Diabetes, Type I or Type II, is a big subject to make sense of. Building your own personalized food plan is really a matter of developing healthy eating habits, a key part of your self-management process. How do you do it? Here are the basics:
- Understand food nutrients
- Choose foods that will help you manage your blood glucose
- Control portion size
- Develop consistent eating habits
- Get help
Understand food. There are three basic nutrients in foods - fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Fats work to repair body cells and help them function. Extra fat, as most of us know to our sorrow, can be stored in all sorts of places around the human body; it is meant to function as a backup energy source. Fats are found in nuts, butter, and oils, among other things. Proteins are strong guys, acting to build and repair muscles, bones, organs, and other tissues. Protein is found primarily in eggs, meat, poultry, and fish. Carbohydrates provide your body with energy, and are found in fruits, starchy foods such as bread, rice, and pasta, and in many other foods. Your body processes carbohydrates into blood glucose, which enters your cells to provide energy; but this cannot happen without insulin. A dysfunctional crab-insulin mechanism is at the heart of diabetes.
Choose foods that will help you manage your blood glucose. It's not that you are suddenly going to be overwhelmed with strange new foods; it's more a matter of doing what you probably already know. We all know we should eat more fruits and vegetables, for example, and we know that whole grain foods are better than more highly processed breads and pastas. Choosing healthier unsaturated fats and oils has received a lot of attention, so most of us understand its importance. Cutting down on high-fat meats (love that steak!) needs to happen; and we need to choose low-fat or fat-free milk, cheese, and other dairy products. Limiting salt, sugar, and alcohol rounds out the list of healthy choices.
Learn to control portion size. The good news is that you can eat about anything you want - IF you watch the size of the portion you take and the other foods you eat along with it. The take-home message here is that you do need to become very aware of portion size, since your carbohydrate grams are, of course, directly tied to it. Even if you are seriously sticking with the 'good' foods, too much of almost anything can wreck both your meal plan and your weight-loss program, making it that much harder to gain control of your blood glucose levels. Look at it this way: if you only eat half of that delicious steak, you have (a) the other half of the steak to enjoy, conscience-free, later on and (b) room in your stomach to eat all the other good things that are on the rest of the plate. Voila! - you've just added variety to your meal without messing up your meal plan!
Develop consistent eating habits. Eating meals and snacks at regular times each day will help you maintain a consistent carbohydrate intake; and if you stick to the plan you have made, you will be less likely to indulge in the wrong sorts of foods. And don't skip meals. That will upset your routine, perhaps lower your blood glucose too far and cause you to overeat later on. You want to eat about the same amount of carbohydrate each day; and you want to space those carbohydrates throughout the day as evenly as possible.
Get help. That's what your doctor and dietitian are there for. Nobody does as well by themselves as they do with experienced guides.
There you are. Get ready, get set, and get going.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Imtiaz_Rahman/2208665
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