The food you choose to eat, can be powerfully important for your overall health and well being.Your diet can make an enormous difference to cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose levels.
The diabetic meal plan is designed to help control blood sugar levels, the less fluctuation, especially rapid release of glucose in the blood is an important aspect of blood sugar control in patients with diabetes mellitus.
It was once thought that the diabetes diet was focused mainly around just cutting out sugar from your diet. However more recently it seems the recommendations for a good diabetic diet focus on a more healthy eating plan high in fibre and low in saturated fats, including a moderate amount of whole grain carbohydrates.
Moreover, a small amount of sugar isn’t a problem, as we now understand that the foods rich in starchy carbohydrates cause more of an increase in blood sugar levels than does sugar.
Some Interesting FACTS to help with Diabetic Meal Planning
1. A good diabetic diet should be a balanced meal plan tailored to your needs, tastes, lifestyles and activity level while aiming to provide all the diabetic needs while keeping the blood sugar as near normal as possible.
2. Not all so called “sugar free” foods are calorie free. There really is a lot of ‘marketing gimmicks’ out there. Some food products that are labeled sugar free, also contain carbohydrates which is in the form of starch. This will certainly increase your blood glucose levels. Choose starchy foods such as whole grains, as they are high in fibre.
3. Fat Facts! Fat doesn’t directly impact blood glucose levels, however if your meal does contain a large amount of fat, this can certainly cause the stomach to empty at a much slower rate and slow down the digestion of carbohydrates. Your blood glucose levels will stay higher for longer, which in turn makes it more difficult to keep your levels within the desired range.
4. When you are experiencing a Hypoglycemia episode, don’t treat that as a good excuse to just go eating your favorite sweet treats uncontrollably. This will cause your blood glucose levels to spike.
If you experience Hypoglycemia, it should be treated with approximately 15-20 g of carbohydrates (This would be for a reading of <4.9 mmol/L. Best to choose a fast acting carb – for instance jellied sweets, soda or juice.
5. Can I eat more protein, but cut down on carbohydrate? If you eat an excessive amount of anything, ie protein, you will also increase the level of fat that you consume and undoubtedly gain weight.
6. Diabetics should certainly eat fruits. Fruits are very good sources of fibre, antioxident vitamins and minerals, although they do contain carbohydrates. Aim for just 2 pieces of fresh fruit per day. (not canned)
Remember that a key objective of a diabetic diet is to reduce weight and keep it off, so a well planned diet is vital for the treatment of diabetes. Moreover, losing weight may not cure your diabetes, but will certainly help to control your levels which will improve your insulin resistance.
More than 1 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes each year and more than 200,000 deaths are attributed to the disease. If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, or simply want to take better care of how you eat is to your advantage to follow the diet for diabetic Americans, in order to keep the diabetes under control.
Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes must learn to follow a diet plan for diabetics to stay healthy. Following the plan of good eating, such as the American Diabetes Diet, diabetic patients are able to effectively control blood sugar without medication.
The reason for the American diet for diabetics is so highly effective is because it covers all food groups. The American diabetic diet plan recommends foods high in monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats and low in saturated fat. Most of the calories recommended in the American diet come mainly carbohydrates diabetes, second from fat, and protein.
The American Diabetes diet should be followed every day and made the following recommendations:
5 Servings of fruits and vegetables (spinach, broccoli and carrots
6 Servings whole grains (cereals, bread and pasta)
Every persons makeup is different, so are their bodily needs. Some of us require the consumption of calories.
American Diabetic Diet Plan for those who need 1200-1600 calories include:
Three servings fruits and vegetables
Two servings of milk, yogurt and meat
Three servings of fatty
Six servings of starches
The American Diabetes diet plan for people who need 1600-2000 calories include:
Three fruit serving
Four servings of vegetables
Two servings of milk, yogurt and meat
Four servings of fatty
Eight servings of starches
The diabetic diet menu for those who need 2000-2400 calories include:
Three servings fruit
Four servings of vegetables
Two servings of milk, yogurt and meat / br> <
Five servings of fatty
Eleven-portions of starches
The popular belief is that people with diabetes should not eat sweets. This is not always so. The American Diabetes diet recommends eating fresh, but in limited quantities. It’s important to eat low-calorie desserts or artificial sweeteners as a sugar substitute.
