Whether you have diabetes or not eating a healthy and nutritious diet is crucial. To feel good and energetic, a balanced diet is essential irrespective if you have diabetes or not. Diabetes is a medical condition that impairs the body’s ability to process blood sugar/ glucose. It can lead to a buildup of sugars that can lead to complications like heart attack, stroke and other medical complications. Doctors say that “the more weight you lose the more you’ll improve your levels of blood sugar.”
Meal planning is of great importance if you are handling diabetes. Both nutrition and physical activity is important in diabetes management. You need to balance what you eat and drink with physical activity and medication if any to manage your blood sugar.
Listed below are some steps for diet in diabetes management:
- Eat a variety of foods in each meal, including healthy fats, lean meats or proteins, whole grains, and low-fat dairy.
- Choose fiber-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains as much as possible, like brown bread, bran cereals, whole wheat pasta, and brown rice.
- Choose calorie-free liquids such as unsweetened tea, coffee or water.
- Choose sugar substitutes.
- Explore alternatives to meat such as lentils, beans or tofu.
- Enjoy having regular meals, starting with breakfast first, then lunch and dinner. Space meals no more than 6 hours apart.
- Healthy eating for diabetes is healthy eating for the whole family.
- You should not skip any meals.
- Avoid eating heavy and fatty meals.
- Avoid eating saturated fats like butter, palm oil, and coconut oil.
- Avoid eating salty food.
- Avoid very sweet foods as it can raise your blood sugar levels.
A diet full of leafy greens, eggs, fatty fish, nuts, yogurt, fruits, cinnamon, flaxseeds, chia seeds turmeric and many other natural food items are extremely good for diet for diabetes. Uncontrolled blood sugar levels can increase the risk of many serious diseases. It is best to follow a healthy lifestyle with balance diet and physical exercise.
A diet that focusses on diabetes management helps to keep your blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol under control, lose weight, delay or prevent diabetes related problems and make you energetic and feel good.