If you suffer from diabetes, a proper diet will prove essential to your health. Your high blood sugar levels require regulation. One way to stabilize your blood sugar is eating appropriate, diabetes-friendly meals. Your doctor may prescribe insulin to help your body maintain more manageable glucose levels, but what and how often you eat play vital roles in controlling symptoms of diabetes.
Nutrition Categories
The healthiest diet plans for people with diabetes provide a balance of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. You should also eat small meals throughout the day and consume about the same amount of food at each meal. Ideally each meal will should include a combination of food items from each of the following six categories: starchy foods like bread or pasta, fruits, vegetables, protein such as meat or tofu, dairy, and healthy fats. Furthermore, when you choose portion sizes for each of the categories, keep in mind that carbohydrates affect your blood sugar levels more than any other category. Because of this, the healthiest meals will include smaller portions of carbohydrates and larger portions of protein, dairy, and vegetables.
Sample Meal
The American Diabetes Association offers tips on how to choose the proper portion sizes for the different categories of foods you should consume at each meal. Begin by dividing your plate in half, then divide one of the halves again, so you now have a total of three sections on your plate. Fill the largest of the three sections with nonstarchy vegetables such as lettuce, tomato, spinach, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms or green beans. Next, fill one of the two smaller sections with a starchy food such as whole-grain bread, oatmeal, pasta, rice, cooked beans or potatoes. Finally, fill the last small section with protein such as chicken, turkey, lean beef, tofu, or seafood like tuna, salmon, catfish, crab or shrimp. You can round out your meal with a glass of milk and a piece of fresh fruit. Prepare your meals with olive oil instead of butter or margarine.
Atkins Diet
While the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association advocate well-balanced meals, other types of diets may help lower your blood sugar levels. Since carbohydrates affect your glucose levels more than any other type of food, you could restrict your intake of carbs on a low-carb diet such as Atkins. On Atkins, you avoid carbohydrates and eat more protein. Atkins-approved foods include lean protein such as chicken, beef, fish and eggs.
Glycemic Index
If you're looking for a diet more structured than the balanced food diet recommended by the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association but less rigid than the Atkins diet, you may want to consider the Glycemic Index diet. The glycemic index is a tool that classifies carbohydrates according to their potential to increase your blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates with a higher glycemic index raise your blood sugar faster and higher than carbohydrates with a lower glycemic index score. According to the Glycemic Index diet, the healthiest carbohydrates -- the ones with the lowest glycemic index -- include high-fiber foods, such as whole grains, legumes and fresh fruits and vegetables.