This particular diet plan is not only useful for people with diabetes, but for everyone. People with diabetes have the same nutritional needs as anyone else. And also the need for regular exercise is the same for people with diabetes as for those without.
The integration of the Diabetes exercise and diet, along with individually prescribed medications are essential to controlling diabetes. Have a well balanced diet and choose the right kind of foods, the diabetic patient can move the glucose to normal levels.
Controlling the blood glucose levels is the main objective of following the diabetic diet for Americans.
Be healthy and live a longer and happier life through the American diabetic diet. Before the commencement of any diet plan, it’s a good idea to consult your health care provider.
According to researchers in Denmark, drinking alcohol – three to four days per week, can reduce your risk of developing diabetes. Researchers in Denmark examined alcohol consumption patterns and found that people who drink moderately on three to four days per week are less likely to develop diabetes compared with abstainers. Wine is particularly beneficial because it is rich in compounds that help maintain blood sugar balance. The findings were published in the journal Diabetologia and the study was conducted by researchers from the University of Southern Denmark.
Diabetes arises when the body’s ability to use or make insulin is impaired. If this chronic disease is not controlled, it can result in hyperglycemia and this can cause serious damage to various organs in the body especially the eyes, heart, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels. The proportion of people living with diabetes worldwide has risen from 4.7% in 1980 to .5% in 2014.
In 2015, 1.6 million deaths were directly attributed to diabetes and high blood sugar was responsible for another 2.2 million deaths.
So Can Alcohol Lower Diabetes Risk?
Studies that have explored the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of developing diabetes have established that moderate to light consumption is linked to lower risk compared to abstaining. However, most of these studies have only examined the volume of consumption without looking at how the volume of consumption is spread over time.
The Danish researches also noted that although other studies explored drinking patterns such as number of drinking days each week and the effects of various types of alcoholic, their findings were inconclusive. Therefore, they decided to examine the link between alcohol consumption patterns and the risk of developing diabetes in the Danish population. The researchers analyzed responses from a total of 70,551 participants (41,847 women and 28,704 men) without diabetes. All the participants had answered questions about health and lifestyle and provided detailed reports abouts their alcohol drinking habits.
The participants were keenly followed until 2012 (for an average of 4.9 years) during which the researchers found out from the national diabetes register that 87 women and 859 men had developed diabetes.
Yes – The Types of alcoholic Drink Matters!
From the information, the researchers also determined drinking patterns, average weekly intake, consumption of different beverages and binge drinking. The team asked participants about their consumption patterns of specific types of beverages and their frequency of consuming alcohol.
Therefore, the researchers were able to classify participants into categories:
current and lifetime abstainers;
people who drank on 5 to 7 days each week;
on 3 to 4 days per week;
on 1 to 2 days each week;
and on less than 1 day each week.
A standard alcoholic drink in Denmark contains 12 grams of pure alcohol. This is less than the standard drink in the U.S which is 0.6 ounces (14 grams) of ethanol. The team also assessed binge drinking (drinking 5 or more drinks in one session). Binge drinking was classified into 3 categories:
more than one day per week,
less than 1 day per week,
and never.
The team also categorized drinking patterns for 3 types of alcoholic drinks: spirits, beer and wine. These drinks were assessed as: 7 or more drinks per week; between 1 and 6 drinks per week; and less than 1 drink each week. However, for men this category was further divided into: 7 to 13 drinks per week, and 14 or more alcoholic drinks each week.
When analyzing the data to determine the link with diabetes, the team adjusted the information to make allowance for the effect of other aspects that might influence it. Some of these factors include:
sex,
age,
smoking,
education level,
BMI (Body Mass Index),
blood pressure (previous or current),
leisure activities,
family history of diabetes,
and type of diet (such as fiber levels, fish, vegetables and fruit).
The study showed that participants who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol in terms of average consumption per week had the lowest diabetes risk.
Women who drank 9 drinks per week had a 58% lower risk of developing diabetes, and men who consumed an average of 14 alcoholic drinks each week had 43% lower diabetes risk compared with abstainers.
