Adopting a Diabetes Diet Plan

When you are suffering from diabetes, it's important to follow a diabetes diet plan. Without it, your condition can worsen, causing a large number of undesirable consequences. Managing diabetes with proper nutrition is considered to be the best way to keep the ailment at bay. The ideal way to do so is by creating a variable, but healthy eating plan. You should get a qualified nutritionist to help you with creating it, which would allow you to vary the food items in your diet, instead of replacing the nutritional values.

A healthy diet plan for diabetics has very strict composition - it must have 50% starch, 20% fat and 30% protein. Since the composition should be so exact, diabetic food must be prepared very precisely, with a great deal of attention given to exact measurements.

Baked, broiled, steamed and boiled foods are ideal in a diabetic person's diet, and fried foods must be avoided at all time. No snacks are allowed between meals and meals must never be missed, because it can put your metabolic system into turmoil if you do. So, this means that when you are eating out, you order only fat-free and low caloric dishes.

Fructose is much more easily digested than sucrose, so consuming a lot of fruits and vegetables is recommended, but they must be fresh and not frozen. Frozen foods are often preserved with various fatty and sugary chemicals. Avoid whole milk dairy products in your daily meals, but you should get your necessary dairy intake by drinking skimmed milk. Look away from all sweets, honey and candy items and other bakery and/or confectionery items containing high amounts of enriched carbohydrates.

There are plenty of other things you will have to try your very best to avoid - alcohol tops the list. Other high-fat foods like red meat, potato chips, eggs, mayonnaise etc must also be avoided, if you can, as should bottled fruit juice, cooking sauces and carbonated drinks. When you are on a strict diabetic eating plan, the daily calorie intake you must aim at is 1800 calories. So you have to make sure that your daily diet is carefully planned well in advance.

Let us look at what one day on a diabetic eating plan can be like - breakfast can be quite filling and nutritious, if you have half a cup of oatmeal, about two thirds of a cup of apple juice, a slice of bread (but make sure it is wholemeal bread), a cup of skimmed milk, as long as it's not sweetened, and a soft-cooked egg. For lunch, you could have half a cup of tuna, two slices of wholemeal bread, half a cup of diced tomatoes, a teaspoon of margarine for the bread, a cup of mixed fruit for a healthy dessert and a glass of lemon tea to wash it all down with. Dinner, again, can be tasty and filling, with a slice of wholemeal bread, half a cup of mashed potatoes, either a tossed salad or a cup of broccoli and three ounces of baked chicken. You have to be careful about salad dressing, though - don't pick one off the shelf, make a low-fat, no-sugar one with olive oil and seasoning.

As you can see, preparing a nutritious and energy-generating diet needs good knowledge about basic nutrients required to keep your body healthy and a good understanding of how your metabolic system works. You can easily get your doctor to help with creating an easy-to-follow, enjoyable and wholesome diabetes diet plan.