|
Starting your diabetes diet
Introduction
It is as well to be aware of what you are trying to achieve before starting the diabetes diet because this must become a way of life.
The diabetes diet you are embarking on is a way of eating that doesn't count calories. You may be eating 1,500, 2,000 or 3,000 calories a day. But don't bother counting them; they are irrelevant.
You must, however, restrict your intake of sweet and starchy foods. You may find that merely cutting down on these foods is sufficient, or you may have to make a more conscious effort to avoid eating too much of them. But either way let your appetite be your guide.
On this diabetes diet you can eat as much protein and fat as your body tells you it needs. Historically people have preferred these combined in the proportions of one part fat to between three and six parts lean by weight.
Blood controls for diabetes and weight loss
If you are overweight, what is it that you actually want to lose? That's not as silly a question as you might think. You don't want to lose weight - you can do that by having a leg amputated; what you really want to lose is fat.
The point is that, to lose fat, your body must use that fat as a fuel; there is no other way. And the only way your body will use its stored fat as a fuel is if you force it to. That means depriving it of its present supply of fuel - the blood sugar, glucose - so that it has no choice in the matter. In so doing, of course, you also ensure that your blood glucose is controlled.
There are two ways to cut your body's glucose supply:
- you either starve, which is what low-calorie, low-fat dieting is, or
- you reduce the starches and sugars from which glucose is made and make it up with a source of a different fuel - fat.
This latter diabetes diet approach has two advantages over the traditional calorie-controlled approach: it means that you no longer have to go hungry and, by feeding your body on fats, it will stop trying to find glucose and change over naturally to using its own stored fat. This is by far the easiest way, not only to lose weight but to control your blood glucose.
|
