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Weight Loss For Diabetics

Losing weight as a diabetic can be very efficient and easy. You must work as a team with your nutritionist and doctor. Also, keep in mind that nothing happens over night, so the results may not actually be visible until after a few months (3 – 5 approximately). Every drastic diet, with huge weight loss in a short period of time, has side effects, and one of most common one is known as the yo-yo effect (when you get back all lost weight, after only few weeks).

For years, obese diabetics were recommended a low-calorie, low-fat diet, which actually proved to be detrimental to their health. In fact, the best way to tackle obesity is to strike it at its root, and the root is not fat but carbohydrates. Dietary fat is not readily transformed into body fat, so severely limiting it will not solve the problem. Restricting the intake of carbohydrates is the only way out; firstly, because it keeps tabs on blood-sugar levels and secondly, because it keeps obesity at bay.

If you are serious about losing weight, a doctor is not the only person you need in your corner. A dietician is also a crucial part of your weight loss plan. She will set weight loss goals with you, and help you create a menu while on diet. Eating healthy is half of the job. Weight loss for diabetics excludes every possible carbohydrate diet. These diets are not suitable for you because they can have a terrible impact on your blood sugar. Always keep this in mind, this is for your own good.

Lessening the amount of carbohydrates consumed also leads to weight reduction in another way: when one is deprived of carbohydrates, and thus deprived of one source of energy, the body resorts to burning the fat cells when the need for energy arises. Fat cells burned in this manner lead to considerable weight reduction. You will have the lion’s share of fats from vegetable oils, avocados, fish liver oil, sunflower oil, etc., but never butter and margarine, and proteins from nuts, cheese, poultry, legumes, etc.

Eat smaller portions but more often. Instead of having two or three large meals, eat 5 or 6 times a day, but smaller portions. Also count your calories, and drink a lot of water – at least 1l every day. This is much healthier, helps you stay full during the day and prevents hypoglycaemia. Weight loss for diabetics must be supervised by a doctor! Keep that in mind and start eating healthy, exercising and feeling better.

Diet Soda Diabetes

Diabetics Diet

If you are one of the millions of people who drink diet soda because you think it’s healthier or you think it’s lower in sugar then you need to listen up. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that diet sodas are worse for us than the regular, full sugared varieties.

Soda is not a healthy drink. Regular sodas contain high amounts of sugar, phosphoric acid and the dark ones contain the carcinogen caramel coloring. Nearly every dentist agrees that drinking soda increases the destruction of teeth.

diet soda diabetes — Diet soda and diabetes

Just one regular soda a day can lead to a 24 pound weight gain. For people who will are at risk for diabetes, this is about 40 g of sugars in your system without the benefit of any nutrients.

This is why people think that drinking diet soda is healthier. The lack of sugar means the risk of decaying our teeth goes away, the pounds will go away and the risk of diabetes goes down. That’s not the case. In fact, new studies are showing that people who drink diet soda put on more weight and the risk of diabetes increases.

Most diet sodas contain the chemical aspartame. Aspartame is a chemical that within the human body breaks down to formaldehyde. We all know formaldehyde from our high from school, mostly because it’s banned because it’s too toxic to be around children. Aspartame can cause liver damage and kidney damage.

Aspartame also stimulates the hormone cortisol, which is the hormone in our body that encourages fat storage. People drinking diet sodas for weight loss end up storing more fat than they lose. Since cortisol is also a stress hormone, people who drink diet sodas have an increased risk of stress related health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure and certain psychological issues such as depression.

Perhaps the worst part about sodas is the caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulant drug. In small quantities, especially those that come from natural sources such as tea and chocolate, caffeine can help us work better, have clearer minds and reduce the risk of heart disease. Any more caffeine more than a half a can of soda or half a cup of coffee can throw off our body systems.

People who consume too much caffeine in the short-term develop jitteriness, inattentiveness, insomnia and skin problems like flushing. In the long term the excess caffeine can damage our brains, resembling Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, increase high blood pressure and damage the liver. And let’s not forget that caffeine dehydrates the body. You actually need to drink twice the amount of water as soda in order to counteract the dehydrating affects caffeine has on your body.

Since the average teenager consumes 30 to 40 ounces of soda every day, nearly 10 times an acceptable level, we need to get the word out about just how bad these drinks are. As an occasional treat, no more than once a day, a small glass of soda is okay to drink. But any more than that and you’re not doing your body a favor. By Christina Major

Reverse Diabetes Diet

Diabetics Diet

Very Low-Calorie Diet May Reverse Diabetes

A very low-calorie diet of 600 calories a day may be able to reverse type 2 diabetes, preliminary research suggests.

