How can I eat healthy so i don't end up with diabetes?
shadows2424
Posts: 179 Member
I know a good diet and exercise are the number one combatant of diabetes, but what type of diet would i have to follow in order for it to actually work? Diabetes runs in my family and i want to minimize my chances as much as possible. Thanks for any advice/help.
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Stop eating anything with added sugar, stop adding sugar to stuff and avoid processed foods. That's it0
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Manage your weight as well - strong correlation to being over weight.0
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Yup. Stay at a healthy weight. Eat most of your calories from whole nutritious foods, incorporating a wide variety (veg, fruit, lean meat, dairy, whole grain, nuts). Add in a few treats for emotional satisfaction. Try not to make it too complicated. There are no magic foods.0
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shadows2424 wrote: »
If canned soup has a lot of sugar yea. Fruits are usually fine, but for starters make a goal to never add sugar when you cook for example. It's quite easy. Natural sugars are good. It's not complicated. Another goal would be to eliminate procesed foods from your diet. Like procesed meats and junk food.0 -
shadows2424 wrote: »
Nothing wrong with either of those.0 -
- Keep your weight at a normal level
- Exercise
That is it. If you have not been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, there is no reason to worry about eating carbs, etc. What you eat does not give you diabetes. You get it from a combination of at least 2 or more of the risk factors: genetics, being overweight, long term use of certain medications (esp. statins and antidepressants), and age (and a bunch more where there is a correlation but not proven causation).
If you have been diagnosed with either, you might want to follow your MD and/or RD's recommendations as to what dietary changes are needed.0 -
This is a concern for me as well. I have a family history of diabetes and I've also been diagnosed as prediabetic. Maintaining a healthy weight is key. Your diet doesn't have to be complicated. Eat a healthy balanced diet and avoid foods high in sugar. Start reading the labels when you shop. You also might consider purchasing an inexpensive glucose monitor and make a habit of checking your blood glucose.0
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Hi, shadows. Limit things with added sugar. Go for fruit rather than fruit juice. Eat lots of fresh or fresh-frozen vegetables (cooked or raw) and quality protein - fish, leaner meats. If you like grains, eat whole-grain products over excessively processed grain products.0
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Sugar does not give you diabetes and it does not affect you if you do have it (unless you are T1Dm and need to know your sugars in order to use the correct amount of insulin). The important number is your total carbs, not how they are divided into sugars and starches. The only difference between sugars and starches is how fast the glucose hits your bloodstream. Your body turns starches into sugars so both will hit your bloodstream as glucose.0
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You can reduce the risk most by staying at a normal weight and being physically active.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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shadows2424 wrote: »
If canned soup has a lot of sugar yea. Fruits are usually fine, but for starters make a goal to never add sugar when you cook for example. It's quite easy. Natural sugars are good. It's not complicated. Another goal would be to eliminate procesed foods from your diet. Like procesed meats and junk food.
You keep saying "easy," but what you're describing -- avoiding anything that has added sugars, never using processed foods, etc -- isn't realistically sustainable for a lot of people due to both financial cost and time cost. Telling a person to eliminate such wide swatches of food is unrealistic, and sets them up for failure.
OP, a "healthy" diet is one that is made mostly of foods that are good for your body. Processed food in moderate amounts is fine. Sugar in moderation is fine. But if you're controlling your diet for the sake of controlling your weight and keeping in contact with your doctor about this issue, you'll likely be fine.0 -
I agree that exercising and staying a normal weight will help keep blood glucose normal.... That will help most people. A normal weight and exercise was not enough for me to keep my blood glucose normal though. I also need to eat a low carb high fat diet, a very LCHF ketogenic diet in my case.
Eating low carb just makes sense to me. Unless one is eating excessive amounts of protein, blood glucose can't go high if you are not eating enough carbohydrates (grains, baked goods, foods with added sugars, starchy root vegetables, tropical fruits) to raise it.
I still eat carbs in the form of veggies, but the calories coming from carbs is vastly less than those I get from fats and protein.
Best wishes.
