When you are diabetic, your diet is of utmost importance. Without a good eating plan your condition can take over your life, and cause your health to spiral out of control. This can lead to massive health problems and even put your life at risk.

That is why having a food plan that caters to diabetes is so important.

What are Diabetes Meal Plans?

To assist you in determining which foods to choose for meals and snacks, a diabetes meal plan acts as a guide.

You can shape your meal plan around your own life schedule as well as around the foods you like to eat. A good quality meal plan will focus on improving your blood glucose level, as well as your blood pressure and cholesterol. Ultimately you will also want a plan that aims to help to either to lose weight, or to maintain a healthy weight. A meal plan makes all of these goals significantly easier and hassle free.

How to Create a Diabetes Meal Plan

Creating this sort of plan may seem like hard or difficult work, but it is not. Your doctor and nutritionist can advise you on your food choices as well as portion size recommendations. It is very much a case of trial and error in the starting stages.

With that said though, it does not mean you trial a junk food diet! Obviously that is not a good idea. Instead, it means trying various portion sizes, food items, food ratios and eating routines.

Exercise Too

Remember, that good food without exercise is only half the goal. Include exercise in your planning and you’ll notice faster changes and improvements in your health and the management of your diabetic condition.

A diabetic food list can be a handy thing to have when you’ve just been diagnosed with type two diabetes. Food is one of the great primal pleasures in this world, so you want to be able to eat things that truly give you pleasure and satisfaction.

Unfortunately, eating unlimited amounts of whatever you feel like is usually how people end up with type two diabetes in the first place. You can still eat the foods you want, but you’re going to have to keep an eye on making better food choices and saving the treats for when you’re going to really enjoy them.

There are a whole books on this sort of thing, so I’m just going to give you the quick and dirty diabetic food list to get you started. I’ll keep this as short and simple as I possibly can:

Meats - Basically, you can eat anything that used to have a face. Beef, chicken, fish, pork, etc. You’ll want to avoid any kind of breading except as a treat, but you should have protein at every meal.

Vegetables - You can also have pretty much as much as you like of anything green. Or really, any vegetable - spinach, pepper, tomatoes, etc. They’re al good for you and won’t negatively effect your blood sugar. This doesn’t include potatoes, corn, and the like.

Fruits - Fruit is tricky. As long as you don’t go overboard, fruit should be fine. Just don’t eat twenty bananas a day. And fruits doesn’t mean fruit juice.

Fats - Make sure you’re getting natural fats. No trans anything. Beyond that, don’t worry about it. I don’t recommend licking the bacon trough, but the worries about fat are vastly exaggerated.

Diary - Cheeses are usually fine, but other diary should be controlled. Milk is mostly sugar, and it will jack up your blood sugar if you have type two diabetes.

Grains - Should mostly be avoided. Don’t get me wrong, I love bread, but it needs to be something special and not a daily diet staple. Same goes for corn and rice. If you do have grains, go for real whole grains.

Sugar - Should be avoided, as much as possible. Try to only have sugar in things that you really enjoy, and not as a routine things. I love tiramisu, for instance, and so when I really want that, I have it. But I keep sugar minimal the rest of the time.

So there you go, a simple diabetic food list.

There are so many alarming stories about type 2 diabetes. Yes, it is a condition that definitely requires your attention and the wise choice is to start now. Let’s get back to basics: it is the result of lifestyle choices. That doesn’t mean you are bad or did anything wrong. What it does mean is you need to make up your mind to take action and undo some of the damage that may have already taken place in your body.

So what are these choices that are mentioned:

1. It had to start somewhere so let’s start with the food we choose:

• so many of us lead busy lives and don’t feel like preparing food at the end of the day … so we eat out or buy takeaway or carry out. These foods contain high fat, salt and sugar
• we often overeat at restaurants; food on the menu sounds too good to resist
• when we eat in company we often allow their choices to influence ours
• missing breakfast sets us up to make poor food choices all through the day, eg. buying sugary snacks on the way to work

2. Reduced physical activity is the next step towards being overweight:

• we jump in the car to go to the local shops, or drive to the station to catch the train. Certainly housing is further away from these conveniences than it used to be, but what do we do to compensate for this lack of activity
• we are tired at the end of the day and relax in front of the television

It’s very basic but if we take in more energy than we use, the result is an increasing waistline.

Type 2 diabetes is the result of lifestyle choices; make a start to reverse this condition by looking at some of your habits:

Step 1:

• keep a list of everything you eat and drink for seven days, write it down
• take note of the type of drinks you have, eg. fruit juices or soda (fruit juices are high in natural-sugar and are equivalent to eating 2-3 pieces of fruit, soda is high in sugar)
• become familiar with your eating style, then you will have a better idea of what you need to change

Step 2:

• increase your physical activity. No need to be a gym junkie, walk for ten minutes after each meal. That’s thirty minutes a day, three and a half hours each week
• park your car further away from the train station, walk that extra five or ten minutes
• get up and walk around the office a couple of times during the day

Step 3:

• learn the basics about type 2 diabetes and high blood sugar levels. Keep it simple. There is no need for it to rule your life

Changing your food choices, increasing your physical activity and losing 5-10% of your body weight is far more effective in preventing diabetes than drugs like Metformin.

