If you have diabetes, your main concern will be regulating your blood sugar level.  Regardless of what type of diabetes you have, your health professional will probably be recommending a diet for you to follow.  A diet designed for diabetes requires no special preparations or ingredients, but there are certain foods that you will have to eat in moderation and some that you might want to avoid altogether.  Here are ways you can design a diabetes diet (with the help of a health professional, of course):

Go natural.
An effective diabetes diet should limit your intake of junk food, which can affect your blood sugar level.  Maintain a diet that focuses on whole grains, cereals, fruits and vegetables.

Unprocessed foods such as raw fruits are not only healthful, they are also filling.  Instead of grabbing a bag of chips for snacks, eat half a fruit or a small serving of vegetable salad.  With the fiber fruits and vegetables have, you can satisfy your hunger and still follow your diabetes diet.

Count your carbohydrates.
If you’re taking insulin or other diabetes medications, you will need to watch your carbohydrates.  Keeping your sources of carbohydrates planned throughout the day will help regulate blood sugar levels.  This will also allow you to adjust the amount of insulin you will have to use.

Lower your meat and fat intake.
Protein and fat don’t usually affect your insulin dose but you still should control the amount in your diet.  If you don’t watch your intake, you could gain weight, increasing your risk of developing heart diseases.

It’s in the portion.
Eating in healthy, recommended portions is important in maintaining a diabetes diet.  Have a plan designed around foods that you are allowed to eat.  Your goal is to maintain a healthy diet and not starve or overeat. 

Consider a diet that that you can use for weight management.  Since weight loss is often a goal for people with diabetes, use portion control.  Follow the recommended serving number by your dietitian or health professional.

To give you an idea of how much of what food you will be eating, here is a list of nutrients and the corresponding percentage of calories your diabetes diet should contain on a daily basis:

Carbohydrates = 45% – 65%
Protein = 15% - 20%
Fat = 20% - 30%

Using portion control will ensure that you will be eating the same amount of nutrients and calories daily, ensuring that your blood sugar is regulated.  If you vary your portion radically, you might find it difficult to control

Use an exchange list.
An exchange list is a system that puts certain foods into categories with corresponding calorie equivalents.  These categories include fats, fruits, meats (including meat substitutes) and starches.  A serving of each food or category is referred to as an exchange.  For example, you can swap half a cup of cooked corn for ½ of a baked potato (medium sized) or half of a hamburger for ¾ cup of cooked pasta.

To use an exchange list as part of your diabetes diet, you will have to ask for the assistance of your dietitian, who will design a diet based on foods that will work for your particular taste and needs.  Integrating an exchange list into your diabetes diet is an excellent way of adding variety to your daily meal plan while maintaining the proper amount of nutrients you will need.

Exchange lists were designed by the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association.  If you want to see what foods are included in these exchange lists, go to www.diabetes.org for more information.  The sites are also rich sources of information to give you an idea of how to design your diabetes diet.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Diet Plans at a Glance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.