Today, in my French class, I have given a 10 minute talk on the BDS – completely in French. At the end I realised I had been speaking for 40 minutes and answered so many questions. None of the people I was with speak English and vary between North African, Dominican, French, Italian, Russian and Japanese, oh and me, English. It turned out one or two had family members with diabetes and wanted me to talk to them separately, after class. One wanted to know if her baby would have diabetes as her mother has it and what can she do to prevent it for herself and her baby. Someone wanted to know if it would help his cholesterol, the questions went on and on.

The message I did manage to get across for all members of the class and not just for diabetics is that changing the way you eat and reducing simple carbohydrates for more complex ones will improve their health. I had a photocopy of the ‘old’ food pyramid with 6+ cereals (incl pots, rice etc) as the mainstay of their diet to the new pyramid which rank cereals as a less important part of the diet. They all wanted a photocopy of the new pyramid which the teacher provided.

I know it was just a small group of 15 people but from little acorns etc……..

You are wonderful! So amazing!! Congrats!

Fantastic sunshine-girl.:-)

Go girl!!

And to do all that in another language, wow! Knowing what you want to say but trying to find the right vocab….

I wasn’t allowed any notes either, just bullet points to keep me on track and I had so many interruptions. My husband said he had no idea I spoke French so well. Maybe he’ll stop butting in and try to correct me.

The main point is that I managed to persuade a few people to take another look at their diets. The thing that stuck a chord was, in class yesterday we had to talk about health and someone showed the pyramid of idea meals and today I went in and blasted it to pieces. They all wanted a copy of the new version. I found it on an Australian website, most others still show the old one. I also told them to look on Amazon for French books on the subject but to watch out for fakes.

I also found out my teacher had bought a spirilizer on my advice several weeks ago. She told the group how good courgetti is and I told them how to make cauliflower rice and mash.

Well done! Great that you’re spreading the word but even better that you did it all in French!

Will be interesting to see if anybody asks for more information from you when they’ve had time to absorb it all.

Well done sunshine-girl 😀💐

thank you for the flowers Lynne. I have said on another thread, I even lifted my jumper and showed them my midriff, full of pock marks, scars and bruises where I have injected, I wanted them to know how serious this is. This wasn’t even my usual class so they were half regulars and half total strangers, men and women. I got a round of applause and a ‘bravo’ at the end. My teacher wants me to give the talk again but to the regular class I attend. On verra (French for, we will see). I woke up this morning still dreaming about it, or was it a nightmare. It is over now – don’t really want to do it again, but if I do it will be in front of people I know much better.