The American Diabetic Association outlines several diet plans to help manage the symptoms of diabetes. From counting your carbohydrates to dividing good and bad carbs, you are sure to find a diet that suits your lifestyle and helps to control your blood glucose level.
Carbohydrate Counting Diet
The Carbohydrate Counting diet is designed to help keep your glucose level within a healthy range by setting a maximum on how much carbohydrates you eat per day. The American Diabetes Association recommends starting off with about 45 g to 60 g of carbohydrate food sources per meal, although your physician will help set the amount he feels is best to manage your diabetes. To know how much carbohydrate is in a food, you must use the food label provided on the packaging. This label will also help you determine serving size, calories and fat content.
Diabetes Meal Plan
A Diabetic Meal Plan is used as a guide that tells you what kind of meals you should choose to eat and when to snack. According to the American Diabetes Association, a good diabetes meal plan will help balance blood glucose levels, blood pressure, improve cholesterol and help with weight loss. A healthy diabetes meal plan should contain vegetables, whole grains, fruit, non-fat dairy, poultry, fish and lean meats. In addition to eating these foods, you must also be mindful of portion sizes. You are also encouraged to choose high quality foods from these categories to ensure a healthy consumption of vitamins, minerals and fiber, which helps to decrease the risk of future health complications.
Create Your Plate
The Create Your Plate diet is designed to focus on serving size, which helps with weight loss and blood glucose balancing. The first step in this diet is to draw an imaginary line down the center of the plate, followed by sectioning one of the sections in half; this will give your plate three sections. Fill the largest section with your favorite non-starchy vegetable. In one of the smaller sections, you can put your starchy food. Examples of starchy foods are whole grains, rice, pasta, cooked beans and potatoes. In the remaining small section, put meat or meat substitutes such as chicken, soy, fish or eggs. Add 8 oz. of milk and a half cup of fruit salad or canned fruit to complete the meal.
Glycemic Index
The glycemic index is a database of carbohydrate foods separated into two categories: high-GI or low-GI. These categories indicate how the foods affect blood glucose levels; foods with a low-GI indexing cause small change to blood glucose, whereas foods considered high-GI raise blood glucose levels rapidly. You should choose foods from the low-GI category in order to balance blood glucose levels and restrict the intake of foods from the high-GI index. Examples of low-GI foods are dried beans, legumes, whole grain bread and barley.
