Diabetic Diet
If you have diabetes, your body cannot make or properly use insulin. This leads to high blood glucose, or sugar, levels in your blood. Healthy diabetic diet eating helps to reduce your blood sugar. It is a critical part of managing your diabetes, because controlling your blood sugar can prevent the complications of diabetes.
Wise food choices are a foundation of diabetes treatment. Diabetes experts suggest meal plans that are flexible and take your lifestyle and other health needs into account. A registered dietitian can help you design a meal plan.
Healthy diabetic eating includes
- Limiting sweets
- Eating often
- Being careful about when and how many carbohydrates you eat
- Eating lots of whole-grain foods, fruits and vegetables
- Eating less fat
- Limiting your use of alcohol
This means choosing a diet that emphasizes vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Rather than a restrictive diabetic diet foods, it's a healthy-eating plan that's naturally rich in nutrients and low in fat and calories. In fact, it's the best eating plan for anyone who wants to manage his or her weight and adopt healthier eating habits.
Planning your meals
Your meal plan is an eating guide that helps you:
- Establish a routine for eating meals and snacks at regular times every day
- Choose the healthiest foods in the right amounts at each meal
If you need to lose weight or you're taking diabetes medications or insulin, you may need to follow a more deliberate plan — eating only a recommended number of servings from each food group every day. Your doctor may suggest working with a registered dietitian to tailor your diet based on your health goals, tastes and lifestyle. Together you'll determine which meal-planning tools might work best for you — such as carbohydrate counting or exchange lists.
Counting carbohydrates
Carbohydrate counting can be a helpful meal-planning tool, especially if you take diabetes medications or insulin. Eating the same amount of carbohydrates at each meal or snack will keep your blood sugar from going too high or too low throughout the day. If you're taking insulin, your diabetes educator can teach you how to count the amount of carbohydrates in each meal or snack and adjust your insulin dose accordingly.
The amount of protein or fat in the meal or snack generally isn't a factor when determining the insulin dose. However, that doesn't mean that you can go overboard on low-carbohydrate foods or those that don't contain carbohydrates, such as meat and fats. Remember, too many calories and too much fat and cholesterol over the long term may lead to weight gain, heart disease, stroke and other diseases.
Some people who have diabetes use the glycemic index to select foods — especially carbohydrates. Foods with a high glycemic index are associated with greater increases in blood sugar than are foods with a low glycemic index. But low-index foods aren't necessarily healthier. Foods that are high in fat tend to have lower glycemic index values than do some healthy foods.
If you're counting carbohydrates, work with your dietitian to learn how to do it properly to meet your specific needs.
Using exchange lists
Your dietitian may recommend using the exchange system, which groups foods into categories — such as starches, fruits, meats and meat substitutes, and fats.
One serving in a group is called an "exchange." An exchange has about the same amount of carbohydrates, protein, fat and calories — and the same effect on your blood sugar — as a serving of every other food in the same group. So you can exchange — or trade — half of a medium baked potato (3 ounces) for 1/3 cup of baked beans or 1/2 cup of corn because they're all one starch serving.
Your dietitian can help you use an exchange list to figure out your daily meal plan. He or she will recommend a certain number of servings from each food group based on your individual needs.
Consistency and variety are key
Consistent eating habits can help you control your blood sugar levels. Every day try to eat about the same amount of food at about the same time. Include a variety of foods to help meet your nutritional goals.
Know your barriers
To maintain your diet for diabetes, it helps to identify potential barriers and the means to break through them. Barriers to following your diabetes diet may include:
- Financial issues. Buying lots of fresh fruits and vegetables can be expensive. But keep in mind that you're buying fewer less-nutritious foods, such as chips and sweets. You may also buy less meat. This saves you money.
- Cultural barriers. From burritos to jambalaya to fry bread, food is an expression of culture. But all cuisine can be prepared in healthier ways. You can find diabetic cookbooks that focus on foods from different cultures and ethnicities. These books contain plenty of ideas for making traditional foods healthier. If you have friends with diabetes or know of someone with the condition, ask for cooking tips.
- Family issues. Food is often the center of social and family life. Sometimes family members aren't supportive of the changes you're trying to make. A family member may feel rejected if you say no to his or her special dish. Discuss your diabetes diet and your diabetes treatment goals with family members and ask for their support. Reassure family members that you're not rejecting them — just their unhealthy food choices. Let them know that your health comes first.
- Social pressure. It's hard to turn down a dessert or snack when it's offered to you. If you're watching football with friends and everyone's drinking beer and eating potato chips, the temptation to join in can be hard to resist. The best way to deal with potentially difficult situations is to anticipate and plan for them. Consider ways you can eat a favorite dish without totally abandoning your diet plan. For example, decide you're going to have pizza at the party, but only one slice. Another option is to bring your own healthier snacks to get-togethers, with enough to share. Think through what you'll eat and drink before you arrive, and stick to your plan.
The motivation to stick with your diabetes diet will improve as you begin to experience the benefits of your hard work. You'll likely:
- Feel better. If you eat too much at once, or eat too many carbohydrates, your blood sugar can rise markedly. This may cause you to feel tired and generally crummy. When you follow your diabetes diet, you feel better.
- Decrease your risk of low blood sugar. If you skip meals or don't eat the right foods, you may experience low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). Signs and symptoms of low blood sugar include sweating, shakiness, weakness, dizziness and irritability. Severely low blood sugar can lead to diabetic coma. Following a regular eating schedule and meal plan reduces this risk.
- Better control your weight. With an eating plan, you're less likely to overeat or eat too much of the wrong foods. Being overweight makes it more difficult to control your blood sugar. It also increases your risk of many other medical problems, such as heart disease and stroke.
- Maintain greater control of your diabetes. Knowing how various foods and eating patterns affect your blood sugar will help you achieve and maintain better control of your disease.