The plan known as the “1800 diabetic diet” was designed to help people lower their glucose, control blood sugar, burn energy, lose weight and feel great.
This diet is low in carbohydrates, which are the main sources of glucose. Eliminate some of the bad refined carbs and replace them with good natural carbs.
The 1800 calorie diabetic diet is based on limiting your daily food consumption to one thousand, eight hundred calories. These calories will come from meats, vegetables, fruits and a little bit of grains but not very much.
This is a low carbohydrate diet that restricts intake of refined carbs like white flour and sugar, soda pop, bread, pasta, etc. Those are on the no-no list.
Refined carbohydrates are the main source of glucose in your blood. This “blood sugar” is what gives your body energy. Too much of these carbohydrates can equal too much blood sugar. That makes perfect sense doesn’t it?
Following the 1800 diabetic diet, and restricting refined carb intake, and increasing exercise might both help you to maintain healthy lower body glucose production and increase the body’s burning of stored glucose energy.
Some people may also find it helpful to take a high quality Diabetes Supplement to support existing good health.
The main idea of this eating plan is to stop adding so much glucose to the blood sugar and to get to work burning up energy with walking, biking, hiking, playing golf, tennis, Jazzercise, dancing, jogging, pedaling one of those recumbent exercise bikes in your living room… anything to raise your heartbeat in a cardio workout.
Many people with diabetes sometimes drink gallons of sugary sodas, eat a lot of sugary carbs and white flour… and get little if any regular exercise. Talk to your doctor about cutting back on processed food carbohydrates and increasing your exercise activity while following a healthy diabetic diet.
One woman got good results by giving up her daily soda pop at lunch, and walking for an hour on a treadmill every evening. That way she avoided adding corn syrup sugars to her bloodstream from the soda, and she burned off some sugars with the walking on the treadmill.
Food exchanges can make it easier to follow diabetic diets. Most fruits, for example, have similar amounts of carbs and calories to each other. You can substitute a banana for an apple or a half cup of orange juice for a serving of cantaloupe.
Vegetables are natural low carb foods and are slow to break down in your system. One cup raw or one half cup of cooked vegetables has only about 5 grams of carbohydrates.
Vegetables are rich in vitamins. A carrot has over 10,000 units of beta carotene which your body converts to vitamin A as needed.
Empty carb foods, such as a donut, are higher in carbs, the refined carbs break down fast and cause a spike in blood sugar, and they offer little if any vitamin or nutritional value. So you are soon hungry again. In fact you may feel starved and undernourished as you gain weight. Amazingly unfair, but true.
Try to get your carbs from foods that are low on the glycemic index. What is the glycemic index (GI)? It is a ranking of carbohydrate foods based upon how they effect your blood sugar. Not all carbs are created equal. Some carbs raise your blood sugar levels more than others.
Some of the foods you may want to eat less of on diabetic diets are those made of high glycemic index carbohydrates. These include white bread, bagels, potatoes, corn, white rice, canned fruit in sweet syrup, donuts, cakes, cookies, pasta, rice cakes, etc.
Low glycemic index foods include vegetables, oranges, apples, berries, peaches, grapes, milk, yogurt, pinto beans, high-fiber cereals, whole grain bran muffins, even a little chocolate once in a while.
Vegetables are always your best bet, have a green salad every day with a variety of veggies and you will be doing your body a good deed.