Healthy eating when you have diabetes
You can make a difference in your blood glucose control through your food choices.
When you have diabetes, your body may have problems using the energy from the food you eat. This can cause high blood glucose levels. Balancing what, when and how much you eat will help manage your blood glucose levels.
How food affects your body
All food affects blood glucose levels. There are no good or bad foods. Eating a variety of foods can improve your health and keep mealtimes interesting.
The foods you eat fall into three main groups:
- Protein: Protein helps build body cells for growth and healing.
- Fat: Fat helps the body absorb certain vitamins, lubricate joints and muscles, and adds flavor to food.
- Carbohydrate: Carbohydrates are your best energy source.
Carbohydrate foods
Tip
Choose carbohydrate foods that are high in fiber, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes (navy, kidney and black beans, lentils, etc.). Fiber:
- slows digestion to make you feel fuller longer
- slows the rate carbohydrates are absorbed into your bloodstream
- helps reduce cholesterol by binding to the cholesterol in your digestive tract and getting rid of it.
All carbohydrate foods turn into glucose. Carbohydrate foods are breads, crackers, cereals, rice, pasta, fruit and fruit juice, milk, vegetables and sweets.
Do not avoid carbohydrate foods. They should make up 50 to 60 percent of your food plan.
Carbohydrate counting is a way to help you manage the amount of carbohydrate you eat during the day.
A carbohydrate choice is a serving that contains about 15 grams of carbohydrate. For most people with diabetes, a healthy meal plan has three to five (45 to 75 grams) carbohydrate choices at a meal and one to two (15 to 30 grams) carbohydrate choices for snacks.
| Grams of carbohydrate |
Carbohydrate choices |
0 to 5 |
0 |
6 to 10 |
1/2 |
11 to 20 |
1 |
21 to 25 |
1 1/2 |
26 to 35 |
2 |
36 to 40 |
2 1/2 |
41 to 50 |
3 |
51 to 55 |
3 1/2 |
56 to 65 |
4 |
66 to 70 |
4 1/2 |
71 to 80 |
5 |
 Examples of one carbohydrate choice (15 grams)
Eat your meals and snacks every 4 to 6 hours to help even out your blood glucose level. Do not skip meals or snacks. If you do, your body will make up for the lack of glucose by "asking" your liver to make extra glucose. This can make controlling your blood glucose even harder.
How to read food labels
 Use the nutrition label for oatmeal (at right) to understand the following.
Serving size: The serving size lists how many calories and nutrients are in one serving of the food. If you eat twice the srving size, you are getting twice the calories, fat, sodium, etc.
Calories and calories from fat: Calories are a measure of energy relseased by a food. Try to lilmit your food choices to those that have less than one-third calories from fat.
Total fat: You need to make good fat choices.
Saturated fat Saturated fat raises LDL (the "bad") cholesterol. Reduce saturated fats to help protect your heart.
Trans fat Trans fats can raise LDL cholesterol, lower HDL (the "good") cholesterol, and add to heart disease. Eat as little trans fats as possible. Avoid foods that contain "partially hydrogenated" and "hydrogenated" oils, including shortening.
Cholesterol Foods from animals (meat, fish, eggs, cheese, butter) have cholesterol.
Sodium Too much salt can lead to high blood pressure. One teaspoon of salt has 2,400 milligrams of salt. This is all you need each day.
Total carbohydrates Carbohydrates give your body energy. However, too many can raise your blood glucose.
Fiber If the food has 5 or more grams of fiber, subtract half of the grams from the total carbohydrate.
Sugar Sugar is included in the number of total carbohydrates.
Protein Choose lean meats, poultry and fish.
My meal plan Food and diabetes: Sample meal plans Food and diabetes: Dining out Heart-healthy eating with diabetes: Making good protein and fat choices
 Back to Healthy eating
|
Print
Send
to a Friend