Diabetics need to make careful choices with their eating habits. For example, as a person living with type 2 diabetes, you need to avoid processed foods and foods high in salt or sodium, MayoClinic.com suggests. Diabetics can eat many foods, but should keep nutrition in mind when choosing them. Keep in mind that fresh, raw and healthy should top your food criteria. Water is also something on which diabetics should focus. Water helps stabilize blood sugars and flushes out unneeded toxins from the body.
Drinking for Health
Remember to drink at least 8 to 10 glasses of water each day, MedlinePlus notes. When you get enough fluid in your body, you will feel better. Your body will function better, and your kidneys will remain healthy. Water helps your kidneys perform their job of ridding your body of unneeded impurities. Water also helps with digestion. You nourish each organ in your body with the water you drink, and water keeps you hydrated. Diet soft drinks, although they contain no calories and do not put sugar into your body, may not provide the healthiest drink. Diet soft drinks contain many chemicals and often are high in sodium, which can cause fluid retention.
Eating Healthy
Although diabetics can eat many foods on food exchange diets, their health should still come first. Eating foods lower in fat and avoiding processed foods loaded with salt should remain a priority, MedlinePlus reports. Fresh vegetables or fruit should be part of each meal of the day. You can add them to omelets, salads and kabobs, as well as eat them alone. A topping of low-fat olive oil and vinegar adds taste to vegetables, and low-fat yogurt will add taste to your fruit. To help yourself avoid getting bored eating the same foods the same way, write down new recipes you find and try them. You might find them tastier than you think, and cooking new recipes helps prevent diet boredom.
Foods to Avoid
Do not eat fatty and fried foods on a regular basis. Although a stack of ribs cooked on a grill smells delicious, the influence of triglycerides, blood fats that are part of cholesterol, enters the picture. Your heart needs to remain healthy to function at its best and needs to supply blood to your entire body. To do so, it needs healthy muscle power. By eating low-fat foods and avoiding fatty fried foods, you can avoid heart and kidney disease. Triglycerides--which come from excess calories, especially saturated fats, sugars and alcohol--can leave fatty deposits in your cardiovascular system that can block blood flow. Choose health first instead of fat. Eating healthy will keep your blood glucose levels normal, and you will feel better, MayoClinic.com. indicates.
Reminder About Exercise
Along with eating healthy foods and drinking healthy beverages, you should not forget that exercise will help keep your body in shape. If you burn extra calories through exercise, you can, on occasion, eat and drink items you normally should not as a diabetic. This does not mean that if you exercise, you can eat candy all day long. It means that if you exercise and eat and drink correctly, you can have dessert once in a while. Exercise brings pink to the cheeks and health to your bones. It keeps the joints oiled with natural lubricants. By exercising, you help your body break down fat being stored in your body, MayoClinic.com says.
