Use natural fiber to control blood sugar and win your battle against diabetes.
What to eat and when to eat they’re important when you’re trying to manage your diabetes, so…here are tips and advice for getting enough fiber in your diet to make a difference in how well you control your blood sugar and manage your diabetes.
Advice: High-fiber foods have been shown to be very beneficial in helping to control blood sugar levels and thus managing diabetes.
One of the best ways to get enough fiber in your diet starts at the beginning of the day… having a healthy, high-fiber breakfast.
Suggestion: It’s always important to follow a schedule when eating if you have diabetes… so: Start your day with a high fiber breakfast
The secrets to choosing a healthy breakfast cereal.
There are many boxed and quick-fix cereals available, but the best ones with the most fiber and therefore “good” to eat are something like old-fashioned oatmeal or even cream of wheat.
Here are some suggestions taken from the USDA.gov List of Fiber Foods to help you get started.
Advice: Oatmeal (a whole grain), Plain Cheerios, and Raisin Bran are listed on the box.
Suggestion: Make pancakes or waffles with whole-wheat or buckwheat flour and top with freshly chopped apples, raisins, berries, or nuts for a boost of fiber.
Advice: It is better to leave the peel apples for the best fiber content.
Lunch… Your next chance to add fiber.
Lunch is your second meal of the day and often the hardest to manage. These hints and tips can help make some of these options a little easier.
Suggestion: If you must “eat out” and can’t bring your home-cooked food with you, then choose those made with whole wheat, oatmeal, oat bran, or rye bread for sandwiches.
Many ethnic food establishments often have dishes with beans, peas, and lentils that contain fiber and sometimes even added protein due to the use of beans.
Advice: This means Taco Bell could be on your list of “fast food” places!
Suggestion: Soups made with dried beans, lentils, bulgur, and barley are great additions to your high-fiber menu. Look for dishes with brown rice or whole wheat pasta.
Advice: Check out Olive Garden for their soup and salad menu. Panera could also make the list, as you can get half a sandwich made with a high fiber bread along with soup or salad.
Suggestion: Monitor your choices. Most restaurants now have “content” information available that lists calories, fat, fiber, etc. contained in their menu offerings.
Salads reign supreme as an option at any time of day. Raw fruits and vegetables have it all…high in fiber, good nutrition due to “live” phytonutrients, and low in calories.
Advice: Take care of your salad dressings and ask for olive oil and vinegar on the side to dress your salad or buy and take away one of those “mini” spritzer salad dressings that have almost zero calories, but pack a lot of flavor!
This Suggestion adds another meal or Mini Meal… your 3 o’clock Snack.
Here you can have fun! Adding this small meal keeps your metabolism going so your blood sugar stays level with fewer spikes and troughs. This is your goal when trying to use food to control diabetes.
Advice: Homemade trail mix with nuts, raisins, seeds, other dried fruit, and whole grains is great. Some dried fruits are high in sugar, so measure and record the calorie count.
A great bar that is a perfect mix of protein, carbs, and fat is the Zone Bar. If you like chocolate and almonds, this is a winner. Of course, thanks to the almonds and whole grains in the bar you get your fiber.
Advice: A safer option might be an apple with the skin and some almonds or sunflower seeds.
Suggestion: A small orange, blueberry, strawberry, or pear with cottage cheese or yogurt is another great way to add fiber and protein.
big tip!
Dinner or “dinner” depending on where in the world you live is often the downfall of dieters or diabetics.
Something I haven’t emphasized so far (but if you check the Hints and Tips you’ll notice they’re there) is the inclusion of protein at every meal and snack plus fiber.
We digest protein a bit more slowly than carbohydrates in fruits, grains, and vegetables, so it’s extremely helpful in keeping blood sugar in balance. Of course, the addition of fiber from fresh fruits, vegetables, and grains works with protein.
What this means is that after our body has used up all the sugar in said carbs is still working to extract and transform protein into usable energy… so we don’t bother with that “I’m Hungry Cave” in our midst.
Dinner: Suggestions and Tips.
