Trust in God...He wants to save you from your sins and have a relationship with you. My husband kept on holding back from God for months because he wasn't sure if he could trust this Jesus to truly take care of him....all his needs,.., spiritual as well as physical. Finally, the scripture Matthew 6:25-34 broke through the wall of his fears and my husband surrendered himself completely into the Lord's care. And he was excited; excited about living the Christian life. He wanted to follow Jesus' leading in life. He had sold out to Jesus completely.

During our first year of marriage, my husband was learning his profession. And as "the new kid" he was assigned to run the work and deliver it when it was done. Quite often these deliveries took place in the late night hours. And he usually had many stops each night. In order for me to even have time to talk with him, I often chose to ride in the car with him while he made his deliveries. It was during one of these evening delivery trips that an interesting event occurred.

We were downtown and finishing up to go home. It was cold that night and the sky looked like some snow flurries could be expected. Since we hadn't had snow yet that winter, the sidewalks were clear, but everything was so cold and gray. Our car had just turned the corner when my husband saw a man walking on the sidewalk toward a wide doorway and my husband pointed this man out to me. The man was dressed poorly; very inadequately for the weather. And his shoes, if you could call them that, were split in so many places that they could not possibly keep out the elements.

Almost as quickly as we drove past this man, my husband pulled over to the curb, put on his flashing lights, and announced that he was giving that man his shoes! I really had no time to protest because my husband was already out of the car. I watched as they talked and after some discussion, the man accepted the shoes. My husband came back to the car in his socks and we talked as we drove toward home.

I was concerned because my husband had only two pairs of shoes that were decent enough for work and here he'd just given one pair away! But my husband said that the scriptures said that if you have more than enough and someone was in need, then the Lord wants us to share. He also explained that he could only wear one pair of shoes at a time anyway, so now this simplified things. We closed the conversation with the thought that when my husband needed another pair of shoes, the Lord would provide them.

Time passed, and we could have used that extra pair of shoes, but we got along. Occasionally we talked about the incident and wondered if the Lord had ever intended to give my husband that second pair of shoes.

Approximately 18 months after my husband gave away his shoes, we were visiting at a friend's apartment. Midway through the evening, our host got up and told my husband that he had something for him. He brought back a pair of brown loafers. They fit perfectly. He went on to explain that for more than a year the Lord had been prompting him to give these shoes to my husband, be he just hadn't gotten around to it. We mentioned that my husband had wanted another pair of shoes, but didn't go into any details. We looked at each other and we couldn't wait to talk about it on the way home.

We decided that the most important issue in the "shoe incident" was the way in which the Lord used people to convey his blessings. But the people were always "allowed" to function within their own free-will. My husband was a vehicle for blessing for the man with no shoes because my husband was so willing to obey without question. Our friend withheld a blessing that the Lord intended for us because he was unwilling to obey without question. And the Lord never made our friend obey, he only prompted and let our friend choose to obey. This was an exciting revelation to us because we were able to see both sides of a blessing and how a man can choose to be a part of it.

10 types of people...

There are only 10 types of people in the world:
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.



Friday, June 11, 2004

The Glycemic Index

Diets that decrease and in some cases eliminate carbohydrates have become extremely popular in the past couple of years. Just look in the diet section of your local bookstore. It is filled with dozens of books telling you that carbohydrates is the greatest nutrition evil of our time.

Carbohydrates are not evil. They are necessary for energy production and general health. Carbohydrates supply the needed energy to keep your heart, brain and vital organs operating. However, these types of diets do have a basis in fact. Some carbohydrates cause you to store fat.

The reason some carbohydrates make you fat is because when they hit your bloodstream they cause insulin to be dumped into your bloodstream. Insulin is a hormone that has one primary job. That job is to regulate your blood sugar. Too much sugar in your blood can lead to vision loss, kidney disease and heart disease. So don’t listen to anyone that says insulin is a bad thing. Without insulin, we would be in a lot of trouble.

High insulin levels do cause an increase in body fat stores. When you eat a food that is high on the glycemic index, your blood sugar soars. This results in large amounts of insulin being dumped into your blood stream. Remember that the job of insulin is to regulate your blood sugar. It needs to do something with the excess glucose (sugar). The easiest thing for insulin to do with it is to store it in your body as fat. In fact, insulin is 30 times more efficient at storing the excess glucose as fat than sending it to the muscles where it would be burned for energy. You can’t and don’t want to stop this insulin response to stop. So what do you do about it? You need to decrease the need for large insulin dumps.

