A huge step that you can take towards helping to manage your diabetes, is eating healthily! If you just keep buying fast food, or unhealthy food and snacks from the store, how will your body ever have enough food and material to repair itself? It can’t! Your body can’t sustain and deal with you eating food that doesn’t give it any nutrition! Your body needs a break, and it needs real foods that it can work with so it can start repairing and stabilizing itself.
If you only eat healthily sometimes or sporadically, hen your bod won’t be able to make any progress. The healthy foods may have a temporary impact, but if you don’t eat them longterm, your body will have to start overcompensating for not enough nutrition again. The problem with eating healthily, is that lots of healthy diets can be very strict!! Way too strict for the average person to maintain, like diet and schedule wise. It’s not just that people can be undisciplined, it’s that these diets can have unrealistic standards and expectations fro daily and modern life.
A lot of diets, will tell people that they have to be very strict. This is why most people fail after a few months on strict diets. This article will show you instead, how to incorporate healthy foods into your regular diet. That way instead of giving up quickly, you’ll want to keep eating healthy foods! Your body will still have its really needed break from you eating bad foods all of the time, and will be able to rest and repair. healthier and whole foods can also help your body to be more hydrated, because they have such high water content. It’s true you usually need to eat raw vegetables to get that benefit, but slow cooked greens are also excellent for nutrition, for an example.
So anyway, here’s a list of the top 20 foods that can help you to manage your diabetes symptoms, and won’t add to or make your condition worse. Also, before you read this, please be aware that if you decide to eat healthily, you need to really do this! Don’t just choose the first food and randomly add it into your diet. Pick from a lot of the foods on this list, and steadily incorporate them into your diet so they will actually have an impact and help you to control your blood sugar. And you may actually love some of these food choices!
Asparagus
Like many greens, this vegetable is very low calorie and low carb! This vegetable is also high in B vitamins and antioxidants. It has a lot of and has a moderate amount of other vitamins besides the B group, like vitamins A, C and E. It also has high amounts of folate, which has been shown to work with vitamin B 12 in the body to help improve brain health. Unlike other greens, asparagus is usually used for evening and dinner recipes (it is usually eaten with chicken piccata recipe). So it can be very versatile to use in the kitchen, instead of just making the salad with it like how you would for many greens. I think asparagus is actually an excellent choice, for using it as a side dish!
Dark Chocolate
It’s recommended that people eat the darker version of chocolate if they want to be healthy. Milk chocolate can have lots of additives, and can also be very high in sugar. It can also just be very unhealthy since the sugar makes it addictive. If you have a major sweet tooth, it’s definitely in your best interests to stay away from milk chocolate.
Dark chocolate, on the other hand, has been shown to have many health benefits for people. It’s been said that dark chocolate can help to reduce blood pressure and also stroke risk since it really helps with heart health. It’s not sweet so it can be very bitter, but if you have a taste for chocolate then try some!
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are known for having a really high amount of vitamin C. They also have been shown to help with circulation issues, and they can be a really good food choice if you’re looking to stabilize your heart. Their high lycopene content can help with this too, and be especially useful for diabetics. There are so many recipes that you can use tomatoes and tomato sauce in, why would you ever leave this fruit out of your diet? Even if you buy tomatoes that aren’t fresh or are even canned, that doesn’t mean that you’ll lose out on the health benefits. You can even buy organic tomato sauce or sauces that have healthy spices added to them (Note: you should not use pasta sauce, Pasta can be tricky to fit into one’s diabetes eating plan.)
Broccoli
Broccoli can give you an entire day’s worth of vitamin C in just a serving or two! It also has a really high fiber content and is rich in plenty of other vitamins. Dark green broccoli is best to buy since generally the darker the color, the richer the nutrition will be. Broccoli can be so amazing to cook with! You can use it in so many dishes, and soups…even though it has a bad stigma for tasting terrible, it’s not true. It can be paired with lots of different sauces and tastes, so it can be delicious.It can also be good by itself, spending on how you prepare it. It doesn’t have to be a soggy or wet vegetable, and in fact, many people eat it raw in salads!
Chicken
Chicken can be OK for you to eat, depending on what you buy. If you buy breast meat, for example, it’ll be lower in fat than other cuts of chicken. And of course, you’ll probably want to take the skin off. Otherwise, don’t think you have to cut out meat all because of your diabetes! You can still enjoy eating meat. And chicken, of course, is so incredibly versatile, it would be a shame not to have it as a staple in your kitchen.
