How to Manage Your Blood Sugar Better With a Diabetes Diet Regime
With better control over one's dietary and lifestyle choices, one can successfully manage diabetes.
Perhaps it's best to state at this point that these choices are not the easiest to live with or follow, but they do help control your blood sugar levels.
The changes that will make a big difference are your dietary ones.
Depending on what and how you have been eating so far, you may need a full nutritional overhaul so that your blood glucose is normalized.
But managing diabetes is only one benefit; the other is you will get to lower and maintain a good body weight which is a plus.
So what makes up a healthy diabetic diet? Do you have to change your grocery shopping list completely? Do you need to give up meat? Hopefully, we can answer all these questions to your satisfaction.
The reason for changing your diet is to have better control over your calorific needs.
And this is usually where one starts.
You should understand your metabolism rate and roughly know how much calories your body needs to get through the day.
Once you have established this, you can count how many calories you eat, so that most of what you eat is used up.
The goal is to prevent glucose from staying in the blood.
How many times should you eat? It is recommended to eat five to six times a day on average.
When you take three large meals, your glucose level will shoot up, then gradually decrease to a hypoglycemic state, and this is not good.
To help manage the glucose level, you can try o snack in small quantity between breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The snacks need to be kept healthy and light, since they are only meant to give you enough calories and glucose to get you through to your next meal.
The question on carbohydrates makes an entry at this point.
How many servings should you have? Well, carbohydrates are good for you, diabetic or not, and your body uses them to get energy.
Depending on your preference, you can opt for a high carbohydrate and fiber diet with an exercise routine or simply a low carbohydrate diet.
These two work either ways, as long as you take complex carbohydrates that are rich in starch like potatoes, instead of simpler ones.
If you can balance up your diet with other important foods such as fruits and vegetables, you should not have any major issue.
It is essential for a diabetic patient to increase the intake of fiber in his diet.
Fiber is important as it moves things along in the digestive tract.
Besides it reduces the speed at which glucose is absorbed into the body, and this is why it is so important.
Your source of fiber will have to come from beans, leafy vegetables, brown rice, whole grains and not from any meat.
It is important to consult a doctor or a dietitian to help in your diet formulation in order to get the desired results of controlling your blood sugar level.
Perhaps it's best to state at this point that these choices are not the easiest to live with or follow, but they do help control your blood sugar levels.
The changes that will make a big difference are your dietary ones.
Depending on what and how you have been eating so far, you may need a full nutritional overhaul so that your blood glucose is normalized.
But managing diabetes is only one benefit; the other is you will get to lower and maintain a good body weight which is a plus.
So what makes up a healthy diabetic diet? Do you have to change your grocery shopping list completely? Do you need to give up meat? Hopefully, we can answer all these questions to your satisfaction.
The reason for changing your diet is to have better control over your calorific needs.
And this is usually where one starts.
You should understand your metabolism rate and roughly know how much calories your body needs to get through the day.
Once you have established this, you can count how many calories you eat, so that most of what you eat is used up.
The goal is to prevent glucose from staying in the blood.
How many times should you eat? It is recommended to eat five to six times a day on average.
When you take three large meals, your glucose level will shoot up, then gradually decrease to a hypoglycemic state, and this is not good.
To help manage the glucose level, you can try o snack in small quantity between breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The snacks need to be kept healthy and light, since they are only meant to give you enough calories and glucose to get you through to your next meal.
The question on carbohydrates makes an entry at this point.
How many servings should you have? Well, carbohydrates are good for you, diabetic or not, and your body uses them to get energy.
Depending on your preference, you can opt for a high carbohydrate and fiber diet with an exercise routine or simply a low carbohydrate diet.
These two work either ways, as long as you take complex carbohydrates that are rich in starch like potatoes, instead of simpler ones.
If you can balance up your diet with other important foods such as fruits and vegetables, you should not have any major issue.
It is essential for a diabetic patient to increase the intake of fiber in his diet.
Fiber is important as it moves things along in the digestive tract.
Besides it reduces the speed at which glucose is absorbed into the body, and this is why it is so important.
Your source of fiber will have to come from beans, leafy vegetables, brown rice, whole grains and not from any meat.
It is important to consult a doctor or a dietitian to help in your diet formulation in order to get the desired results of controlling your blood sugar level.