Feeling Great About Your Diabetic Meal Plan. What You Should Look For.

A good diabetic meal plan will show you how you can eat healthily, and avoid feeling left out. On a general basis, if you can watch out for these three things, you can enjoy food with the rest of us.

Three Things To Watch For In Your Diet

Being diabetic is not much fun, but if you can keep your blood sugar levels stable, reduce your fat intake and eat regularly, then in some cases you might be able to control your diabetes with just diet and exercise.

1. Avoid Feeling Anxious And Irritable By Keeping Blood Sugars Stable

Stabilize your blood sugar levels by increasing the amount of fiber in your diet. While everyone needs to get the recommended 25 - 30 grams of fiber in their diet, diabetics benefit from good fiber levels as it helps to control roller-coaster blood glucose levels through slowing digestion and the body's absorption of nutrients.

The Harvard School Of Public Health even recommend eating enough fiber to prevent developing Diabetes.

A good diabetic meal plan will make sure that you are eating enough fruit, vegetables and high fiber cereals. In some cases some ready to eat cereals in the morning can account for nearly half your daily fiber intake requirements.

On special occasions, you may also be able to have that cake or chocolate bar, as long as you remember to cut out the pasta or potatoes that day to minimize your caloric intake and to even out your blood sugar levels.

2. You Don't Have To Miss Out On Fats, Just Eat The Right Fats

There is no need to feel like you can't have fats, you just have to have the right fats.

In many ways, a diabetic meal plan is just a healthy meal plan. Cutting out the bad fats in our diets, is something that we all have to watch, however, diabetics need to be especially concerned with cutting out saturated fat as they have two to four times the risk of heart disease of the rest of the population.[2]

A good diabetic meal plan should replace saturated "bad" fats with unsaturated "good" fats.

Some research has shown that, replacing carbohydrates with mono-unsaturated fats can help to improve your blood sugar levels.[1]

Including foods in a diabetic meal plan such as canola and olive oils, avocados and some nuts can help and has also been shown to lower triglyceride levels.

3. Keep Your Body Powered Up

Eat regularly to keep your blood sugar as level as possible. This is obviously a no-brainer.

When you eat, blood glucose levels are increased. If you go for a long time without eating, your energy and glucose levels are going to be low. If you then eat a big meal, your blood sugar levels are going to spike.

So give your body constant fuel and a steady flow of glucose by eating smaller meals more often, including snacks between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner and before bed.

4. Being The Best You That You Can Be

O.K., there is one more thing, to staying healthy and feeling great with diabetes, and that is regularly exercising.

Exercising can mean that you not only lose the weight, control your insulin levels, and lower your blood pressure, it can also mean that you are looking and feeling the absolute best that you can be.

Some forms of exercise that are especially great are walking, aqua aerobics or gardening.

7 Day Stable Blood Sugar Meal Plan and Grocery Lists

You can find full length stable blood sugar meal plans and grocery lists within Lynn's book, Melt The Fat. It also covers how you can tailor an exercise regime to your own needs.

Talking To Your Doctor First

If you've just been diagnosed with Type I or Type II diabetes and you're wandering what you need to be eating. Make sure you check with him/her first before starting a new diet regime.

[1] Medline Plus Diabetes Diet

[2] Saxelby, C. (2002) Nutrition For Life Hardie Grant Books p. 157

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