Eleven people who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the past four years slashed their calories for eight weeks, sticking to a diet of liquid diet drinks and non-starchy vegetables.

Three months after going off the diet, seven were free of diabetes.

Sound too tough to follow? Don’t worry, the researchers aren’t recommending the low-cal diet as a treatment for diabetes.

“We used the 600-calorie diet to test a hypothesis. What I can tell you definitively is that if people lose substantial weight by normal means, they will lose their diabetes,” says study head Roy Taylor,MD, director of the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre at Newcastle University in England.

The findings were published online by the journal Diabetologia and presented here at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

Low-Calorie Diet Reduces Fat in Pancreas

Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, about 95% of whom have type 2 diabetes. It develops when the body does not produce enough insulin and/or the insulin that is produced doesn’t work properly. As a result, blood sugar levels shoot up.

Taylor tells WebMD that the very low-calorie diet reduced the amount of fat in the pancreas and liver, which allowed insulin production and function to return to normal.

After one week on the diet, participants’ fasting blood sugar levels were no longer elevated, he says.

MRI scans showed that the fat levels in the pancreas fell from around 8% — considered high — to a normal 6%.

After eight weeks on the diet, their bodies were once again making sufficient insulin, essentially reversing their diabetes, Taylor says.

“Fat in the pancreas inhibits the action of beta cells in making insulin. The low-calorie diet got rid of this excess fat,” he says.

The men and the women in the study weighed an average of 220 pounds at the start of the study and lost an average of 33 pounds over eight weeks. By three months later, they had regained an average of 6.5 pounds.
Low-Calorie Diets: Permanent Results?

David M. Kendall, MD, chief scientific and medical officer for the ADA, tells WebMD that it’s been known for a while that “substantial calorie reduction can be very effective in rapidly improving diabetic control, especially in people who are obese.

“What is unique about this study is it looked at some of the mechanisms that underlie the rapid improvement,” he says.

More research is needed to determine whether the low-cal diet results in a permanent reversal of diabetes, Taylor says. “We also have to figure out a more practical way for people to get these results — that is, to get fat out of pancreas and keep it out,” he says.

Type two diabetes diet

Diabetics Diet

The importance of a healthy diet cannot be stressed enough. Getting on a healthy type two diabetes diet is an essential part of treatment. Many times a healthy diet is the only treatment you will need as time goes on and your diabetes becomes more and more controlled.

Tips for type two diabetes diets:

Have your meals in time. Don’t miss any meal but strive to have it at any cost as scheduled. Frequent meal in measured quantities is recommended to maintain blood glucose level.

Add fresh vegetables with your daily meal plan. The vegetables with fiber content should be eaten as much as you can. Some vegetables like carrot, beats and cucumber are most nutritious when eaten raw.
Add greens as side dish and avoid root vegetables with more carbohydrate content.
Have boiled foods and avoid fried as well as fast foods. When the foods are prepared by boiling, the vitamins are preserved without loss.
Eat fruits with low calories which include apple, guava, orange and red grapes. A handful of salads will do well for diabetics of type two.
Use fatless oil. Olive oil is always good. Limit the volume of oil by 2 to 3 spoons for a day. If it exceeds the limit, your blood pressure may get increased.
Avoid direct sugar and high sugary food items.
Avoid ice creams and sugar added fruit juice.
Use skimmed milk and avoid sugary butter added snack.
Chicken is better than meat. Fish varieties may be consumed as much as you can.

The first rule in a type two diabetes diet is to eat at regularly scheduled times. This helps your body become regulated and less prone to sugar surges and bottoms. The rest of the plan is simply concentrating on eating healthier. Add in plenty of fruits and vegetables and eat all foods moderately. Your diet doesn’t have to be boring simply regulated.

Breakfast:

Two slices of whole wheat toast/ 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
Cup of coffee or tea
A whole banana/ apple/ peach…. Any kind of fruit

Lunch:

Lean Roast Beef
Two slices of whole wheat
2 tablespoons of mustard
Cup of steamed cauliflower or broccoli
Cup of tea or coffee

Dinner:

Skinless chicken breast cooked in olive oil
Two thirds cup of cooked wild rice
1 Cup vegetable of your choice
Lemon water or 1% low fat milk to drink

It is also advisable to eat at least to healthy snacks in between meals. Snacks should be light and not loaded with carbohydrates. Try a half-cup cottage cheese and fruit or half cup yogurt with a cup of herbal tea or coffee. The key to the entire diet is moderation. Use the same portion amounts for each meal and you will go a long way toward regulating your caloric intake.