ETA eating to your (glucose) monitor will help. If you have any issues you can discover them early and correct it.0 -
- Stay at a healthy weight -or get to a healthy weight if you are overweight.
- Exercise regularly, including both cardio and strength training.
- Eat a well-balanced diet, including whole grains, fruits and vegetables, dairy, lean meats and seafood, minimal saturated and trans fats, and minimal added sugars (the WHO recommends less than 10% of total calories being from added sugars). If your health care provider finds that you are insulin resistant, lowering carbohydrates may be recommended (all carbohydrates require insulin, not just sugars. Glucose is the body's preferred energy source and converts most other carbs to it for energy).
- Discuss your concerns with your health care provider and see if they want to include more frequent diabetes screenings. The big thing is to catch type 2 diabetes early -it is often considered a "silent killer", because a diabetic can go years with elevated blood sugars without developing any symptoms (when those elevated BG levels can cause complications to develop).
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Sugar does not cause diabetesStop eating anything with added sugar, stop adding sugar to stuff and avoid processed foods. That's it
Bad advice ^^^- Keep your weight at a normal level
- Exercise
That is it. If you have not been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, there is no reason to worry about eating carbs, etc. What you eat does not give you diabetes. You get it from a combination of at least 2 or more of the risk factors: genetics, being overweight, long term use of certain medications (esp. statins and antidepressants), and age (and a bunch more where there is a correlation but not proven causation).
If you have been diagnosed with either, you might want to follow your MD and/or RD's recommendations as to what dietary changes are needed.
Good advice ^^^
Know the difference0 -
Sugar does not cause diabetesStop eating anything with added sugar, stop adding sugar to stuff and avoid processed foods. That's it
Bad advice ^^^- Keep your weight at a normal level
- Exercise
That is it. If you have not been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, there is no reason to worry about eating carbs, etc. What you eat does not give you diabetes. You get it from a combination of at least 2 or more of the risk factors: genetics, being overweight, long term use of certain medications (esp. statins and antidepressants), and age (and a bunch more where there is a correlation but not proven causation).
If you have been diagnosed with either, you might want to follow your MD and/or RD's recommendations as to what dietary changes are needed.
Good advice ^^^
Know the difference
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I thought there was nothing you could do to prevent TYPE I diabetes. The type that runs in families.0
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JanetYellen wrote: »I thought there was nothing you could do to prevent TYPE I diabetes. The type that runs in families.
The OP didn't specify which type.0 -
shadows2424 wrote: »I know a good diet and exercise are the number one combatant of diabetes, but what type of diet would i have to follow in order for it to actually work? Diabetes runs in my family and i want to minimize my chances as much as possible. Thanks for any advice/help.
Diabetes runs in mine also. Right after maintaining healthy weight I focus on filling my diet with protein and fat while minimizing carbs. There is a worldwide epidemic of diabetes and the scientific community still doesn't have a clue on what causes those of us prone to actually develop it, so IMHO minimizing the stress on my carb processing system is the best course of action.0 -
If you mean a tendency towards Type 2 and not Type 1, I would say the advice given to exercise and avoid a high carb diet may be the most important. I don't have diabetes, but elevated blood sugar runs in my family and I also have blood sugar that is too high. Everyone is different, but I think I'm finding out that in my case, carbs may even be more important than exercise or weight (I'm active and don't have any excess body fat, not even 5 lbs). There does seem to be a small portion of the population for which weight/body fat has little impact on blood sugar, although I'm not sure scientifically how this is the case.0
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Both are slightly hereditary. T2DM runs in my family, but I somehow ended up developing T1DM (there's no family history of T1DM or autoimmune disease that I know of). I'm trying to find the source again, but I think I read somewhere that more people are diagnosed with T1DM without a family history of it than people with it (though the risk of developing it increases if you have an immediate family history of it).JanetYellen wrote: »I thought there was nothing you could do to prevent TYPE I diabetes. The type that runs in families.
According to this website
For type 1 diabetes...- There is a 10-20x greater risk of developing T1DM if you have an immediate relative with it. The risk rises from 1:100 to about 1:10 (if not higher)
- Sibling risk is 1:10 of developing T1DM before age 50.
