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Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies
Published:
October 21, 2013
Overview
Learn how to eat well, improve your health, and enjoy life with diabetes
The new edition of Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies offers you a holistic approach to living your best life with diabetes. Optimize your diet and plan delicious meals that will empower you to take control, improve your health, prevent, and even reverse diabetes. Written by an award-winning chef and renowned doctor who are both experts in the field of nutrition, this book helps you understand what defines healthful eating for diabetes, its crucial role to long term health, and how meal planning is a key to successful diabetes management. Learn how to receive all the nutrients necessary for glucose control while managing Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes and maintaining ideal weight. Discover how to supercharge your diet and protect yourself from the complications associated with diabetes with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich foods. To get you started, this indispensable guide includes 22 mouthwatering,
easy to recreate, and affordable recipes that maximize the benefits of nutritious ingredients to regulate blood glucose levels. The kitchen and shopping hacks will enable you to master culinary therapy and take delight in preparing meals and cooking. This updated edition includes:
- Practical examples of meal plans perfectly suited for prediabetes, Type 1, and Type 2 diabetes
- A whole person approach to diabetes that focuses on diet, lifestyle, exercise, and medical treatment
- Coverage of new therapies and the latest evidence on how gut health can help with diabetes management
- Nutrition facts and health benefits for your favorite ingredients, so you can eat what you love
Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies is an excellent resource for those interested in the latest diabetes-friendly nutrition guidelines, as well as anyone who has been diagnosed with diabetes or has a loved one who has been diagnosed, or would like to prevent it.
Diabetes is a serious medical condition where your body cannot properly process foods to meet your energy demands and keep your blood glucose levels balanced. But, you can do a lot to help your body work better. Adopting and sticking to a heart-healthy diet that also manages your intake of carbohydrate foods can help prevent the complications of diabetes for years to come.
About The Author
Toby Smithson, RDN, CDE, has managed her own diabetes for more than 40 years, and founded DiabetesEveryDay.com to share her insights into diabetes self-management. Alan Rubin, MD, is the author of several successful diabetes books, including Diabetes For Dummies and Diabetes Cookbook For Dummies.
Articles From The Book
3 results
Diabetes Recipes
Articles
Healthcare professionals could probably put together a list of 1,000 myths and inaccuracies surrounding diabetes, and new ones pop up regularly in patient interactions. Nutrition inaccuracies may not rise to the level of mythical, but in this information age there is a self-proclaimed expert around every turn.
Diabetes Recipes
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Some foods are just big-time healthy, and with diabetes so closely connected to food and nutrition, these are the foods you want to incorporate into your daily eating habits.Oats are a whole grain, so they are a great start toward healthy right off the bat.Oats are most noted for bringing a specific soluble fiber called beta-glucans to the rescue.
Diabetes Recipes
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Much about managing diabetes can be costly, but food doesn’t need to be one of them. A diet that’s right for diabetes is a diet that’s right for virtually anyone, and there are enough foods that fit the bill for blood glucose control and heart health that your budget can remain flexible, and your choices are still many.
Diabetes Recipes
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An elevated body mass index (BMI), where body weight to height falls into the overweight, obese, or even higher category on that scale, is very common among people with type 2 diabetes, and it isn’t just a coincidence. Excess weight is a distinct risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, and excess weight makes blood glucose more difficult to control after diabetes is diagnosed.
Diabetes Recipes
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Recording what you eat, what time you ate it, what your blood glucose readings are at what time, when you take your medication, how much activity you got, if you are ill and even your mood can provide a wealth of important information to evaluate.
The more interesting thing is that even if you never evaluate anything about that information the simple act of writing it down has a significant impact on your success.
Diabetes Recipes
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Inconvenience, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The intent of this discussion about fully committing to diabetes self-management and healthy eating is to elevate the importance of this task among your many priorities. When tasks are seen as important, the effort required can be accepted as an investment, not an inconvenience.
Diabetes Recipes
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There is an impressive body of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of a vegetarian diet in weight management, A1C improvement, increased insulin sensitivity, and cardiovascular health indicators. But, can you really get adequate nutrition from plants?
According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, “appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.
Diabetes Recipes
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DASH is an acronym for “dietary approaches to stop hypertension.” DASH is an eating plan developed experimentally by the National Institutes of Health when that agency conducted clinical trials on three distinct diet plans through five medical centers between 1993 and 1997. High blood pressure, hypertension, is too common among people with diabetes.
Diabetes Recipes
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Coffee and tea may be best known for delivering the stimulant caffeine, but evidence is mounting to support significant health benefits for both. On the caffeine point, coffee takes the prize, delivering about two to five times as much per cup. That’s good news for sleepy heads, but most of the health benefits of coffee and tea seem unrelated to the caffeine.
