10 Simple Tips To Create Your Own Diabetes Healthy Diet

One of the biggest challenges of managing diabetes is sticking to a healthy diabetes diet. If you follow a few simple rules this can be a lot easier to do. Moreover, you don’t have to try to make every change at once. Take it one step at a time, adopting each of these simple tips to transform your diet into one that can help you keep diabetes in check.

10 Diabetes Diet Tips To Stay Healthy

• Go Whole

This should be the foundation of your diet because simply eliminating processed foods in favour of whole foods will lower your intake of simple carbs, added sugar, trans fats, and other ingredients that can raise your blood sugar or cause other complications. Instead of bread or pasta, opt for brown rice or amaranth. You can look for other food swaps as well to ensure that you follow a whole food diet. 

• Increase Fruit & Veggie Intake

Fresh fruits and veggies are low in calories and high in nutrition, giving you almost all of the vitamins, minerals, and fibre that you need to stay healthy. While the glycaemic index is an important consideration, most fresh fruits and veggies won’t pose a problem if eaten in moderation. That’s why it’s also best to eat these foods whole, instead of as juices or smoothies.

• Opt For Healthy Fats

While you will want to avoid saturated fats that can increase the risk of heart disease, healthy fats play an important role in your diet. While limiting foods like red meats, processed meats, butter, deep-fried foods, and ghee, increase your intake of nuts, seeds, fatty fish, olive oil, and sunflower oil to ensure that you get healthy fats in your diet. Just remember to eat these foods in moderation.

• Power Up With Protein

Increasing your protein intake will help to keep you satiated for longer and reduces the risk of food cravings and weight gain. When choosing protein rich foods, just make sure to choose lean meats and plant-based protein from foods like pulses, nuts, fish, eggs, and poultry.  

• Cut Back On Salt

High sodium or salt intake is one of the biggest risk factors for high blood pressure. This can give rise to heart disease as well as kidney disease, which is a high risk for diabetes patients. Avoiding pre-cooked meals and processed foods, while having home-cooked meals instead, will allow you to control your salt intake. You can also try low sodium diets like the DASH diet.

• Watch Your Portion Size

Eating heavy meals just twice or thrice a day increases the risk of blood sugar spikes. To keep blood sugar levels stable, it is best to eat smaller and balanced meals throughout the day so that your body has a steady supply of energy. This also lowers the risk of overeating and making unhealthy food choices.

• Read The Fine Print

When buying any food or food products from stores, make it a point to check the caloric content, carbs, fibre, fat, and other ingredients, whether or not the product is marketed as ‘healthy’ or ‘natural’. This will help you avoid hidden sugar and salt that is often included in packaged foods. 

• Try Meal Prepping

Prepping your meals in advance can make it much easier to stick to a healthy diet. This practice is particularly helpful if you have a lot to manage and are often rushed for time. By doing so, the lack of time will never be an excuse to skip a meal or make an unhealthy choice. Meal prepping is useful not just for your lunch and dinner, but also for snacks. 

• Satisfy Sweet Cravings

Satisfy your sweet cravings with fresh fruits that you can use to make delicious fruit salads. If fresh fruits don’t do it for you, make a homemade sugar free sorbet to satisfy your dessert cravings.

• Skip The ‘Diabetic’ Food

In many parts of the world, it is now illegal to market food products as ‘diabetic’. That’s because such foods have no proven benefits despite years of research and eating whole food alternatives is much healthier. These foods also often use artificial sweeteners and other ingredients, with the end result being that they can still affect blood sugar levels and cause other side effects. 

References:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/
• https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/managing/eat-well/meal-plan-method.html
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835583/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4995182/