Managing Diabetes Through Your Diet

A nutritious diet and an exercise regime are necessary for a healthy lifestyle, even if you aren’t ill. If you have diabetes, it becomes all the more crucial. The good news is that a diabetic-friendly diet need not necessarily be too different from that of a regular healthy person. Among the things to watch out for, are the timing and quantity of your meals.

For nutrition, a balanced diet with low-fat content and fewer calories primarily help in diabetes management. Fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are beneficial to consume. Focus on your carbohydrate intake to keep your body weight in check. And consumption of fibre-rich foods helps you feel more satiated. It helps keep your blood sugar, cholesterol, and lipids in check.

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Far from being a compromise for your tastebuds, a diabetes-friendly diet is more about your overall dietary plan than about giving up on your favourite foods.

To Put It Briefly,

Eat More:

• Whole grain, High-fibre cereals, and bread
• Eggs, low-fat dairy, unsweetened yoghurt, and beans
• Fresh and more colourful vegetables and fruits
• Nuts, olive oil, fish oil, flax seeds, and avocados
• Organic turkey, chicken, fish, and shellfish

• And Eat Less:

  • Red and processed meat
  • Refined pasta or rice, sugary cereals, and white bread
  • Packaged and fast foods, baked goods, sweets, chips, and desserts
  • Low-fat products with fat and added sugar, especially fat-free yoghurt

  Read on, for a few more tips, suggestions and hacks to make your diabetes-friendly diet both interesting and effective.

  1. Limit Refined Carbohydrates And Focus On High-Fiber Complex Carbohydrates.

  Carbohydrates have a greater impact on blood sugar levels than proteins and fats. Therefore, indulge your taste for carbs carefully. Limit refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, rice, soda, candy, packaged food and fast food. High-fibre complex carbohydrates digest more slowly, which flattens the spikes in your blood sugar levels after meals.

  2.

3. Don’t Sweat The Sweets

• A diagnosis of diabetes isn’t a life sentence of abstinence from sweets. With moderate eating habits, you can still enjoy your favourite dessert tension-free, but once in a while. Keep in mind the following:
• Don’t switch from consuming too much sweet to no sweet at all. Manage your craving, slowly and steadily. Give your body sufficient time to adjust to the new diet.
• Compensate for the sweets you consume by cutting down on carb-heavy food like bread, rice and pasta in the same meal.
• Avoid eating sweets as a separate dish. Instead, add it to your whole meal diet.
• Make sweets healthier by adding good fats like peanut butter, ricotta cheese, and yoghurt. Fats generally slow down the digestive process, which means blood sugar levels do not spike too quickly.

Tricks to control your sugar intake:

• Reduce the amount of sugar in recipes
• Check labels and choose low sugar products
• Avoid having soft drinks, juices, and soda
• Start eating half the dessert than you would normally have
• Find alternatives to satisfy your sweet tooth

4. Be More Attentive While You Consume Alcohol

Alcohol can interfere with diabetes medication and insulin. Thus, it is critical to monitor your blood glucose levels if and when you consume alcohol.

5. Beware Of Hidden Sugar Content

While it is easy to avoid desserts, it is more important to avoid food that is not sweet yet contains sugar. Sugar content is not explicitly stated on the labels of packaged foods, fast food meals, bread, cereals, canned goods, pasta sauce, margarine, instant mashed potatoes, frozen dinners, low-fat meals, sauces, and ketchup. Always spare a minute to read the ingredient list to be able to mindfully avoid sugar-containing packaged food.

6. Choose The Right Fats

Not all fats are healthy for our body. Some are unhealthy and can harm the body in many ways. Unhealthy fats include oils, red meat, dairy products etc. Healthy fats include Fish, olive oil, nuts, flax seeds, avocado etc.

7. Get More Active

By regular exercise, it is possible to improve your insulin sensitivity and manage your weight. To start your exercise routine, begin with a 30 minutes’ walk regularly. Along with this, you can try swimming, biking, running, and other moderate-intensity activities that make you breathe heavily. Once you meticulously adopt a diabetes-friendly lifestyle, you will become more aware of the effect of diet on your physiology. The two strategies given below have been found particularly useful.

• Eat regularly and on time.
• Keep a food diary.
• Following a specially designed diabetes-friendly diet plan will help you to keep your blood sugar level under control and prevent further complications. To maintain a healthy balance, be in regular touch with your doctor and dietician, who will help you create a diabetes diet plan and a workout routine that best suits you.