After analyzing drinking patterns, the researchers also found that participants who drank alcohol on three to four days each week had the lowest risk of diabetes. For women, the risk of developing diabetes was 32% lower and for men it was 27% lower compared with participants who only consumed alcohol on less than one day per week.
However, analysis of binge drinking data did not show any clear link to the risk of developing diabetes. The Danish researchers say that this might be due to the low number of participants who actually reported binge drinking. This made it difficult for the team to produce meaningful statistical result.
So – Which Alcoholic Drink is Best for Diabetes?
WINE
When it comes to the type of alcoholic drink, just as previous studies have found out, the team also discovered that high to moderate wine consumption is linked to a significantly lower diabetes risk.
They attributed this to the fact that red wine contains polyphenols, which help control blood sugar.
Compared with consuming less than one each week, drinking at least 7 drinks of wine per week is linked to a 25% to 30% lower risk of diabetes.
BEER
On the other hand, in terms of drinking beer, the study showed that men who drink between 1 and 6 per week had a 21% lower riskof diabetes, compared with men who drink less than one drink per week. However, for women, the study showed no ties to the risk of diabetes.
SPIRITS
In terms of spirit consumption, the team established that there’s no significant tie between the amount of spirits men drank and the risk of developing diabetes. The study also found that women who consume 7 or more drinks of spirits each week had an 83% higher risk of diabetes compared with those who had less than one drink each week.
These finding suggest that the frequency of drinking alcohol is linked with the risk of developing diabetes. Moreover, consuming alcohol over 3 to 4 days is linked with the lowest diabetes risk.
Exercise is good for us all – especially those with diabetes. With the correct amount of exercise to suit the individual and a sensible diet, there would be many type 2 diabetics out there that could avoid taking medication altogether!
There is no denying the importance of exercise for keeping healthy if you have diabetes. Exercise is vital for both Type 1 and type 2 diabetics helping the body to:
Respond better to insulin and reduce the amount of medication they take.
To keep circulation healthy in their arms and legs
To reduce their risk of depression
To keep their metabolism healthy and their muscles strong- this in turn helps with maintaining a healthy weight. Strong muscles also help to maintain independence with age.
What Exercise is Good for Diabetes?
If you have diabetes and you haven’t exercised for a while, you need to take it slow. OK so you can go out and hire a personal trainer, or even join the local gym but to be honest it’s really not necessary. Don’t over think this – there’s easier and cheaper ways out there that you can get all the exercise you need.
Good old fashioned walking. All you really need is some comfortable clothing and a good pair of walking shoes! And if you are lucky enough to live close by a beach, you don’t even need the shoes!
Always good to take it easy to start – even just 20 or 30 minutes per day – 5 days a week if you can manage it. This is going to help you see improvements in your haemoglobin A1C, your triglycerides and cholesterol. As you gradually build this up to 90 minutes per day, you really start to see the difference that exercise makes to your life. How you feel, how you look and even blood pressure!
Swimming is also another ideal exercise for people with Type 2 diabetes. Some diabetics also experience other conditions, like arthritis which can often make other forms of exercise painful and uncomfortable. Being in the water is less stressful for your body as it doesn’t put pressure on your joints. It’s also much easier on your feet. Swimming is great for weight loss and diabetes is quite often a factor with regards to obesity.
Exercise and Diabetes Prevention – Make Exercise a Habit!
If you have diabetes, you will certainly need to look at how you incorporate exercise into your daily life now. You need to make exercise a habit, that will in time become part of your life. If you find it difficult to get out to a park or beach to go walking, or you’re just not really into going to gyms, then perhaps have a look at all the FREE Apps that are available for your smart phone or Tablet! I love the 7 minute workout apps, and even the gentle stretching sessions that you can actually do just about anywhere! How about getting some diabetic exercise videos – or even getting into some gentle yoga exercise for diabetes.
Getting your daily dose of regular exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or that time consuming – you just have to commit to making it part of your daily life routine!
A significant number of studies have shown that a low-carb diet for diabetics can be highly effective not only for healthy weight loss, but also for improving numerous measures of risk for diabetes and heart disease. A research by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reported that a low fat diet does not have any advantage over the Atkins low carbohydrate diet.
