Dietician Sheela Seharawat
Suddenly changing your daily diet plan for diabetes is a bit challenging but a customized diabetes meal planner can make it much easier. A personalized meal planning usually depends on various factors, such as your taste preferences, your activity level, or even your medications. However, a general advice is to follow a diet with aconsistent quantity of carbs and your meal should be absolutely balanced so that you get an adequate amount of all health-boosting nutrients like phytochemicals or fiber through your diet. For this reason, you need to eat exactly same quantity at breakfast, lunch, and dinner in order to prevent your blood sugar level from increasing or decreasing too low. To maintain your personal calorie goals you can also supplement your diet with healthy and nutritious snack foods rather than oily and junk foods.
Following is an example of a diabetes diet plan providing 1200-1400 Kcal.
• Prepare your breakfast with items like nuts or seeds,hardboiled eggs,very low-fat cheese or yogurt, peanut butter, or unsweetened whole grain oatmeal; plus any one type of fruit – dried fruit, an apple, etc.
• Enjoy your lunch with a bowl of whole grain cereals orwhole-wheat pita along with vegetables-loaded soup or salad.
• Use healthy snacks to fill up nutritional gaps in between your main meals, such as cottage cheese with basil, boiled tomatoes, and black pepper or with apple, peanut butter, nuts, etc.
• For dinner, you can stick to any great one-pot recipes loaded with different veggies.
In short, your personalized diabetes diet should contain the following.
40% of carbohydrates, including 20-30 grams of high fiber from the best sources: whole-grain cereals, green vegetables, beans, and fruits .
25-35% of proteins from sources like fish, low-fat or non-fat dairy products,skinless turkey or chicken,legumes, and tofu .
20-30% of mono- or poly-unsaturated fats from sources like olive or canola oil, seeds, fatty fish, and nuts .