Diabetes Recipes
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Alpha lipoic acid has been examined in relation to diabetes from several different angles. Since many facets of diabetes, and the common complications of diabetes, have a foundation in oxidative stress, this powerful antioxidant has been a candidate for improving insulin sensitivity, damage to arteries and blood vessels, and damage to nerves.
Diabetes Recipes
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Managing diabetes with diet includes getting an adequate intake of high quality protein in your diet to maintain important muscle mass, and to keep important metabolic functions humming along. The highest quality protein has amino acids which are readily available, and easily absorbed, during digestion.
Amino acid molecules are what characterize proteins.
Diabetes Recipes
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Diabetics don’t really require any special health foods, but grocers often place some very useful foods in a location that suggests they’re special. Here’s what you might find in the health food aisle.
Alternative milks, for those who are lactose intolerant, can help add a dairy-like touch to cereals and hot chocolate.
Diabetes Recipes
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Who doesn’t love crunchy snacks? If you do, it’s best to share your love only with the snacks that love you back, and that means studying the nutrition labels for fat, carbohydrate (both potatoes and corn are carbohydrate foods), sodium, and added sugar.
About 12 to15 potato or corn chips make a 15 carbohydrate gram carb choice, and those few chips can come with 10 grams of fat or more, and 10 percent of your daily recommendation for sodium.
Diabetes Recipes
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For diabetes-related nutrition the emphasis is on 15-gram portions of total carbohydrate, also known as a carb choice, or a starch, milk, or fruit exchange. Carbohydrates have a direct effect on blood glucose levels, and your intake of carbohydrates affects how well your diabetes medication works, too.
Your meal plan specifies how many carb choices, or how many grams of carbohydrate, you should have at each meal, most likely three to five carb choices (45 to 75 grams) depending on your calorie requirements.
Diabetes Recipes
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Weight Watchers is a successful weight loss program that is not, by its own admission, “designed for those with diabetes.” However, successful weight loss can have profoundly positive effects on blood glucose control and on risk factors for diabetes complications like heart disease.
Weight Watchers promotes a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, and offers programs that include regular, in-person meetings as well as an online program.
Diabetes Recipes
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When managing your diabetes, fresh foods are marvelous, but canned and frozen foods are, for the most part, equal in nutritional value. The nutrition profile of some foods, in fact, is improved in the canning process. Canned and frozen foods can be kept for a much longer time than fresh foods, meaning you can stock up when these foods are on sale.
Diabetes Recipes
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Carbohydrates — sugars, starches, and fiber — liberate single molecules of glucose during digestion, which are promptly absorbed directly into the bloodstream. When blood glucose levels begin to rise, insulin is released from special cells in the pancreas to assist in getting glucose out of circulation, stored away inside of certain cells, bringing blood glucose levels back to normal.
Diabetes Recipes
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Recently, a few studies have suggested that cinnamon can be helpful in managing blood glucose levels. A study in Pakistan showed people with type 2 diabetes improved fasting blood glucose, blood triglycerides, and bad LDL cholesterol levels after 40 days.
A Chinese study showed essentially the same results in 66 patients monitored in a controlled study environment.
Diabetes Recipes
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The errata document for Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies corrects layout errors that occurred in the first printing of the book. For access to the errata, click here.
Diabetes Recipes
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Without getting into the deep water of randomized control trials and statistical meta analyses, it’s fair to say that managing the total carbohydrate content of meals is still considered the most effective tool for diabetes meal planning. You’re probably familiar with carb counting, at least with the concept. But, if you’re not taking it seriously yet, it’s time to start.
Diabetes Recipes
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Establishing an environment that minimizes the food-related temptations, which are reinforced by your working brain’s chemical stew, could start by moving to the far reaches of Alaska or Wyoming, and declining TV, telephone, or internet service. That may make getting important regular medical care for your diabetes more challenging, however.
Diabetes Recipes
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If a new focus on healthy eating for diabetes management is going to take root and grow, then feeling deprived of food that satisfies your taste buds or an adequate amount of food can’t be part of the plan. The word deprivation has been used most widely over recent years in the context of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the debate about what constitutes torture.
Diabetes Recipes
Articles
Diabetes is a serious medical condition where your body cannot properly process foods to meet your energy demands and keep your blood glucose levels balanced. But, you can do a lot to help your body work better. Adopting and sticking to a heart-healthy diet that also manages your intake of carbohydrate foods can help prevent the complications of diabetes for years to come.
Diabetes Recipes
Articles
It's a legitimate question: In the U.S., how does someone with diabetes come to grips with the crucial issues of nutrition when he suddenly finds himself expected to think about food as a gram of this and a milligram of that? Americans are used to thinking in terms of ounces and pounds, after all. It's confusing, and it's entirely possible that the metric system keeps some people with diabetes resistant to thinking about food in the way that's necessary to effectively manage their diet.
