Diabetes means the inefficiency of your body to make use of insulin properly or the insulin won’t function at all. Diabetes leads to increased level of sugar in your blood. Only a healthy diabetic diet helps you to keep the blood sugar level at control. Keeping your blood sugar level under control can prevent the complications of diabetes.
The food items in a diabetic diet should be flexible and your lifestyle and health needs should be taken into account. A dietitian can help you prepare a diet plan for you.
A healthy diabetic diet gives importance to
- Divide three heavy meals into six small meals.
- Limit the sweets
- Make you aware about the amount of carbohydrates that you are consuming.
- More importance to fruits, vegetables and whole-grain foods
- Avoiding or limiting fatty foods
- Limit the consumption of alcohol
Diet plays a crucial role in the treatment of diabetes. The diet may be followed alone or it may be carried along with insulin injections.
A diabetic diet plan depends up on a person’s age, height, weight, sex, nature of the diabetes and the person’s physical activity. While planning a diabetic diet, the following points should be also taken into consideration:
- Whether the person is having any other complication such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure etc.
- The energy requirement should be taken into consideration.
- The type of food preparation, the amount of carbohydrates, fibre etc should be determined.
Diabetic diet is broadly classified into two types: measured and unmeasured diet. In the case of a measured diabetes diet, the quantity of your meal has to be measured to ensure whether it is according to the prescription. But in an unmeasured diabetes diet, the diet prescribed to you should follow continuously without any measure in food quantities.
Foods that have to be avoided in a diabetic diet:
Food items such as sugar, honey, glucose and all types of sweets, chocolates and candies should be avoided.
Foods that have to be limited:
Alcoholic beverages, bananas, cakes and pastries, dry fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes, mangoes, grapes, fried foods, fried and oily foods and yam.
Foods that have to be consumed more:
Green and leafy vegetables, buttermilk, cucumber, tomatoes, radish and soups etc.
A diabetic diet should comprise of proteins, carbohydrates, and fat in required amount. Out of the required calories, half should come from complex carbohydrates. This comprises of vegetables, fruit, cereals, whole grain breads, and milk and milk products having low fat.
Instead of cooked vegetables, consume raw salads as they digest very slowly. Most of the people mistakes that just because of having a food that does not contain sugar, it does not mean that your blood sugar levels remains low or controlled. In diabetic diet importance is given to the type of food, the amount of food, and in what form the food is eaten.
Since all the consumed carbohydrates are converted into glucose, its consumption should be regulated. The main concern in diabetes is that the body cannot handle the blood sugar level, so it is necessary to slow down the rising of glucose levels.
A diabetic diet is all about calories, and the right amount of carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, salads and low fat dairy milk, and cereals in the right form helps to achieve the desired result.