- Risk from parent to child is lower if the mother has T1DM compared to the father. The risk of a child having T1DM if the mother has it is close to the "general population" risk (1:100) if the mother is over 25. If a parent developed T1DM before the age of 11, their children have a higher risk of also developing T1DM before the age of 11.
For type 2 diabetes...- The general population risk of developing T2DM is 1:9
- The risk increases by two-fold if you have one parent with T2DM (despite the parent being lean at the time of diagnosis)
- The risk increases by four-fold (1:2 risk) if both parents have it.
- <1/3 of T2DM patients have a strong family history of it
Remember that T2DM accounts for about 90-95% of all diabetes cases. It's typically safe to assume that someone implies T2DM if they say they have a family history of it.0 -
JanetYellen wrote: »I thought there was nothing you could do to prevent TYPE I diabetes. The type that runs in families.
Type 1 runs in families (it is a specific gene) but the main risk factor for Type 2 is genetics, more along racial lines than actual family. People of African descent have the highest risk of developing T2Dm. Pacific Islanders have the second highest risk.0 -
I'm not sure you can avoid it completely. My father has diabetes and I've been tested countless times as negative even when i weighed 280. I don't go out of my way to avoid sugar either. In fact most days i'm over my goal. Not sure which type he has though. I think the best you can do is keep your weight down and hope but, I kinda feel like if you're gonna get it you're gonna get it0
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You can reduce the risk most by staying at a normal weight and being physically active.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
This. Thirty minutes a day is enough, generally. And according to my doctor, a 38" waist (for women) is the maximum. Stay under that to reduce your risk. What you eat has no bearing on your propensity for developing diabetes. It's all about how much you eat (and thus your size) and genetic and lifestyle risk factors.0 -
- Keep your weight at a normal level
- Exercise
That is it. If you have not been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, there is no reason to worry about eating carbs, etc. What you eat does not give you diabetes. You get it from a combination of at least 2 or more of the risk factors: genetics, being overweight, long term use of certain medications (esp. statins and antidepressants), and age (and a bunch more where there is a correlation but not proven causation).
If you have been diagnosed with either, you might want to follow your MD and/or RD's recommendations as to what dietary changes are needed.
This, OP I am guessing type 2 diabetes runs in your family. We have both in our family and I had gestational diabetes with my 2nd pregnancy so I am at higher risk for number 2. Keep active and keep your weight at a normal level, but it's never a bad idea to eat healthy whole foods.0 -
1. Eat a Mediterranean diet ( = a balanced diet and you can eat it all in moderation as long as you dont have any medical issues with certain food groups...so also sugar is no problem...moderation is the key)
2. Keep a healthy weight
3. Move/Exercise/ be active
btw like @ninerbuff said you reduce the risk of getting it0 -
You can reduce the risk most by staying at a normal weight and being physically active.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
This. Thirty minutes a day is enough, generally. And according to my doctor, a 38" waist (for women) is the maximum. Stay under that to reduce your risk. What you eat has no bearing on your propensity for developing diabetes. It's all about how much you eat (and thus your size) and genetic and lifestyle risk factors.
Can you point me in the direction of the studies that proved that what you eat has no bearing on your propensity for developing diabetes?0 -
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You can reduce the risk most by staying at a normal weight and being physically active.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
This. Thirty minutes a day is enough, generally. And according to my doctor, a 38" waist (for women) is the maximum. Stay under that to reduce your risk. What you eat has no bearing on your propensity for developing diabetes. It's all about how much you eat (and thus your size) and genetic and lifestyle risk factors.
Can you point me in the direction of the studies that proved that what you eat has no bearing on your propensity for developing diabetes?
Would it change your mind even if somebody showed you a study?0 -
As someone who has successfully lowered my blood sugar numbers to below prediabetic levels I suggest: exercise 30 mins per day), lose weight, and eat a diet that is more protein and veggie and lower in carbs. One of the best things I did was talk to a nutritionist and attended a few diabete information sessions. I learned a lot on how to eat a healthy and well balanced meal.0
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