Diabetes can be one of the consequences of overindulgence and bad eating habits. These bad food choices creates an environment in which this disease can develop and progress. Unless better eating habits are formed, diabetes, as well as other diseases, could be part of your future.

However, there is a simple practice that you can start that can help to prevent this disease from forming, and this is to eat foods that have a low glycemic index. What are low glycemic foods? These are foods that have a minimal effect on the raising of your blood sugar or insulin levels. It is the constant spiking of insulin levels that can lead to insulin resistance, which is a precursor to diabetes.

Low Glycemic Index Food Sources

There are an abundance of these low glycemic food sources. Many sites, including this one, have lists of glycemic foods with their values. However, even though the list are helpful with finding the foods with the lowest index, they are not entirely necessary in order to determine which foods probably have low indexes.

An easy way to determine this is to ask yourself has the food been processed or not. Processed foods are those food items that have been prepared in a manner that may destroy or removed important nutrients from the foods. If foods have been processed, then in all likelihood these foods do not have a low glycemic index. Therefore they should be avoided are at least severely limited in your diet.

Instead, the foods that you are looking for are just the opposite of these processed foods, namely whole grains or foods in there natural state. This includes whole grain breads, the majority of legumes or beans, certain fruits, and of course the majority of vegetables.

However, just because it is a whole food does not mean that it is going to have a low glycemic index. For instance, baked potatoes have a high index, especially when the skin is not eaten with it. Also, tasty as it might be, watermelon also has a high index.

So to help lower your risk at developing diabetes, consume more foods that have a low glycemic index. And for a general means of determining whether or not a food may be considered to have a low index, just ask yourself if it is in its natural state or not.

According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), Diabetes now afflicts 20.8 million Americans, or 7% of our population. Only 5-10% of Diabetics are type 1, where through autoimmune destruction of insulin producing beta-cells, they now have a lifelong dependence on insulin. The rest are classified as type 2, resulting from insulin resistance (the cells of the body stop responding to insulin) combined with insulin deficiency. According to the ADA there are 54 million Americans who have prediabetes, or 17% of our population.

What’s causing this epidemic? Is it really “bad genes” or what we are putting into our bodies?

Diabetes is a serious, life-threatening condition that has everything to do with what one eats (excessive and poor food choices) and what one does not eat (nutritional deficiencies), and much less to do with the supposed biological fatalism of our genes. While geneticists apply vast amounts of time, energy and money to finding the “causes” of disease in our genes, much less attention is placed on research that has already proven that the consumption of foods like wheat, dairy and soy are major contributing factors in the development of type 1 diabetes, or that the consumption of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes.

Blaming “bad genes” on diseases like diabetes is a convenient way to escape the obvious things we can do individually, and as a culture, to prevent the escalation of an already epidemic problem.

We shouldn’t settle for the unlikely prospect of a future “cure” via the pharmaceutical pipeline, gene therapy, stem cell research or similar scientific fantasies, when the cause (and therefore the cure) of diabetes may be as close to us as what is at the end of our fork.

It is universally accepted that type 1 diabetes is caused by the immune system attacking the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Eventually the pancreas is no longer capable of producing insulin. While geneticist look for the “bad genes” that are supposedly “causing” the autoimmune problem, it is well documented that in susceptible individuals something in wheat known as gliadin stimulates diabetogenic class II HLA antigens on the surface of the pancreatic islet cells (cells that normally do no display these antigens), marking them for autoimmune destruction. [Do dietary lectins cause disease? BMJ 1999;318:1023-1024].

Not everyone who eats wheat will develop diabetes. Different people will exhibit differing degrees of susceptibility to wheat lectin and this is why it is right to say that there is a “genetic component” to the development of type 1 diabetes, or to any disease. But acknowledging the existence of genetic differences and differing susceptibilities to illness in a population is not to say that genes are “causing” the disease. In the case of wheat lectin, it is not the gene that is causing the islet cell to present an antigen on its surface. It takes wheat lectin to activate the genes necessary for this cellular transformation. To use an analogy, the genes predisposing one to higher risk for diabetes are like an “unloaded gun.” The “bullets” are certain allergenic foods like wheat, dairy and soy. The “triggers” that “fire” this “loaded gun” are varied, from prolonged exposure to these foods, to increased intestinal/gut permeability, vaccinations, viral infections, and perhaps a multitude of as of yet unknown factors.

