With the right lifestyle, you can reduce your symptoms of diabetes or even reverse diabetes to a point where you won’t need any medications! Let’s explore how in this blog.
Diabetes is a chronic condition in which your body doesn’t produce enough insulin or doesn’t use the insulin it produces efficiently.
Glucose or blood sugar is the main source of energy for the body which it derives from the food we eat. Insulin helps move the glucose from your blood to the cells where it can be used. But, when the body doesn’t produce enough insulin or if the body becomes insulin resistant, the sugar present in the blood goes unused and accumulates. This leads to high blood sugar levels that can cause serious health complications.
Now let’s get to the diabetes diet chart that’s going to help in our battle against diabetes!
Best Diabetic Food Chart:
Diabetics are also at a heightened risk of high blood pressure and high blood fats which can lead to heart diseases. Certain foods help lower your blood sugar levels and play a major role in controlling diabetes. Therefore, the food you choose must also be healthy for your heart and low in fats and salt.
In this blog, we have put together a diet chart for diabetic patients for an entire day to help you get started:
-
Early Morning
Starting your day straight with milk and cereals can cause your blood sugar levels to shoot through the roof. Instead, have some cinnamon water or dalchini ka paani, methi ka paani by soaking fenugreek seeds overnight in water, soaked walnuts and almonds early in the morning to get your body started and then have proper breakfast.
-
Breakfast
A HUGE warning: Do not skip any meals of the day, or have your meal too late or too early. Skipping a meal can increase your blood sugar levels after the other two meals. For breakfast you can have broken wheat or daliya, upma, vegetable dosa, bajra dosa, aval upma, chilla made with besan. You can prepare any kind of chutney to go with these but make sure not to add too much salt.
-
Midmorning
For a diabetic patient, every meal of the day should be evenly spaced out with a gap of about 4 to 5 hours between them. To get you to the next meal without any problems, you can have midmorning snacks.
Midmorning is about 11 in the morning while breakfast is about 8. For midmorning, have some cucumber to munch on, or you can have vegetable soup or butter milk.
-
Lunch
Have your lunch at 1 in the afternoon, if you do the calculations, you will realize that the morning breakfast was exactly 5 hours before lunch.
You don’t have to strictly stick to the timings given in this blog, just make sure that all your meals of the day are evenly spaced out like the ones we have here.
Now as for lunch, try some lemon rice, brown rice with dal or sambhar, paneer or egg stuffed parathas, green leafy vegetable salad, peas pulao and boiled eggs.
-
Evening Snack
On second thought, it shouldn’t be called snacks, it’s just another time of the day where you can have something to munch on. Let’s go munching these at 4 pm: Bhuna Chana, carrot and cucumber, mixed sprouts, pumpkin seeds, almonds, walnuts, green tea.
-
Dinner
Have your dinner at 7 pm. YES! We really said 7 pm! Here’s why: Late night dinner induces ‘nocturnal glucose intolerance’, which means your body will both secrete less insulin and become insulin resistant at the same time causing your blood sugar levels to raise during your sleep. This happens more in people who don’t evenly space out their meals and hit the bed right after dinner.
So we repeat again: Have your dinner at 7 in the evening. Here’s your dinner menu: You can have everything you had for breakfast… kafi anti-climax! For dinner keep it light.
You might have realized there’s something missing in this food chart for diabetic patients. Have you found it? Yes, this diet chart is entirely vegetarian! That explains why the dinner is the same as breakfast.
-
If you are craving for something non-vegetarian, fatty fishes got your back. Wait, it has fat in its name? Not all fats are harmful for your health, there are good fats and then there are harmful fats. Fatty fishes like mackerel (bhangra), salmon (rawas) and sardines (tarli) are safe options, we can even confidently say it’s healthy for you! You can have fatty fishes as much as 5 times a week, that takes care of the dinner, doesn’t it?
But wait, there’s more. Your non-vegetarian menu doesn’t stop with fatty fishes. Read on to learn more!
Food List to Include in Diabetic Diet Chart
-
Whole grains such as barley, rye, millet, black, brown and red rice are one of the richest sources of fiber to keep you full for longer.
-
Leafy Greens such as spinach, drumstick leaves, mint leaves and amaranth leaves.
-
Nuts and Seeds such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds are great as anti-oxidants and are high in proteins, dietary fiber, magnesium and fatty acids (the good ones).
-
Whole Pulses and Legumes such as chickpeas, lentils, moong dhal and kidney beans pack a generous amount of proteins and many other nutrients.
-
All Vegetables high in water content are good for diabetics.
-
Cinnamon regulates blood sugar levels and makes your body insulin sensitive. Cinnamon water also helps in removing toxins and burns excess fats in your body aiding in weight loss.
-
Lean Meats such as fishes and skinless poultry are good for you, and fine additions to your diabetic meal plan chart, isn’t it? But avoid red meat (pork, beef, lamb and mutton) as they are high in harmful fats and can spike your cholesterol levels. Also, do not deep fry the fishes and chicken, instead, you can grill or roast them.
Summary of Diabetes Diet Chart for Diabetic Patient
That concludes our diabetic diet food chart! One of the things we always want you to remember is that you have more control over your health than you think. Your diet is one of the main factor of good diabetes management. Along with eating healthier, you must also try hard to be physically active and lose some extra weight.
