Uncontrolled diabetes is a dangerous and complicated disease that I’ve seen my aunt battle. After being diagnosed with diabetes five years ago, the doctor advised her to reduce the amount of certain foods she eats like pasta and rice. My aunt taught me and all my cousins about the “healthy plate” method, which consists of half a plate being vegetables and fruits, one fourth with protein, and one fourth with whole grains. The plate method, combined with diet and exercise, helped my aunt keep her blood sugar level from rising to dangerous levels. This has motivated me to exercise and eat healthier in support of my aunt and it has also benefited me personally. She often gets different healthy eating tips from www.choosemyplate.gov or postings on www.joslin.org that provide her with a variety of fun and delicious ways to prepare fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein for her meals. Information on those websites also allowed her to enjoy her favorite treats, like Haagan Dazs ice cream and cake, but in strict moderation. My aunt always says, “There are a lot of things we can’t control in life, but one thing we can control is our diet!”

Changing plate size and dividing meals into equal sections is a good method for anyone who wants to follow a more healthy diet. From my own experience, this method has worked well for my family, although it did take some time to get used to. As long as everyone in the family limited their portions so as not to overeat, we were able to have a healthy meal size. We also tried to create a healthy diet by having vegetables with every meal. For example, my mother always included an equal amount of veggies and whole grains such as brown rice along with our meat-based entrees. Another method that my mother took on was getting everyone in the habit of drinking plenty of water or homemade juice such as watermelon or orange juice. This way, she was able to control the amount of sugar in our beverages. As a result, I developed a habit of drinking liquids with little to no sugar in them. As I grew up and began to live on my own, I had less time to cook and began to order out more often. However, I have still kept the habit that my mother taught me of dividing my portions equally among vegetables, fruits, meats and whole grains. I do this by ordering from take-out places like Whole Foods Market, that have lot choices of veggies, fruits and meats. This lets me create and keep track of my own meal portions.

The biggest challenge that I had over the last two months with my diet was deciding how to eat my traditional Ghanaian foods while trying to be healthy. The main Ghanaian traditional foods are mostly made up of starch. For example, fufu, banku, and kenkey, which are eaten with either sauce or soup, are made with corn or potatoes, that tend to be fattening.

Because I eat traditional Ghanaian foods every day I found it very difficult to try to control my weight. Instead of changing what I eat I decided to decrease my plate size from 12” to an 8”. I also started substituting brown rice for white rice because the brown rice is less processed and therefore, less fattening. I have now included salad in my diet because it is low calorie and high in fiber, which I have read helps with weight loss. I eat salad about twice a day as an appetizer before my lunch and dinner meals. I have also added more fruits into my diet by blending a variety of them into smoothie and storing it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. I drink the smoothie daily when I have a craving for sugar-sweetened beverages like sweetened ice tea and soda. I also started drinking a lot of water.

Controlling my portion size from eating on a 12” plate to 8” plate was not easy the first couple of weeks, because I didn’t feel full, but I was motivated to stay on track not only with the idea of being healthy but because of the weight loss results I saw on the scale. I have lost about 10 lbs since I began my new healthy eating style.