Diabetes Recipes
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One trick to eating healthier is keeping diabetic-friendly choices available at all times. You can fight the urge to hit the fast-food drive-through and instead whip up a convenient and healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack if you keep the right foods handy. Some healthy foods to always have on hand in your pantry include:
Olive oil or canola oil for healthy, unsaturated fats
Egg substitute for the high-quality egg white protein without the fat and cholesterol
Frozen fruits and vegetables for healthy choices at every meal
Herbs and spices, fresh or dried, to replace salt with intense flavors
Whole-grain, high-fiber tortillas for sandwich-like lunches without the full amount of carbohydrates in bread
Canned tuna (in water) to have healthy seafood available anytime — aim to eat seafood twice each week
Almonds, walnuts, or peanuts for healthy fats
Black beans (or your favorite beans) for healthy carbohydrate, protein, and soluble fiber Buy no-added-salt varieties of canned beans
Low-fat dairy products, including 1 percent or skim milk, and no-fat regular or Greek yogurt.
Diabetes Recipes
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There’s nothing about diabetes self-management that’s impossible for you to accomplish. In fact, it’s not terribly difficult, as really difficult things go. Inconvenient would be a better description. Yet, way too many people with diabetes simply don’t commit to the effort.
Maybe the absence of attention-getting symptoms in type 2 diabetes has them doubting that diabetes is really all that serious.
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With diabetes, it’s important to spread your food, especially your daily carbohydrates, over time. Spreading your carbohydrates minimizes blood glucose spikes and gives your body an opportunity to bring levels down. The same holds true for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Spreading your meals out also is associated with successful weight loss.
Diabetes Recipes
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Blood pressure is the B of the diabetes ABCs. Your circulatory system is something like the waterlines that run through your town or city, pushing water through large and small pipes with enough pressure for you to have an invigorating shower. Your arteries, veins, and tiny capillaries deliver materials, like glucose and oxygen, to cells all over your body under the pressure provided when your powerful heart muscle contracts.
Diabetes Recipes
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With diabetes, polyunsaturated fats have a favorable impact on insulin sensitivity, and trans fats are especially unfavorable. Saturated fats are carbon chains with no double bonds between the carbon atoms, therefore the molecule is saturated with hydrogen bonds.
Trans fats result when unsaturated fats are hydrogenated, making the fat saturated.
Diabetes Recipes
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You only need to browse the nutrition information provided on the websites of your favorite restaurants to get an idea of how difficult it can be to eat healthy when eating out. Just scan the sodium content to keep your search simple, remembering that the population with diabetes falls into the “special” category with a daily sodium recommendation of 1,500 milligrams per day.
Diabetes Recipes
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Your task after a diabetes diagnosis is to manage your intake of carbohydrates is a way that keeps those variations in blood glucose levels close to normal.
Carbohydrates, specifically molecules of the carbohydrate glucose, are your body’s favored fuel, and even though your cells can, and do, extract energy from protein and fat, glucose is choice numero uno.
Diabetes Recipes
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Studies have shown some improvements in blood glucose control, and even reduced bad LDL cholesterol, among subjects with diabetes who were given fenugreek extracts. Fenugreek is a plant whose seeds provide a characteristic maple-like flavor to Indian cuisine, but its leaves are edible as well, and can be eaten as salad greens, or dried for use as an herb.
Diabetes Recipes
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Some weight loss programs claim to do all the work for you by delivering your meals already made. But, is doing all the work for weight loss the same as doing all the work for controlling blood glucose? Two of these popular commercial weight loss plans have a specific program targeted at diabetes management.
Nutrisystem
Nutrisystem was founded in 1972, and in 1999 began its current business model selling prepackaged foods directly to customers.
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Many people with diabetes think that they can't have "fun food," such as good breads or sweet and creamy ice cream. With a little tweaking and swapping, you can enjoy many different kinds of foods that you might have believed were off limits!
Ice cream: Choose low-fat, no-sugar-added ice cream and count the carbohydrates.
Diabetes Recipes
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Diabetic diet is a phrase you’ll hear constantly, and what could be more discouraging than to imagine yourself sentenced to an eating plan that’s so restrictive only people with diabetes have to subject themselves to it? The truth is almost the complete opposite. An eating plan that works for diabetes would be an appropriate eating plan for nearly anyone.
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Glucose is a simple sugar that is extremely important to you as a source of energy. It’s the key ingredient in a biochemical recipe that produces a powerhouse molecule adenosine triphosphate, best known by its initials ATP. ATP is your fuel, the source of the energy you use to move or to think or, for that matter, to generate the heat needed to remain a steady 98.
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Want to know the surest and quickest way to become completely disenchanted with your diabetes management efforts? Simply expect perfection, and wait a day or two.
Starting any lifestyle change with unreasonable expectations is a certain path to disappointment. Unreasonable expectations could apply to both the anticipated results like an extreme weight loss or lofty goal to improve A1C, or your own capacity to carry out an overly ambitious plan.