In fact, the study shows that the low carb diet actually has various significant advantages. This news is very important especially because most conventional doctors still believe that low carb diets are dangerous despite substantial evidence to the contrary.
What is the Atkins diet and how does it work?
The Atkins diet is popular across the globe and numerous books have been written about the diet since its original promotion by Dr. Robert C. Atkins, a physician who wrote a bestselling book about the Atkins diet in 1972. Initially, the diet was demonized and considered unhealthy by most mainstream health authorities largely due to its high saturated fat content.
New studies show that saturated fat is not harmful and since then the Atkins diet has been studied extensively and shown to lean to greater improvement in blood sugar, triglycerides, HDL (good cholesterol) and actually leads to greater fat loss compared to low fat diets.
The reason why a low carb diet is effective for boosting various health makers and weight loss is that when you eat more protein and reduce carbohydrate intake, your appetite goes down and you end up eating fewer calories without even having to think or work on it.
Phases of the Atkins Diet
The Atkins diet is divided into four main phases:
Phase 1: Induction
Eat less about 20 grams of carbohydrates per day for two weeks. Kick-start the diet and weight loss by eating high protein, high-fat with leafy greens or other low carb vegetables.
Phase 2: Balancing
Gradually add more low-carb vegetables, nuts and a small amount of fruits to your diet.
Phase 3: Fine-tuning
Add more carbohydrates to your diet in case you don’t want to lose weight.
Phase 4: Maintenance
Eat as many carbohydrates as the body can tolerate without gaining weight.
Foods you should avoid on a Low Carb Diet Plan for Diabetics.
Grains such as rice, barley, rye, wheat and spelt.
Sugar including fruit juices, soft drinks, ice cream, candy and cake
Trans fats that are found in processed foods. Such foods usually have the word ��hydrogenated’ on the list of ingredients.
High carb vegetables including turnips and carrots (induction phase only)
Starches such as sweet potatoes and potatoes (induction phase only)
High carb fruits such as apples, pears, bananas, grapes and oranges (induction phase only).
Legumes including beans, chickpeas, and lentils ((induction phase only).
Foods to include on your Low Carb Diabetic Diet Menu.
Your diet should be based around these healthy foods:
Meats: Pork, bacon, chicken, beef lamb and others
Sea foods and fatty fish: Sardines, trout and salmon
Eggs: pastured or Omega-3 enriched
Low-carb vegetables: Spinach, asparagus, broccoli, kales and others
Full-fat dairy: Cheese, butter, full-fat yoghurt and cream.
Nuts and seeds: Macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, walnuts and almonds
Healthy fats: Coconut oil, avocado oil, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil.
Sample day’s menu for people on the Atkins Diet for Diabetes Type 1
This is what you might eat during a day of the first phase of the Atkins diet:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese and sautéed onions. Some of the acceptable beverages include herbal tea, water, tea and coffee.
Lunch: Chef Salad with bacon, salad and avocado dressing.
Dinner: Asparagus, baked salmon steak, and arugula salad with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes along with any allowable beverage.
Snacks: You should have two snacks on a typical day. The snacks may include Atkins diet products such as granola bar, or chocolate shake or simple snacks such as cheddar cheese and celery.
Health benefits of the Atkins diet
The Atkins eating plan can improve or prevent serious health conditions such as type 1 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. It’s essential to keep in mind that can help you shed excess weight can also reverse or reduce the risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In fact, most diets that can help you lose excess weight, (not just low carbs diets) can improve blood sugar level and blood cholesterol.
Some studies show that people who follow the Atkins diet had improved triglycerides, which suggests better heart health. However, there are no major studies that show whether the benefits increase how long we live or whether they hold up for the long term.
However, you should always check with your physician or diabetes management team before starting on a new eating plan like the Atkins diet, especially if you have serious health conditions such as kidney disease and diabetes.
1. A good diabetic diet should be a balanced meal plan tailored to your needs, tastes, lifestyles and activity level while aiming to provide all the diabetic needs while keeping the blood sugar as near normal as possible.
If you have diabetes and you haven’t exercised for a while, you need to take it slow. OK so you can go out and hire a personal trainer, or even join the local gym but to be honest it’s really not necessary. Don’t over think this – there’s easier and cheaper ways out there that you can get all the exercise you need.
