It’s Ramzan, time for fasting and also for feasting! Sadly, often time to gain weight!
What if you’re diabetic? Here’s how to eat and still control blood sugar levels.
1.Increase Your Fiber Intake
Try to include both soluble and insoluble fiber in your daily diet. Berries, nuts, vegetables and beans like rajma and chowli are a great way to slip in the fiber daily. Aim to include 40 to 50 grams of fiber in your daily regimen for every 1,000 calories you eat. You may want to start measuring the foods you eat each day until you are able to estimate how much fiber and carbohydrates you are eating.
2.Reduce Your Net Carbs
A low-net-carbohydrate diet reduces the stress on your body, reduces inflammation and reduces the amount insulin required to use the energy from the food you eat. You’ll want to reduce the number of net carbs you eat, for most people this ranges between 50 and 80 grams per day.This is calculated by taking the grams of carbs you’ve eaten and subtracting the number of grams of fiber. In this way a high-fiber diet also helps you to lower the amount of insulin you need to utilize your food for fuel.
3.High-Quality Fats
When you reduce your carbohydrates, what are you going to replace them with? Your best alternative is high quality, healthy fats necessary for heart health, feeding your brain and to modulate genetic regulation and prevent cancer. The idea that fats are bad for you, is OUTDATED.
Healthy fats include:
| Avocados | Coconut oil | Organic butter from organic grass-fed milk |
| Organic raw nuts | Olives and Olive oil | Grass-fed meat |
| Organic pastured eggs | Palm oil |
4.Exercise
Exercise helps your cells become sensitive to leptin. This reduces your potential resistance to insulin and therefore your risk of diabetes.
5.Hydration
When you become dehydrated, your liver will secrete a hormone that increases your blood sugar. As you hydrate blood sugar levels lower naturally.
Stay well hydrated by monitoring the color of your urine during the day. The color should be light yellow. Sometimes your first indication your body requires more water is the sensation of being hungry. Drink a large glass of water first and wait 20 minutes to determine if you’re really hungry or you were thirsty.
6.Reduce Your Stress
When you become stressed your body secretes cortisol and glucagon, both of which affect your blood sugar levels. Control your stress levels using exercise, meditation, yoga, prayer or relaxation techniques. These techniques may reduce your stress and correct insulin secretion problems. Combined with strategies that reduce your insulin resistance, you may help to prevent diabetes.
7.Sleep
Enough quality sleep is necessary to feel good and experience good health. Poor sleeping habits may reduce insulin sensitivity and promote weight gain.
Diabetes is not a sentence! It’s easily reversed.