Diabetics and Healthy Eating During the Holiday
January 5, 2008 by Max Peykar
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Loading ...Controlling dietary habits is the key to keep blood glucose in control in case of both type1 and type2 diabetes. Holidays are the time your regular diet plan might go out of control because of the holiday dinners you attend. This might affect your amount of intake of food and spacing of meals. Following are the tips for diabetics to keep blood glucose in control while you enjoy your holiday meal.
Make sure you know how many dinners you are going to attend in a single day and try to limit that heavy meal to one per day. This helps in not overloading yourself and also controlling your calorie limit according to your dietary plan. Only one dinner per day also helps you control your calories by making minor adjustments in rest of the day’s meal.
Keep track of your calories and amounts in your holiday foods according to your exchange list. Make a point that you should not exceed your calorie limit or the carbohydrate limit. Your carbohydrate allowance is like your debit account. So use it wisely so that you can enjoy your favorite pies and puddings though in limited quantities. Excessive eating of one variety might deprive you of another of your favorite dish. So make sure you balance your carbohydrates in your diabetic exchange list so that you always have place for your favorite holiday foods.
Make sure you take your insulin injections and other medications on time if you have to. Forgetting to take medications might cause severe fluctuation in your blood glucose levels which is always harmful and sometimes fatal to a diabetic patient.
Eat salads and light soups before you go to the main course in your holiday dinner. Salads without too much of dressings are very helpful because they fill you up with out adding too many carbohydrates or calories to your meal. Also as salads usually contain fresh vegetables they are rich in many vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. Light soups are those which are not thickened with any kind of starch. They also serve the same purpose and also add flavor to the holiday dinner.
Holiday dinners might sometimes keep you starved for few hours before you start your dinner, because of so many reasons. This starvation is very dangerous for any diabetes patient as it might lead to severe hypoglycemia (very low blood glucose levels). To avoid this, you have to snack on some thing light without exceeding your carbohydrate and calorie allowance for the day. So, keeping stuff like crackers, fruits and veggies to snack on when you think you can’t have your meal at your regular time is a good idea.
Along with the holiday dinner do not forget to have a lot of water. Make sure that you drink at least 8 cups (each 240 ml) of water per day. Drinking water will avoid dehydration.
Foods to be avoided for diabetics during holiday
Avoid all kinds of carbonated beverages. They add so many calories to your diet than you realize. Also consuming too many diet or zero calorie carbonated beverages adversely affect your digestive system. Stay away from alcohol, which along with adding calories, will also damage your liver. Water is the best drink to go with. Flavored water might be a replacement choice for carbonated beverages.
Follow the above guidelines and make your holiday a happy one.
Posted in Diets And Diabetes
