By Healthy Hueman: Sabi K
You have the power to control diabetes with every bite of food you put in your mouth. If you have Type 2 diabetes, the power to stabilize your blood glucose and supercharge your health lies with you. It is built on three principles: eating the right foods, getting enough exercise, and keeping a positive, low-stress approach to life, allowing you to lose weight, stave off diabetes-related complications, regain your energy and feel terrific. The system is simple, convenient, and requires no special food or equipment
So what’s the secret behind eating to manage diabetes? The issue isn’t carbs vs. protein or low fat vs. high fat. How much you eat is just as important as what you eat. It’s kilojoules that count. That’s because when you lose weight, your cells’ response to insulin improves.
Diabetes is a numbers game.The vital numbers include your blood glucose, and the numbers on the scales.To lose weight, you have to eat less. But don’t worry, you won’t be nibbling like a rabbit. You should aim to consume a total of 5500 kJ a day, or 6750 kJ a day if you’re larger or more active. For some people, this might simply mean snacking on an apple instead of a chocolate bar.
How To Eat To Manage Diabetes
Carbs
While it’s smart to limit the carbs you eat at one sitting, it’s just as important to choose the right ones – the ‘slow-burning’ low-GI carbs. That means switching to grainy slices of bread, legumes, and pasta. Doing this, along with eating five servings of vegetables a day, bulks up your fiber intake. High fiber, low GI is key because it slows digestion and keeps blood glucose from rising quickly after a meal. This effect is so powerful that it can lower your overall blood glucose levels.
Fat
Eating less fat is essential to weight loss, but so is switching the type of fat: fat from fish and olive or canola oil is your best friend. Fat from meat and butter is your worst enemy.
Vegetables
Vegetables are low in kilojoules yet high in volume because a lot of their weight comes from water. By eating more vegetables, you may also eat less fat – and that’s important, since fat has more than twice the kilojoules of carbohydrates or protein. (Fruit is good for you, too. Although it contains sugar in the form of fructose, it isn’t absorbed as quickly as the sucrose in table sugar and sweets. And fruit packs plenty of disease-fighting nutrients.)
Sugar
Cutting back on sweets is key. The real problem with sweets is that they load you up with kilojoules that provide little nutrition. To sidestep those calories, consider using sugar alternatives.
Calories
We’re not suggesting you count all the calories you consume, but you should develop a sense of how many kilojoules the foods you eat contain, and use that information to see if you’re eating about the right number of kilojoules throughout the day.
Whole Foods
You should limit high-GI foods such as refined bread, most bought cereals, and rice, and favor wholegrain low-GI foods, beans, and low-fat dairy. These are your energy foods. They supply a steady stream of fuel and don’t propel you up and down a blood glucose roller-coaster that leaves you tired when you hit a trough. Energy is very important to the quality of life, and we want you to have plenty!
Energy
It’s important to eat five servings of vegetables a day and to plan your meals ahead of time every week to make sure they fit the bill and to help you avoid last-minute grabs for greasy takeaway or pizza. You should be eating small meals and snacks at least five times a day to keep your blood glucose steady and your metabolism in high gear.