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A heart-healthy diet can help prevent the complications of diabetes for years to come. Part of that healthy diet is learning to manage your intake of carbohydrate foods. You can do a lot to help your body work better by adopting and sticking to a heart-healthy diet.
When it comes to diabetes, food is medicine.
Diabetes Recipes
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The term alternative sweetener refers to sweeteners that are alternative to sucrose, which is typical table sugar and primarily produced from sugarcane and beets. Sucrose in different forms is the sugar most people know — table sugar, brown sugar, confectioner’s sugar, and so on.
But there are many alternatives to sucrose, some confined primarily to commercial food production uses, that can generally be divided into alternatives with equal calories to sucrose or alternatives that are no-calorie (often called non-nutritive).
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As the number of chained together molecules of simple sugars gets longer, the carbohydrate foods are sometimes called complex. Starches are where plants store their excess glucose, and the chemical bonds connecting the simple sugars in starch are easily broken by your digestive system.
Whereas starches can be refined and isolated from their source for dietary purposes like sugar, its use is usually limited to thickening agents like corn starch.
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Alcohol is not a carbohydrate, so alcohol doesn’t raise blood glucose levels directly; however, alcohol stores more energy per gram than the 4 calories per gram in carbohydrates or protein, and almost as much as the 9 calories per gram stored in fat. So, at 7 calories per gram 1 ounce of 80 proof liquor adds about 60 calories to your day.
Diabetes Recipes
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Understanding nutrition facts labels for diabetes meal planning and nutrition starts with ignoring some of the information. In the United States as well as in many other countries, nutrition facts labels are required on all packaged foods, and this is a good thing. The information included on the nutrition facts labels tells you everything you need to know about the labeled food product.
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If an occasion to eat at a restaurant comes up without time for preplanning, you can still make the healthier, diabetic-friendly choices. The biggest difference is that you’re making your choices surrounded by distractions and engulfed in an atmosphere created to trigger your eating instincts.
These are powerful influences, but you can make healthy choices if you concentrate on what you know about your diabetes meal plan — manage carbohydrates from all sources, look to reduce dietary fat, and reduce sodium.
Diabetes Recipes
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Finding an eating plan that facilitates weight management, blood glucose control, and is heart healthy doesn’t mean everything about your old life goes on the trash heap. People have interesting relationships with food, and sometimes an emotional connection with the past is strong.
It’s entirely probable that your grandmother’s pumpkin pie can fit somewhere in your eating plan now and then.
Diabetes Recipes
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A1C, sometimes called hemoglobin A1C or HbA1C, is the A of the diabetes ABCs. Your doctor orders a lab test of your hemoglobin A1C periodically; diabetes professionals pay careful attention to this number. Here are two important facts you should know now:
A1C measures your average blood glucose levels over the 60 to 90 day period before the test.
Diabetes Recipes
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When you are trying to manage your diabetes, you should approach the deli counter with caution. When you approach the deli counter with its long rows of meats, cheeses, and salads, in most cases you do so without your best friend — nutrition facts. That’s not to say there aren’t healthy choices available, but the trick is finding them.
Diabetes Recipes
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It’s possible, with an early diagnosis and a strong commitment to lifestyle, to manage type 2 diabetes without medication. This course, however, isn’t commonly the case, and type1 diabetes can’t be managed without insulin. So, keeping blood glucose levels in balance almost always involves matching medication to your ingestion of carbohydrate foods.
Diabetes Recipes
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The produce section of the grocery store is the perfect place to start your shopping. OK, so you lose 30 minutes of freshness without refrigeration, and you have to be careful not to mash your fruit in the bottom of the cart.
But, nothing beats starting your shopping by gathering what are arguably the healthiest foods in the store — fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole nuts, and probably some soy products hidden away someplace in produce.
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If you've recently been diagnosed with diabetes, you have a new job. The good news is that it’s a high-level management position with lots of freedom, and the power to make important decisions daily.
Even better, the long-term benefits for a job well done may include an extra ten healthy years of living. If you’re 50 years old now that could mean every day you do this job well adds an extra half day later.
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Episodes of low blood glucose — hypoglycemia — are not uncommon for anyone taking insulin and can be a side effect of other pills or injectable medications used to treat type 2 diabetes. Left untreated, hypoglycemia can be life threatening. Hypoglycemia is defined by blood glucose levels below 70 mg/dl.
The symptoms of hypoglycemia vary by individual, as does the blood glucose level when symptoms appear.
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Having the capacity to get an accurate reading of your own blood glucose level in a few seconds, at home, was a significant advance in diabetes care, and undoubtedly has literally saved lives among people with type 1 diabetes. But, the tremendous increase in cases of type 2 and the associated costs in medical care has some questioning the cost of testing supplies for type 2 diabetes.
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At first glance, the American concept of Asian food would seem to be extremely healthy — stir-fry dishes are like a healthy salad that’s simply been cooked. It’s clearly possible to make or find very healthy Asian food.