So how do you do this? You simply stay away from the foods that cause the large increases in insulin. That is where the glycemic index comes in. There are a couple of different indexes available. One uses white bread as a standard, with the white bread rated as 100. The other scale uses glucose at the standard, with glucose rated as 100.

The glycemic index was developed in the early 1980’s to assist diabetics. Eating foods that are low on the glycemic index would help them avoid dangerous increases in blood sugar. This will also help non-diabetics with body fat reduction. Staying away from the foods high on the index will decrease the amount of insulin and as a result will decrease the amount of stored fat.

Eating foods low on the glycemic index will also help increase your energy levels during the day. When you eat a high GI (glycemic index) food, you get an immediate rush of energy because of the high blood sugar levels. The resulting insulin response removes the sugar from your blood, so you now begin to feel fatigued. Eating foods low on the GI will keep you from going through this roller coaster of high and low blood sugar. Your blood sugar levels will remain more level throughout the day, which will give you a feeling of high energy all day long.

The GI of a specific food can vary. Cooking, especially overcooking foods will increase their GI. The GI of bananas will increase as they ripen. The GI of pasta can vary by protein content, size and even shape.

Each individual will also have a slightly different insulin response to each food.

Below is a partial list of the GI of some common foods. This list uses glucose as the standard and has a rating of 100.

Breads

· White bread 96

· Waffle 76

· Donut 76

· Whole wheat bread 75

· Bread stuffing 74

· Kaiser rolls 73

· Bagel, white 72

· Melba toast 70

· Tortilla, corn 70

· Rye bread 65

· Whole wheat pita 58

· Pumpernickel bread 49

Cereals

· Puffed Rice 90

· Rice Chex 89

· Crispix 87

· Corn Flakes 84

· Corn Chex 83

· Rice Krispies 82

· Grapenut Flakes 80

· Cocoapops 77

· Cheerios 74

· Shredded Wheat 69

· Puffed Wheat 67

· Grapenuts 67

· Museli 66

· Life 66

· Cream of Wheat 66

· Bran Chex 58

· Oatmeal 55

· Special K 54

· All Bran 42

Crackers/Cookies

· Vanilla Wafers 77

· Rice Cakes 77

· Water Crackers 72

· Golden Grahams 71

· Stoned Wheat Thins 67

· Shortbread 64

Dairy

· Ice Cream 61

· Pizza cheese 60

· Ice Cream – low fat 50

· Milk – skim 32

· Yogurt – with sugar 33

· Yogurt – no sugar 14

Fruits

· Watermelon 72

· Dried fruit 70

· Pineapple 66

· Cantaloupe 65

· Blueberry 59

· Orange juice 57

· Mango 55

· Fruit cocktail 55

· Banana 53

· Kiwi 52

· Orange 43

· Grapes 43

· Pear 35

· Apple 35

· Strawberry 32

· Grapefruit 25

· Plum 25

· Cherries 23

Grains

· Rice – instant 88

· Millet 71

· Rice – white/not instant 70

· Cornmeal 68

· Rye flour 65

· Couscous 65

· Bran 60

· Buckwheat 54

· Bulgur 48

· Spirali, durum 43

· Barley, pearled 25

Legumes

· Fava beans 80

· Baked beans – canned 68

· Romano beans 46

· Black eyed peas 42

· Chick peas 33

· Split peas 32

· Lima beans – frozen 32

· Butter beans 31

· Black beans 30

· Lentils 29

· Beans – dried 29

· Kidney beans 27

· Soybeans 18

Pasta

· Brown rice pasta 92

· Refined pasta 65

· Gnocchi 65

· Whole grain – thick 45

· Angel hair 45

· Star Pastina 38

· Whole grain spaghetti 37

· Vermicelli 35

Vegetables

· Parsnips 97

· Potato – baked 85

· Potato – instant 83

· Pumpkin 75

· French fries 75

· Potato – fresh – mashed 73

· Rutabaga 72

· Carrot 71

· Beets 64

· New Potato 62

· Sweet corn 55

· Sweet potato 54

· Yam 51

· Tomato 38

· Green vegetables low

· Bean sprouts low

· Cauliflower low

· Eggplant low

· Peppers low

· Squash low

· Onions low

· Water chestnuts low

Miscellaneous

· Tofu frozen dessert 115

· Maltose 105

· Glucose 100

· Rice cake 82

· Jelly beans 80

· Pretzels 80

· Honey 73

· Corn chips 73

· Soft drink 70

· Angel food 67

· Sucrose 65

· Hamburger bun 61

· Sponge cake 54

· Chocolate 49

· Instant noodles 47

· Fructose 23


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