You can help and manage your diabetic condition with a healthy balanced diet. Diabetes is a metabolic disease which creates high blood sugar levels. Insulin, the hormone, moves sugar from the blood into your cells to keep or use for energy. If you have diabetes, either your body does not create enough insulin orcannot effectively use the insulin it makes.
What is a healthy balanced diet?
Choosing to eat healthy foods helps you to manage your health issues. Following a good diet would allow you to manage your glucose levels and help you to keep to a healthy weight. Once you develop diabetes, every weight increase must be a concern. No one food has all the food nutrients you need. That’s why you want to consume foods from all the food divisions.
How much you wish to eat and drink depends on your age and gender. How active you’re and also the goals you have set for yourself would influence your diet plan. As you may be aware, no single food contains all the essential nutrients you need for your body. That’s why you need to select and choose your ingredients from different sources of the daily food supply.
When we refer to the diet as balanced, we do not mean the consumption of equal portions. You can have certain foods a bit more than others. However, be careful with the amount of your food intake. The more food you consume, the more likely you would put on weight which will create problems for you.
Fruit and vegetables
Being a diabetic doesn’t mean you can’t have fruit. Fruit and veg meals naturally have low calories. They are full of vitamins, minerals and fibre which your body needs and they give additional flavour to your meals.
Fresh, frozen, dried and canned – all of them are good to use. Choose a rainbow of colours to give widespread of vitamins and minerals to help balance your meals. Try and avoid fruit juices and smoothies as they don’t have the maximum amount of fibre.
Even though fruit and vegetables are carbs, do not exclude them from your daily balanced diet. Fruit and vegetables will help you against stroke and cardiovascular diseases and cancers. A healthy balanced diet will help you to manage diabetic health issues.
Starchy foods: Why do you need starchy foods in a healthy balanced diet.
Starchy foods are the main source of carbs and are essential in a healthy diet plan. Food ingredients like rice, pasta, cereals, potatoes and bread should be included in our daily meals and constitute about a third of the food we eat.
Whenever possible, use wholegrain kinds of food, and eat your potatoes with their skins on for more fibre. As part of a healthy balanced diet lifestyle, some starchy foods must be included in our daily balanced diet program.
Starchy foods are good sources of energy and the chief source of a variety of nutrients in our diet-menu. As well as starch, they contain iron and vitamins B, fibre, and calcium. Many people consider starchy foods as fattening, but they contain less than half the calories of fat. Be careful with the added fats, like cooking oil, that you use in cooking and serving.
Protein foods: beans, eggs, meat also fish, nuts, pulses
Meat and fish meals have high omega, which keeps the muscles healthy. However, a healthy diet implies less red and processed meat consumption. They are strongly linked to cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Oily fish like mackerel, salmon and sardines have loads of polyunsaturated fatty acid oil, which helps the heart to be healthy.
Dairy foods and other options
Milk, cheese and dairy products are good and essential for your bones, teeth and muscles. However, some farm foods are high in fat, and significantly saturated fat. So choose lesser-fat alternatives.
Make sure you use food with less sugar in the dairy products. If you want to sweet up a daily ingredient, use some berries but not sugar. If you want an ingredient like soymilk, choose one that’s sugar-free and calcium-fortified.
Foods high in sugar, fat and salt
As part of a healthy lifestyle, sugary food, like ice cream, should be avoided. The less you consume such foods, the better it will help you. However, occasionally, you may indulge little bits of such foods.
These kinds of foods like ice cream, butter, sugar-coated foods and drinks as well as biscuits, crisps and chocolates have more calories and raise sugar levels in the blood. The best glass to depend on and use often is water. And avoid unnecessary alcohol consumption. They are not suitable for your heart.
Fibre, as noted earlier, can help your bowels to stay healthy and make you feel full. This means you are not likely to need food unnecessary. If you are trying to lose weight, eating whole grain starchy foods like potatoes with their skins on would help you a lot.
Some types of fibres found in fruits and vegetables like apples, carrots, potatoes, and in oats and pulses can be partly digested. They will help to reduce the level of cholesterol in your blood.