The theme is much the same with Asian food as with other ethnic cuisines — it’s what gets added that can make the most difference.
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It’s entirely likely that the American concept of Italian food is colored by the Americanization of Italian food. Nevertheless, when you eat Italian in America it’s carbohydrates and fat you need to manage.
The carbohydrates often come from bread and pasta, and the bread may be already waiting for you before you’re seated.
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Everyone with type 1 diabetes takes insulin with meals to compensate for the carbohydrate total of the meal. You may take an injection, or you may initiate a bolus from your insulin pump. Some people with type 2 may take insulin injections related to food also, although it’s much more common that type 2s take long acting insulin which is unrelated to meals.
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Zinc plays a very important role in your body’s production, storage, and use of insulin, the hormone that lowers high blood glucose levels. And, zinc is crucial to your immune system, it enhances your senses of smell and taste, is involved in the metabolism of the macronutrients, promotes tissue growth and cell reproduction, is an antioxidant working to protect cells from damage, and is involved with hundreds of enzymes.
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Your personalized meal plan, which guides your daily choices for managing your diabetes with food, isn’t a menu, telling you exactly what to eat. Instead, it’s a framework, like a house under construction where the various rooms have been established, but leaving you a world of options for how you’re going to finish the décor.
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You may be asking if there are low-calorie and low-carb snacks that you can incorporate in your diabetic-friendly diet. And, what about snacks that are more in the carbohydrate family — grains, fruit, starchy vegetables, or dairy?
There are options here, and in some cases carbohydrate snacks are a specific part of your meal plan.
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Cholesterol is the C in the diabetes ABCs, but this subject can be a little complicated. Cholesterol is essential for a number of cellular functions, playing important roles in building and maintaining cell membranes, synthesizing bile for fat digestion, manufacturing vitamin D, and building certain hormones.
Cholesterol is ferried around in your bloodstream by special carriers called lipoproteins, and these lipoproteins come in assorted varieties.
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Healthy eating involves time to plan, shop, prepare food, and keep yourself motivated. When you have committed to healthy eating the time spent on this commitment becomes, by definition, important. When an activity is accepted as an essential part of your schedule the stresses of feeling like time is wasted are removed, and you can give yourself permission to actually enjoy the time.
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Preparation for diabetes meal planning and nutrition starts with a very minor kitchen makeover. Your kitchen should be set up for ease of food preparation, and that includes everything from measuring cups and scales to the right ingredients. Preparing food at home more often than not simply makes diabetes management easier, so your kitchen should make food preparation convenient.
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You can choose foods from different categories to create a lunch that fits into your diabetes meal plan perfectly. The number of servings from each group will depend upon your daily calorie levels, but you can do this with your favorite foods for breakfast or for dinner, too.
This little exercise demonstrates perfectly how simple it can be to put healthy meals together when you think about the components separately.
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The so-called Mediterranean diet is a perfect example of a diet you can live with, not a diet you’ll go on — the Mediterranean diet is a general pattern of eating.
A diet for effective diabetes management controls blood glucose averages, helps you manage body weight, and reduces risk factors for heart disease like cholesterol and blood pressure.
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In 2011, the USDA replaced its pyramid with MyPlate, a visual representation of relative portion sizes for different food groups in a dinner place setting, including a dinner plate and a separate section for dairy. The figure shows the current official icon representing the general categories of food that make up a healthy diet, showing recommended portions of protein, grain, fruit, vegetables, and dairy.
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Chefs have preferred oils for cooking based upon the particular smoke point or other characteristic, but in everyday life the vegetable oils commonly available are fine for managing diabetes. Oils are liquid fat at room temperature, so they’re all more or less the same in calories and fat grams. Oils are about 120 calories and 14 grams of fat per tablespoon, period.
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If you're diabetic, some of your healthiest food choices are grains and legumes (beans), main elements of the healthy Mediterranean diet and DASH eating plans. These foods are rich in nutrients, and some are high in both soluble and insoluble fiber. Grains and beans are also carbohydrate foods, so you manage them in 15-carbohydrate-gram serving sizes at your meals.
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Successful diabetes self-management, including effective meal planning, is all about your attitudes and behaviors, and your personality plays a key role in how you deal with these important health-related responsibilities. Your individual personality is surely one-of-a-kind, but psychologists have recognized for a long time that billions of unique individual personalities, or temperaments, can be grouped by some dominant traits they share in common.
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Adopting a healthy lifestyle to help manage your diabetes isn’t about training for the Iron Man Triathlon. It’s about making small decisions that fit better choices into your other lifestyle.
You could make a long list of reasons why many children and adults get less physical activity now than in days gone by — technological, social, environmental, entertainment, demographic, development planning, and safety are a few.
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About 20 percent of your daily calories should come from protein, although your personalized diabetic meal plan could vary somewhat from that. Nevertheless, protein is an important macronutrient for building and repairing tissue, to create enzymes which accelerate important biochemical reactions, and for constructing important hormones like insulin.