Foods For Diabetics to Avoid

Diabetics Diet

Since diabetes is already a global epidemic, it is not surprising to find foods and other supplements ideal for the recipe of a blood sugar patient. However, many physicians will tell you that purchasing such diabetic food products without planning can be detrimental as well. If you don’t look closely, these products could be high in fat, and worse, even expensive.

The chief concern while monitoring and controlling diabetes is to see that the sugar level does not cross the normal range. This means that one needs to cut down on certain types of food and consume regularly those foods, which are good at regulating diabetes.

People with diabetes should try to maintain a healthy weight and eat a diet that is:

low in fat
low in sugar
low in salt
high in fruit and vegetables (at least five portions a day)
high in starchy carbohydrate foods, such as bread, chapatti, rice.

There is no such food that people with diabetes should never eat. In addition, there is no need to cut out all sugar. But, people with diabetes should try and eat only small amounts of foods that are high in sugar, fat. So, if you have diabetes you can treat yourself to cakes and biscuits once a blue moon, as part of a balanced diet.

What foods to eat?

A diabetic patient must eat lots of fruits and vegetables in which fibre content is very high. Such type of food lowers the requirement for insulin, the reason being it releases energy into the body cells slowly. A high fibre diet means more chromium, which is very helpful in the treatment of diabetes.
As for vegetables, onion, garlic, ginger, radish, spinach, kale, cucumber, carrot, tomato, cabbage and cucumber are excellent in the treatment of diabetes. Moong, kidney beans which have been sprouted, and unripe banana which is cooked, are also recommended.
Fenugreek seeds which have been soaked in water are good for diabetic patients.
For fruits, take guava, Indian blackberry (jamun), fig, kiwi fruit, apples, citrus fruits and pomegranate juice. Let these things be a part of your morning breakfast. Since, fruit juice is high in fructose (fruit sugar) and can cause blood sugar levels to rise quickly, it’s best for diabetics to drink fruit juice with a meal and avoid having more than one small glass a day.
Replace white sugar with palm sugar, dates and honey, if you want to have something sweet.
Unpolished rice, sprouted grain should be taken in moderate quantity.
Fats like olive oil and peanut oil are good in diabetes.
Drink plenty of water, at least 8 to 10 glasses per day.
Single helping of fish or seafood, as it provides omega 3 fatty acids.
Condiments such as pepper, chilli, mustard, herbs and spices.
Raw vegetables need to be taken in large quantity, as cooked food raises the level of blood sugar fast.
Eat non-fat dairy such as skim milk, non-fat yogurt and non-fat cheese, plain yoghurt, avoid cottage cheese a sit is high in carbohydrates.
Some herbs and vegetables are specifically prescribed for diabetes, like Bitter Gourd and bitter melon juice.
What to avoid?
Processed foods, white sugar, white flour and junk food, must be totally given up. Avoid sweets, glucose, fruit sugar, cakes, ice cream, chocolates, soft drinks, cream and fried foods.
Anything that contains harmful preservatives and too much salt should be avoided.
Avoid smoking and alcohol.
Try and abstain from sweets, ice-creams and chocolates, including the so-called sugar-free types.
Foods made from white flour, rye, corn, polished rice, bread, pasta, pastry, cakes, biscuits, pies.
Starchy vegetables such as potatoes in particular; and go easy with beet, carrots, peas, beans.
Avoid concentrated dairy products, such as khoya, kheer, cheese, cottage cheese.
Fruits such as bananas, mango, grapes, strawberry, custard apple, date.
Cottage cheese (except in small amounts)
Avoid commercially packaged foods such as fast foods, chips, ready-to-eat foods, snack foods and “health foods.”
Fruit juices, as these are much higher in carbohydrates than fresh fruit. Moreover, they also lack in dietary fibre.

When on a diabetic diet, you should stay away from red meats, eggs, as well as whole-milk dairy products. Diabetic diets work better when the dairy in your life comes from low-fat or fat-free selections.

10-20% of your daily calories on a diabetic diet should come from proteins in foods, such as lean meat, fish, and low-fat dairy products. The rest of a diabetic diet should consist of carbohydrates coming from whole grains, beans, as well as fresh vegetables and fruit.

Overall, there is no official diabetic diet to follow and it really depends on the individual diabetic. If you are able to work closely with a dietician, doctor, or nutritionist, you will be able to find a balance within your diabetic diet and exercise routine.