Nov 09 2008
Diabetes Diet Plan
A structured diabetes meal plan is an important part of your diabetes control as is recognizing when you need to eat or drink in order to balance the effects of tablets or insulin on your blood glucose level. By not following some form of diabetes meal plan, if your routine is unpredictable, or your usual eating pattern is disrupted, you may find that your blood glucose level is less well controlled.
If you take insulin or tablets to stimulate your insulin production, eating at regular intervals throughout the day is essential to avoid hypos. If you inject insulin or take tablets to increase the insulin in your bloodstream and you don’t eat, your blood glucose level will fall – so part of your diabetes meal plan needs to take account of meal times and when you take your insulin.
There are some tablets and insulins now available that enable you to closely match your insulin to your food, making it less likely that you will have too much insulin in your bloodstream.
Healthy diabetic meal planning means regularly eating meals containing carbohydrate throughout the day that will "fuel" your body, help your digestive system to function properly, and avoid sharp rises and falls in your blood glucose level. If you have only one large meal a day, your body will struggle to turn this into energy quickly enough to keep your blood glucose level balanced. A regular eating pattern is also more likely to fit in with any tablets or insulin you take for your diabetes.
Your Diabetes Meal Plan – Timing Your Food With Medication
Knowing when your tablets or insulin will work and when your blood glucose level is likely to start falling is useful when formulating your diabetes meal plan. For example, some tablets may make your blood glucose level in which case you might need to eat a snack at these times. If you can’t eat when you need to, perhaps because of long shifts or meetings at work, different medication that will suit your routine better. Discuss this with your health professional.
Snacking
Having diabetes does not automatically mean having to add snacks to your day – it may be that eating regular meals at certain times controls your blood glucose level well enough. Also, if you are trying to lose weight, you may not want 10 increase are taking certain types of insulin or tablets, you may need snacks between meals and before bed to keep your blood glucose level steady.
Or you may simply want a snack because you are hungry. If this is the
case, try to make sure snacks are not all high in fat or sugar – a piece of fruit instead of a biscuit is much healthier. Also, snacking should not mean you eat more food overall – by reducing what you eat at other times, such as by having smaller meals, snacks will not be extras but part of your normal daily food intake.
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