Save Your Life with Simple Changes to Your Diet

When you’re diagnosed with diabetes, it doesn’t mean that you have to undertake monumental endeavors in order to ensure that you’re able to have a long and enjoyable life.

What it does mean is that you’re going to have to make some changes. These changes start with your diet. For someone with diabetes, that means changing the way that you think about food.

For many people, food equals happiness. We use it to celebrate, to commiserate and just because there are so many delicious meals and treats available. We fail to see food as fuel so we don’t treat it accordingly.

But one of the most important things you must know when you have diabetes is that everything that you eat has an impact on your blood glucose levels. Whether you eat fattening, sugary foods or you eat nutritional, low-calorie foods, they’ll all raise your sugar levels.

But the difference is found in how quickly they raise your sugar and the height to which they’ll raise those numbers. It’s not only glucose levels that can be cause for concern when you have diabetes.

You have a higher risk of other conditions developing. When you make changes to your diet, you can stop these other conditions from happening to you. With diabetes, you want to make sure that you make lifestyle changes that give you the most benefit.

Some people refer to a new eating plan after a diagnosis as a diabetic diet. But the truth of the matter is that your focus shouldn’t be on diabetic eating but rather eating healthy. You can do this by making simple changes to the way that you eat now that can ensure both short term and long-term benefits for your body when you’re dealing with diabetes.

Don’t eat anything without thinking about it. Studies have shown that mindless eating is a surefire way to not only eat foods that spike your glucose, but can also make you pack on the pounds.

If you have a food that’s a trigger item for you, make sure you limit having it in your house. Buy it only in portion-controlled sizes. Avoid going cold turkey on your favorite carbs.

Sudden deprivation has a tendency to backfire and you’ll end up sabotaging your good intentions. Instead, gradually phase out the amount of high fat, carbohydrate rich foods that you eat.

Opt for low calorie, low carbohydrate food choices whenever you can at home and when eating out. The worst food that can sabotage your glucose levels when you have diabetes are the carbohydrates.

But this depends on the type of carb that it is. There are both simple and complex carbs. Simple carbs are more commonly found in the foods that aren’t that good for you. You’ll find carbohydrates in a lot of different foods.

There are carbs that are great to eat when you have diabetes while others aren’t so great for you to consume because of what they do to your glucose level. Foods that are on the list of good carbs are things like a few fruits and vegetables.

Strawberries are low carb as are apricots. Although fruits do contain sugar and are often thought to be a simple carb, the truth is that fruit is packed with fiber. The fiber content in fruit causes your body to break down the sugar in the fruit at a slower pace than it would something like a slice of cake - which is also a simple carb.

Vegetables such as zucchini and cauliflower are also low carb choices. Cauliflower can be made to taste like mash potatoes but without the high carb count. Spaghetti squash is a vegetable that can be used as a replacement for pasta.

So you can have delicious pasta meals using this vegetable and not to have to dread the impact it will make on your blood sugar level.  The thing about the way you eat and diabetes is that when you make better choices with the foods on your meal plan, it not only lowers your glucose, but also your blood pressure and cholesterol.

Both of these can be a problem when you have diabetes and are something that eating right can eliminate. In fact, of all of the ways that you have at your disposal to fight back against the condition, eating healthy is the best tool you have to control or even reverse diabetes.

So, when you make simple changes to the way that you eat, you can raise the odds in your favor that you’ll live a lot longer. Even with diabetes, if you eat the right foods, you can end up having a longer life span than someone who doesn’t have diabetes, but who makes poor food choices.

Being diagnosed with diabetes can be a shock and it’s highly likely that you’re not going to adjust to the fact that you have this disease overnight. By the same token, you’re not going to change how you see food that quickly, either.

But by focusing on simple, easy changes to your diet, you can prevent your body from having to deal with the more serious complications of diabetes. In many cases, changing the way that you eat can work to keep your glucose levels in a healthy range and you may end up being able to avoid having to go on medication.

One of the keys to success with making simple diet changes with diabetes is watching your portion sizes. It can be too easy to think something’s a single portion when it’s actually two or more - especially if that’s the way that you’ve eaten for years.

When you’re making dietary changes, make sure that you read all of the labels. When you read the labels on some foods, you’ll see that many of them contain double or triple the serving size that you would assume they have.

It might be a bit difficult at first when you start making these changes, but by making them slowly, your body will learn to adjust to eating portion-controlled meals and snacks.