Cait James

Following a nutritional plan sometimes seems so complicated. But really, if you follow the few simple rules outlined here, you can make the process much easier. None of them cost anything other than time. Doing them one at a time makes a big difference in your calorie and fat intake. Adding one after another makes the results huge.

Children don’t hate vegetables any more than they hate ice cream. It is what you teach them that determines their feelings about food. If you show them that you love vegetables and consider them delicious, that’s how they will feel about vegetables. They love to follow your example. The best time to do this is at family meals.

You may think that giving up the diet you’ve followed all your life in favor of the Mediterranean diet requires a major upheaval in your lifestyle. The process may not be simple, but you aren’t giving up good taste. You’ll enjoy the diet — and your blood glucose, blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight will all take a turn for the better.

As you go through life with diabetes, you'll be exposed to many "experts" and different ideas about the best way to manage your disease. Before you make a major change in your diabetes program, run the new ideas by your doctor or diabetes educator to make sure it will help and not hurt you. Here are a few of the more common myths about diabetes — save yourself some grief and ignore them.

Exercise is a key part of the foundation for the management of diabetes (the other parts of the foundation are diet and medication). Everyone with diabetes should exercise, but be sure to check with your doctor if any of the following apply to you: You have complications of diabetes like eye disease, kidney disease, nerve disease, or heart disease.

Although diet is an essential part of the Mediterranean lifestyle, there is much more to it than just the diet. Most of the way that people live their lives is consistent with prevention or amelioration of diabetes. Many other behaviors that make up the Mediterranean lifestyle contribute to the long, healthy lives of people who live in the Mediterranean region.

Vegetarian eating is an excellent way to prevent diabetes or to manage it if it occurs. Although a vegetarian diet remains an excellent diet for diabetes, most people prefer to have some animal protein in their diets — for taste, variety, and convenience. The Mediterranean diet fulfills all these criteria and more.

Although people with diabetes are allowed to have some sugar in their diet, sugar is more appropriate for a diabetic who is at normal weight than an obese diabetic. Preventing obesity may be a matter of avoiding as little as 50 extra calories a day. If this can be accomplished by using artificial sweeteners, which provide sweetening power but no calories, so much the better.

Thai food is a good choice for people with diabetes. It is cooked with little fat because stir-frying is the method of choice. Thai cooking keeps the meat, fish, and poultry to small quantities, thus providing taste rather than bulk, as in a Western diet. The dipping sauces have strong tastes, so they’re used in very small quantities, minimizing the salt and sugar in the diet.