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Prepackaged food simply means food that is packaged before sale. If you think about it, that covers most everything in the grocery, whether it comes in cans, bags, boxes, bottles, jars, vacuum packed, or plastic wrap. So, how is it that prepackaged food has a bad reputation in some circles? Is prepackaged food getting a bad rap (pun intended)?
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One trick to eating healthier is keeping healthier choices around — how simple is that? The truth is that even the most detailed plans, including your menu, need to be adjusted sometimes, even if it’s only because you don’t feel like preparing what’s on today’s plan.
You can fight the urge to hit the fast-food drive-through and whip up a convenient and healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack if you keep the right foods handy.
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The phrase processed food is a nutritional hot potato, generally viewed in an even more negative context than prepackaged food. But, processed foods are just foods that have been altered from their natural state and can include freezing, canning, cooking, dehydrating, or even pasteurizing milk for safety.
You probably wouldn’t consider the processing of a grape into a raisin as some horrible insult to a formerly healthy food.
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Proteins are extraordinarily complex, and the blueprint for assembling all of the proteins you require is coded into your DNA. Protein molecules are primarily chains of amino acids, and the chains can include many thousands of amino acid molecules, making some proteins very large.
One of the most interesting points about proteins, however, is their secondary and tertiary structure (the specific sequence of different amino acids is a protein’s primary structure).
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Healthy eating to manage blood glucose and the risks for diabetes-related complications requires some thinking and preparation. Fortunately, there are credible resources that can help immensely. A pocket-sized reference book can be your best pal, but other resources work just as well.
Searching websites and apps
It may be debatable whether there is too much information available on the web, and now even on your mobile phone or tablet, but it’s hard to deny that these technologies can be very handy.
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The cabbage soup diet of the 1980s is alive and well, apparently outliving cabbage patch dolls of the same period. But, those who own the original dolls may find they still have value — those who tried the diet lost any value almost immediately.
In fairness to the cabbage soup diet, it only claims on its website that you can lose 10 pounds in seven days.
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Since the appearance of salad bars in restaurants, people have often seen them as the healthy choice. Even though salad greens make a great foundation for a healthy meal, the range of ingredients available to add to your salad can leave you with an unexpected load of calories, fat, and carbohydrates. It’s the small amounts you add that can lead you to consider those ingredients as irrelevant.
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Don’t misunderstand the word sneaky here — there’s nothing malicious about these foods. In fact, these are some great choices for your diabetes meal plan because they are complex, offering more than one of the macronutrients in addition to a host of other nutritional benefits.
In general, the most significant issue with these foods comes if you fail to recognize them as carbohydrates, and it’s possible you don’t think of these foods as carbohydrates.
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Soft drinks are sometimes called soda, pop, soda pop, Coke, or something else, in large part depending upon where you happen to live. And, soft drinks have been around for a long, long time. Soft drinks are, of course, carbonated.
Flavored waters, on the other hand, are a recent comer to the commercial drink market.
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It could be just a coincidence that a geographical area of the United States now labeled as the diabetes belt, where the rate of diabetes (mostly type 2) exceeds 12 percent of the population, is concentrated in the American South. Or, maybe not.
Maybe a cooking tradition that can turn a serving of very-low-carbohydrate carrots into two carb choices, or no-fat turnip greens into a fat exchange is an ongoing demonstration of the destructive power of added sugar, fat, and salt.
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The advertising behind sports drinks is slightly different than for soft drinks. Sports drinks actually do provide benefits in carbohydrate replacement and in electrolyte replacement. But the need to quickly replace carbohydrates and electrolytes comes as a result of intense exercise. If you’re not a marathoner, or participating in some other high intensity exercise for an hour or longer, chances are that you don’t need a sports drink.
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Meal planning for diabetes starts by developing your menu and collecting the foods that make up your meals, and there is a wide range of possible destinations that offer everything you need. Although the figure shows a typical floor plan for a supermarket, you can find healthy choices at farmer’s markets, local grocers, giant retailers, warehouse-like stores, web-based home delivery, and even at the local convenience store
But even though these establishments offer the best choices of foods for effective diabetes management, they’re also chocked full of options that you’re better off avoiding.
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There is food that’s clearly beneficial to your health, especially when you have diabetes, and there’s food that’s better avoided. Getting a great deal on food you should best avoid isn’t such a great deal after all. Don’t let a few dollars, or the thrill of victory from that great deal, steal your attention away from your health.
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There’s no doubt that you can visit a grocery and come home with a lot of food, but without a plan the outcome may be less than ideal. Your plan is your shopping list.
There are a few things you need to take along on your food shopping expeditions, but first things first — making time to go. Like it or not, managing your diabetes effectively can be inconvenient at times, and one category of inconveniences is making the effort to gather and prepare food at home.