If we know that the three most commonly lauded “health foods,” wheat, dairy and soy all are implicated in the development of type 1 diabetes, wouldn’t it be a good idea to remove them from the diets of our young as a precaution? What is the other alternative? Succumb to the fatalistic fallacies of the “gene theory” of disease, and just hope that our children won’t develop the disease because they do not have “the bad gene,” or have just been lucky in the game of nutritional Russian roulette?

Type 2 Diabetes - a preventable and reversible disease!

Type 2 diabetes, and the prediabetic state of insulin resistance that precedes it, are caused by the following preventable factors:

1) excessive consumption of calories.

2) inactivity; lack of exercise.

3) Consumption of high glycemic foods (foods that make the blood sweet):

a) primarily sugar and grain derived carbohydrates, e.g. pasta, cereal, crackers.

b) high fructose corn syrup, and other sources of concentrated fructose: e.g. sugar, agave.

4) hydrogenated oils

5) nutritional deficiencies of minerals, especially magnesium, chromium and zinc, and omega 3 fatty acids, as found in foods like flaxseed, walnuts and wild fish.

When we eat beyond our capacity, excess energy is stored in the body as glycogen and saturated fat. When through prolonged over-consumption of food our body no longer has room to store these unneeded calories, insulin resistance emerges. As if to protect itself from caloric over-saturation, the fat cells and muscle cells begin to lose the number of insulin receptors, thus reducing the amount of glucose that may enter. This causes the blood sugar to raise to unhealthy levels leaving the pancreas with no other option than to overcompensate and produce more insulin. If this cycle continues, eventually the insulin producing beta cells become enervated and lose their ability to produce insulin, resulting in full blown type 2 diabetes. Caloric restriction becomes of vital importance in forestalling the development of type 2 diabetes.

Exercise is essential in helping the body use up stored energy, converting calories consumed into calories burned. Exercise has the opposite effect of over-eating, increasing the number of insulin receptors in muscle, and increasing the sensitivity of the body to insulin; hence, releasing the pancreas of the burden of constant insulin production. Exercise also results in the release of appetite suppressing hormones and neurotransmitters which help to forestall over-eating.

Carbohydrates generally have an insulin secreting effect on the body because they have a high glycemic rating. That is to say, carbohydrates cause the blood to become sweeter than protein or fat, which are broken down slowly in the body, independently of insulin. Even so-called “complex carbohydrates” like puffed rice have higher glycemic ratings (110) than white sugar (80), which is 50% fructose, and therefore less likely to induce an insulin response than these “whole grains.” On the flip side, fructose while having a low glycemic rating, can raise blood sugar on the back end by reducing the affinity of insulin for its receptor, hence contributing to insulin resistance and elevating blood glucose.

When it comes to “whole grains,” no food category is associated with greater misunderstanding in realm of blood sugar disorders. The perception that “whole grains” are good for our health and should be consumed in plenty is based on the assumption that the millions of years of biological evolution that preceded the advent of the agrarian revolution (circa 10,000 b.c.) are no longer relevant. We spent 300,000 years as archaic homo sapiens in the capacity of hunters, gatherers and foragers, where the consumption of cereal grasses, and especially the seed form of these grasses, would not have occurred with any regularity, if at all. Our metabolism is simply not designed for large amounts of starch, sugar, and synthetically produced sweeteners and fats. We need fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts, and high quality animal protein in plenty. Moreover evidence exists demonstrating that the glycoproteins in starchy grains known as “lectins,” can bind to the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus blocking out the appetite suppressing effects of the hormone leptin. This is one reason why bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, etc, can generate incessant cravings and contribute to a condition known as “leptin resistance.”

High Fructose Corn Syrup has been shown to cause insulin resistance in rats and humans. It also been associated with insatiable hunger and increased production of fat by the liver, along with other blood lipid alterations associated with “metabolic syndrome,” which includes high triglycerides, increased blood pressure, low HDL and elevated LDL.

Hydrogenated oils dramatically reduce the responsiveness of our muscle and fat to insulin, whereas, omega 3 fatty acids increase that responsiveness. A search of the biomedical citations on www.pubmed.gov shows a treasure house of research proving omega 3 fatty acids help to correct insulin resistance.

Numerous clinical studies have also been done showing that magnesium, gtf chromium, chelated zinc, alpha lipoic acid, cinnamon (ceylon or true cinnamon; not cassia or false cinnamon) all help to prevent, reduce or reverse the progression of type 2 diabetes.

The reason why these truly remarkable dietary supplements receive less attention than they deserve is because they are not “patentable drugs.” Mother Nature’s formulas are proprietary, but She does not grant patents! Rather, she offers these things to us to use freely for self-healing, if only we would listen and consider ourselves deserving enough to use them.