Beef
Yep, the same advice goes for beef! You can choose to eat the leanest cuts, so you don’t get all of the fat. You can even buy ground up beef that’s lean too if you’re just looking to add it to other recipes. Some of the leaner cuts you can buy are flank steak and tenderloin. So the next time you’re at the store look for these options and see if you want to try them. Or if you prefer regular beef, just freeze the beef about half an hour before you want to cook it. Then it will be much firmer, and you can simply slice the fat off yourself. You can eat beef however you like, but try to make sure that you at least leave some of the fat off.
Beans
Many types of beans have really high amounts of soluble fiber. So, that can be used by the body to help reduce high blood sugar. You don’t need to pick a specific kind of bean since almost all kinds of beans are infamous for having high fiber. You can pick pretty much any type that you want to at the store, and still get many benefits.
Cucumber
Now this is an excellent food to use if you’re looking to make a salad. A cup of this hardly has a few carbs in it, so feel free to use as much as you want to. They’re also high vitamin K, which can help your body to metabolize glucose. I think cucumbers can be so awesome to use in recipes. They are mostly for summer recipes like salads, but you can put them into sandwiches too.
Barley
This is known for being able to help with blood sugar issues. It’s said if you replace regular rice with barley, you can see dramatic reductions in your blood sugar levels. It can also help your body to keep your blood sugars levels more stable in the long term. It works, by giving your body a ton of fiber. This slow digestion down and so your body can’t absorb carbohydrates as quickly.
Berries
Berries can have tons of antioxidants and fiber too. They can also have a lot of anthocyanins, which can help to lower your blood sugar. These sweet fruits can be higher in carbs, but still fairly low when it comes to food so don’t be afraid to snack on them. Also, whole foods can have other nutrients that offset the effect of carbs, and their natural sugars aren’t as detrimental to the body as processed sugar.
Cabbage
Cabbage is has a lot of manganese and vitamins C and K. It’s rich in antioxidants too. I think it’s best to slow cook it, as the water will have lots of vitamins deposited into it from the cabbage wilting. This is actually true for many greens, but since cabbage is mostly a fall and winter veggie, consider using it in some slow cooker recipes!
Oatmeal
Specifically whole grain or even steel cut would be best. Don’t buy the instant oatmeal that has all of those additives and chemicals! Buy the whole versions that will give you max amounts of fiber, and really help your body to improve it’s digestion.
Carrots
Carrots can be very sweet it is true! But, they have actually had very low amounts of sugar. They’re also very high in vitamin A, so why miss out on this delicious food? There’s no reason to worry at all, carrots are very healthy.
Eggs
Eggs are very, very high in protein. They can also be excellent sources of vitamin B 12. Vitamin B 12 can really only be fond in animal products, so if you’re looking to raise your B 12 levels without having to worry about fat, the eggs are definitely an excellent choice. They also won’t raise your cholesterol.
Fish
Fish has been shown to really lower the risk of heart disease, even if people only eat it semi-regularly. It’s very healthy, and can be very low in bad fats. It can be very high in good and unsaturated fats.
Milk
You can just purchase the Lactaid (specific brand name), or fat-free versions. Even without the fat, dairy is rich is protein and of course calcium! Dairy has also been shown to help with insulin issues. If you don’t like the idea of zero fat, then you can also try the 1 or 2 percent milk versions.
Avocado
These can really slow your digestion down. They’re filled with healthy fats, not the bad fats. So you don’t have to worry abut them hurting you. Eating a diet high in good fats, can actually really help your body to reverse insulin resistance.
Seeds
Seeds can be filled with good fats too! They can actually be used to lower cholesterol, and they can go really high in fiber.
Whole Grain Bread
Whole grains have been shown in studies to reduce diabetes risk really. Whole grains will absolutely offset the negative effects bread will have on your blood sugar. Studies have been done that show that whole grain bread is by far the better option for diabetes patients.
Sweet Potatoes
If you eat these instead of regular potatoes, they won’t spike your blood sugar as much. They have a ton of soluble fiber and vitamins. Soluble fiber slows your digestion down like how I mentioned before. Sweet potatoes are also high in carotenoids, which give them their orange color and also help the body deal with insulin.
If you really want to make a solid impact on your diabetes condition, look into mostly eating low glycemic index foods. They’ll have lower carbs and calories, which will make controlling your blood sugar levels much easier. Also, our modern diet that we eat can be very vitamin deficient, so make sure to take your new food and health ideals seriously! Being deficient in vitamins is the last thing your body needs to deal with when it’s already dealing with a health condition.
However, just to warn you, before you decide to supplement with any vitamins directly please talk to a doctor! Whole foods have other vitamins and nutrients to help your body process the vitamins it needs. Taking vitamins in pill form can have some risks for people with diabetes since they’re so concentrated. So please ask for professional advice before taking supplements!