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Guessing about blood glucose levels is completely unnecessary. Now, it’s possible to draw a very small amount of blood from your finger or other location (with some meters), and get a relatively accurate measure of blood glucose in ten seconds.
Blood glucose meters today also store historical information, which can be downloaded to a computer or transmitted to a physician’s office.
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The Atkins Diet, surely the best-known low-carbohydrate weight loss plan, is based on a theory that excess weight is mostly related to excess carbohydrates. And this eating plan may be attractive to people with diabetes because the constant focus on carbohydrates in diabetes management plans could be interpreted to confirm the notion that carbs are inherently bad.
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In many ways, the conflict between diabetes and Mexican food is similar to the issues with traditional Southern and soul food — it’s mostly about what’s added. A standard Mexican dinner in an American restaurant, however, also offers the person with diabetes a steady stream of carbohydrates — tortilla chips as a warm up, tortillas on the side or as a wrap, a generous helping of beans, and so-called Mexican rice.
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A heart healthy diet is especially important for people with diabetes. Most people know that diet can contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels, and those unhealthy cholesterol levels raise the risk for heart disease. A heart healthy diet can do more than improve cholesterol levels.
Heart health is so important to diabetes because diabetes itself raises the risk of heart attack or stroke two to four times higher than the risk for people without diabetes.
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Nuts and seeds may sound like professional advice for attracting squirrels to your yard, and there’s no doubt those fuzzy rodents would appreciate the consideration, but maybe squirrels know more about healthy eating that you give them credit for.
Healthy snacking is an important part of any healthy eating plan, and in some ways especially important for managing body weight and blood glucose when you have diabetes.
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The B vitamins are important in diabetes management for two reasons. First, all of the B vitamins participate in chemical reactions taking place in your cells to harvest the energy from fats, protein, and carbohydrates, the energy that fuels everything from muscle movement to body heat to transporting glucose from your small intestine into your bloodstream during digestion.
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Fiber is the most complex of carbohydrates, often forming the structural elements of plants. Fiber is relatively indigestible by humans, but is still an extremely important part of your diet. Insoluble fiber provides bulk, which helps to move food residues through your digestive system. But some fiber — soluble fiber — also has beneficial physiological effects.
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Low levels of magnesium have been associated with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, and low levels may contribute to the formation of calcium plaques in arteries, a risk for heart attack. Having diabetes can result in an increased excretion of magnesium as well, so getting enough magnesium should be a clear priority.
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It’s not possible to eliminate all stress from your life — having diabetes is stressful, as are families, jobs, 24-7 news on television, travel, finances, and hundreds of other circumstances.
Everyone experiences stress because some stress is natural and unavoidable. Start with what’s called the fight or flight response — pounding heart, dry mouth, perspiration, muscle tension, shaking, lightheaded, and heightened awareness.
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The relationship between low levels of vitamin D and metabolic syndrome (or type 2 diabetes) are confounded by the fact that fat cells tend to capture vitamin D, keeping blood levels depressed. Lower vitamin D levels may simply be a result of obesity, which could be the real culprit behind these related conditions, and there’s not much evidence that vitamin D helps control blood sugar levels after diabetes is diagnosed.
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The attention and effort you’re asked to give to managing blood glucose levels with medication, testing your blood, physical activity, and especially diet is to reduce your risk for complications associated with diabetes.
In everyday life you probably use the word complication to describe something that disrupts your plans slightly, but can be resolved with a minor adjustment or two.
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Type 2 diabetes doesn’t begin as a problem with insulin production like type 1 diabetes. In fact, the beta cells at the insulin factory are often working overtime. The high blood glucose levels that define type 2 diabetes result from a problem getting glucose into the cells that need it.
With type 2 diabetes some of the locks have been changed, and the key (insulin) doesn’t work.
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You may not think of bread, cereal, and crackers as grains, but of course the primary ingredient in these products is grain, or grain refined into flour. Like grains, bread, cereal, and crackers are carbohydrate foods — one slice of bread equals one carb choice, or 15 grams carbohydrate.
Whole grains that contain the bran, germ, and endosperm are the healthier choice, and that goes for bread, cereal, and crackers, too.
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Meat offers the highest quality, complete protein to your diet, but can also add unhealthy saturated fat that increases your risk for heart disease. Red meat, in particular, has also been associated with increased insulin resistance in large population studies. A healthy approach to meats is to rotate lean cuts of beef, pork, or lamb with skinless chicken or turkey, and fish or shellfish.
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Virtually everyone knows that sugar has something to do with diabetes — sugar diabetes, the sugar, or a touch of the sugar are all colloquial phrases that mean diabetes in some communities. Blood sugar is a common phrase substituted for the more precise blood glucose. Sugar affects diabetes, but sugar’s role in diabetes may not match what you think of when you hear the word sugar.
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It wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that body mass and type 2 diabetes are closely linked. One clue would be that 85 percent of people with type 2 diabetes fall into the overweight or obese range (or higher) on the Body Mass Index (BMI) scale. An above normal weight is something shared by the great majority of people with type 2 diabetes.
