General Diet Guidelines | Menu | Diet for children | How to plan meals
Two types of diabetes mellitus can be distinguished, namely, type one and type two. These two types require an individual approach to diet. In the second type of diabetes, nutrition plays an extremely important role, but in the first it does not have such value, since insulin plays the largest role here. However, with the first type of diabetes, you still need to adhere to some rules in the diet.
General Diet Guidelines for Diabetics
There are basic principles that patients with any type of diabetes need to adhere to. These principles help, in a sense, bring carbohydrate metabolism to a stable state. These principles include:
- frequent and regular meals. Desirably, this should occur about the same time 4 times a day.
- you need to evenly share calories and nutritional value for all meals.
- foods consumed should be varied. But at the same time, you need to eat only those products that are recommended for diabetics.
- food should be sweetened exclusively with sorbitol or xylitol.
- to control the calorie content of food you need to use special tables and charts.
- drinking liquid should be reduced to 1 liter of 200 ml (including first courses).
- blood sugar should always be controlled, according to the results you need to adjust your subsequent diet.
What should be the menu for a diabetic on insulin?
It is extremely important for a person suffering from type one diabetes to keep under control all carbohydrates consumed every day. Thanks to this, he will be able to know how much insulin he needs to take today in order to keep blood glucose at the right level. Other important nutrients on the menu for a diabetic on insulin are fats and proteins, which also have a direct effect on the amount of glucose in a person’s blood. But still, carbohydrates have such an instant effect.
A clear and proper balance of insulin and carbohydrates, in addition, and physical activity are the most important criteria for the constant maintenance of normal glucose levels in the body. If all these points are not followed by the patient, then he begins to observe large fluctuations in sugar. If, with type 1 diabetes, the patient takes a steady dose of insulin daily, then the food should also contain a constant amount of carbohydrates every day.
Diet for children with type 1 diabetes
By controlling the level of cell growth and the child’s weight as a diabetic, you can understand whether there is enough nutrition for them. By changing eating habits and with sufficient physical exertion, you can create a good balance for sugar levels. But for occasions such as a child’s birthday, special menu planning is needed. Since, here in any case there will be cakes and sweets. So, you may need a diet with high insulin, which requires a reduction in carbohydrates in other foods used. For example, a child can no longer eat his usual amount of pasta, rice or potatoes. Thus. You can maintain balance in the body.
How to plan meals for type 1 diabetes
Protein should be present in every meal. But for breakfast, this item is especially important. Breakfast should be very satisfying and remember that you cannot leave the house without breakfast. For a diabetic, eggs are an ideal breakfast. But if you do not eat a lot in the morning, you need to accustom yourself to eating dinner early. In order to have dinner earlier, you need to set an alarm clock and when you hear it, immediately drop everything and go eat.
It is necessary to exclude from the diet the use of chemical additives that are in all factory sausages or meat delicacies. It is better either cook it yourself or buy only proven products from familiar people. Fish and meat should be eaten baked rather than fried. Also, you should not eat all kinds of salty and canned foods. Since they cause candidiasis, which is manifested not only by thrush, but also causes symptoms such as lethargy and constant fatigue. It is important to say that diabetics are most susceptible to this infection.
Thus, we can conclude that a patient with type one diabetes can make up a completely full menu without smoked meats, sausages, pickles, tomatoes. It is important to maintain a constant balance of carbohydrates in the body and supplement all this with physical activity.