Amazeballs

This week, I’ve bounced back from feeling overwhelmed and I’ve gone back to basics. When type 1 gets too crazy, the best approach is to be systematic – change a single variable at a time, be patient, work out a pattern, and only change the next variable after I feel confident and calm.

So I have made food my focus this week. Here at the Family Centre, I have a good friend and colleague in Amy Rush, who is a dietitian and diabetes educator. Amy ran my food diary through FoodWorks and has really helped me out with advice around meal composition and maxing out the nutritional value of my food, along with a stern talking to about how irregular I am with meals!

Amy and I are also thinking a lot about race nutrition strategy and trying to nut out a low carbohydrate nutrition plan for long distance open water swimming. I don’t want to have to inject rapid insulin every time I stop for nutrition during my swims, and I also don’t want to be forced to constantly eat to feed a big dose of long-acting insulin – so low carb is the way forward from a blood glucose stability perspective. It obviously helps that after 15 years of low carbing, my body is very well adapted to burn fat in preference to carbohydrates, so being adequately fueled on low carbohydrate snacks will be no problem.

Out of the water, my go-to snacks are low in carbohydrate but not particularly portable – olives, veges and dips, cheese, small tins of tuna, greek yoghurt. While swimming, I need snacks to be portable, easy to chew and swallow, not strongly flavoured, and high in energy but low in carbohydrates.

Enter Amazeballs.

Amazeballs are high in protein and healthy fats, and low in carbohydrate (about 4 grams each). And they taste delicious! I tested them on my long swim this week. I ate one before training, and two during – and barely spiked. I felt fueled, and I looked forward to my mid-training snack (important, when you’re face down in murky salt water for ages – you need something to look forward to!)

Amazeballs are amazeballs! I am stoked.

One of the important ingredients in Amazeballs is protein powder. I have received great support from protein powder company The Naked Sack for my swim, who have helped cover my entry fees and boat fuel. The Naked Sack makes all-natural, gluten-free organic protein products, and they gave me some samples of their awesome new products to try. Here’s the range:

And here are the Amazeballs I made with the Natural Whey Protein:

Here’s the recipe:

Amazeballs (makes about 25)

The Naked Sack Protein Powder (I used whey, but pea or brown rice protein will also work), 100 grams

Dried dates, 80 grams, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes

Walnuts, 140 grams

Almonds, 140 grams

Coconut oil, 50 grams

Cocoa powder 3 tablespoons

Vanilla essence, teaspoon

Water

Desiccated coconut for rolling

The method is easy – place all ingredients (except the water) in a food processor, and whiz until it looks like the picture below, adding water now and then if it looks a bit dry.

Then, form into balls and roll in coconut. Store in the fridge and enjoy!

The Naked Sack have offered 20% off their range if you’re interested to try it. Simply enter the coupon code NS20 at the checkout when you hit their website:  https://www.thenakedsack.com/

Until next time – stay amazeballs people.

Kilometres this week: 20.5