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Two sources of high-quality dietary protein are eggs and dairy, and both have seen their share of controversy. For a time, eggs were outcasts due to their relatively high levels of cholesterol. But eggs have gained favor again as an excellent source of high quality protein, choline, riboflavin, folate, selenium, vitamin B12, and vitamin D.
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Ethnicity and genetics are associated to some degree, and both have a relationship to type 2 diabetes. There are genetic variations that increase the risk for, or make people susceptible to type 2 diabetes. In fact, the risk that a child will develop type 2 diabetes if a parent has type 2 diabetes is a stronger link than for a parent with type 1 having a child with type 1.
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To say that timing is everything may apply better to stock market trades or hitting a baseball than to eating with diabetes, but the timing of your meals and snacks and medication can be important in several ways.
The most direct timing relationship, and the most important, is the timing between injecting or bolusing with rapid- or short-acting insulin and eating carbohydrate food.
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If you don’t own an egg cuber, razor-sharp pizza shears, a culinary torch, a Swiss corn zipper, and a truffle shaver, you will never make the cut as an Iron Chef. Fortunately, the equipment standards for a Diabetes Meal Champion are considerably less complicated and way less costly.
Measuring tools are the most essential devices for healthy eating.
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Type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes and as insulin-dependent diabetes, is what many people think of as real diabetes. The familiar image is one of an exceptionally thin child taking insulin injections, and that’s a fairly accurate image.
Type 1 diabetes does tend to occur at a younger age, and insulin injections are a routine part of having type 1 diabetes.
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You can use the health benefits of leisure and laughter to diabetes as your justification for a vacation or even a relaxing night with a funny movie. If that doesn't seem like an excuse anyone would really buy, maybe some evidence can help your case.
The negative effect of stress on health, especially the kind of chronic stress that often goes hand in hand with diabetes, is well established.
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When diabetes is involved, the one thing you learn right away as you begin to seriously consider eating healthier is that Mom was right — eat your vegetables. You will hear that declaration more often and more emphatically. Eating healthy with diabetes has two clear objectives — controlling blood glucose and reducing the risk for heart disease.
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If prepackaged and processed foods are generally viewed in a negative light, then organic foods have the opposite reputation. But what does organic actually mean when referring to food? It turns out that laws and regulations are involved.
In general terms, organic foods are produced and processed with minimal input of chemicals, including fertilizers, pesticides, ripening agents, antibiotics, and growth hormones.
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Diabetes mellitus is defined simply as having higher than normal levels of glucose in your blood too often, a condition called hyperglycemia. Blood glucose is sometimes called blood sugar, but glucose is a very special sugar when it comes to diabetes. For the sake of accuracy, blood glucose is the correct terminology.
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The glycemic index of carbohydrate containing foods was originally developed in 1981 at the University of Toronto. Recognizing that different foods affect blood glucose differently, researchers fed carbohydrate foods to fasting volunteers and monitored their fasting blood glucose response over the following two hours.
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Eat more whole foods for a diabetes-friendly meal plan. Whole foods is a term often defined as unrefined and unprocessed foods, or foods that are refined or processed as little as possible before consumption. Frankly, terms like processed, natural, organic, and even whole can be confusing, and because you hear them used in many different ways it’s best to think about examples.
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Adopting and sticking with eating habits that maximize blood glucose control and heart health is, perhaps, the biggest challenge diabetes presents. First, for most people this represents a significant change. Second, misconceptions abound regarding what a diabetes-friendly diet includes, or more accurately doesn’t include — no sugar, no carbohydrates, no this, and none of that.
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These are the foods that seem to find you, even if you’re trying to hide from them, especially hors d’oeuvres — with those little party bites it may seem there’s a conspiracy at work to put you face-to-face with a tray of bacon-wrapped scallops. Once again, these are foods that seem to just appear, are powerfully tempting, can seem insignificant, but can add up quickly.
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Right between your ears is your incredible and mysterious brain, and your brain plays essential roles in managing diabetes. But, the different roles your brain plays in diabetes management aren’t always in your best interests, and more often than you might imagine messages from your brain make managing diabetes more difficult.
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You may be inclined to think you can’t actually choose a doctor or health care team to help you manage your diabetes, but like many other responsibilities for diabetes care, it’s up to you to know what’s necessary and to make some demands if you’re not getting the support you need.
Here’s a quick listing of medical resources you can take advantage of:
Primary physician: Most people with type 2 diabetes work with a primary physician, who prescribes medication and routinely monitor for signs of diabetes-related complications in physical exams and laboratory work.
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Whether you have type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes, you share one crucial responsibility from your diagnosis going forward — doing your part. In simple terms, you must now become an active helper in your body’s metabolism, and the better helper you become, the less likely you are to experience the damage that diabetes can do to your body.