The new “flat” works great for dinner. It comes with serving suggestions from the 4 food groups we need to eat to stay alive and healthy! Remember that old saying, “Eat to live, not live to eat?”
best advice for Dinner that I can give you is that you include a large part of your portion of protein for the day in your dinner. Hopefully this will prevent bedtime snacking.
Suggestions for dinner protein include reserve resources: Dried Beans, Peas, and Lintels: All High-Fiber Foods and broiled or baked chicken, fish, pork, and lean red meats (the latter two are recommended no more than twice a week).
Advice: I love fried chicken, so I oven fried it. Lightly bread in buckwheat flour with added spices, dip chicken, then roll in crushed bran cereal (beat 1 egg with 2 tablespoons water, then roll in chicken to make a breading stick). Spray your baking sheet and both sides of the chicken, then bake it.
Hard to spot that it’s not the old pot of fat Fried Chicken!
More wacky recommendations: A medium baked potato with skin has enough fiber to put it in the acceptable category. (Much better than whole-grain pasta and whole-grain bread, which barely make it on the fiber chart.)
Advice: Garnish your baked skin-on potato with nonfat Greek yogurt (make your own, buy the largest store-brand container of nonfat yogurt, place it in a coffee filter in a strainer, and let it work its magic) . I leave it out of the fridge for about 30 minutes, drain and refrigerate to finish removing the liquid. As good as sour cream!
fiber up with dinner. This is a good time to have a raw vegetable salad, as raw seems to work best. Spinach, dark lettuce (iceberg is mostly water), and celery are some of the standby resources.
Great advice: Create a salad base with bite-size or smaller pieces of chopped broccoli, cauliflower, and celery. Mix, cover and keep refrigerated.
The BCC mix can be made into a meal by putting some in a separate bowl, adding raisins, almonds, trail mix, and a dressing… A great without cooking Dinner.
For a different flavor, add loose leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes, onions, and some lean ham or boiled eggs and call it a “Chef” salad.
Tired of the salad thing?
Suggestion: Invest in a good processor like VitaMix or one of those Ninja things and along with a Unpeeled apple without coremix in enough of your BCC salad mix to make a nice Veggie Slurpee.
Advice: Raid your spice rack in search of flavors. Those dried spices and garlic, onion, and curry powder have almost no calories, but they pack a punch. But now you’re drinking your fiber and enjoying it!
Note: Add spices to some of your homemade Greek yogurt to make creamy sauces and salad dressings.
Suggestion: For dinner…build soups with cooked dry beans as a base, adding barley, brown rice, pasta, and a few potatoes, onions, a carrot or two, and any leftover vegetables. Chop up a handful of spinach or collard greens, kale or turnip greens and add to the mix. To make things a little interesting, I sometimes include chopped chilies and tomatoes.
Advice: Great tasting food is fun to eat.so you can add celery seed, garlic powder, curry powder, parsley flakes, crushed red pepper or thyme and, if I’m in the mood for tomatoes and don’t have fresh ones on hand, use diced canned tomatoes or even V-8 juice at end of cook time (beans will never go soft if tomatoes are added before they are done).
This soup will be high in fiber and low in calories. Instead of crackers, I often make little “corn ponies” with cornmeal and “fry” them in a sprayed nonstick pan (spray the tops before flipping for a crispy crust).
Finally one last tip.
Thirty minutes before bed, have a nice hot drink…green tea, hot milk, or whatever you want plus the other half of the Zone Bar you had for your 3 o’clock snack. (I have to cut the Zone Bars in half because I eat 1,200 calories a day and some of the bars are over 300 calories.)
Honey Grahams and hot milk are something of a go-to, but Ginger Snaps work too.
Cadbury cakes are great if you can find them…just make it with a mix of a hot drink and some carbs…helps you sleep. If you’re tracking your calories, you can be adventurous with your snacks. Most have the calorie count on the package.
enjoy your new fiber healthy diet.
Wikipedia has some good information on fiber, just do a Fiber wikipedia search.