What Can I Eat as a Diabetic?
What Can I Eat as a Diabetic?
After being diagnosed with diabetes, the first thing you’re more likely instructed on is what you can and can’t eat. So much stress is placed on what you can’t eat, and if you had a diet mostly consisting of those food items, you’d be left a bit lost on what’s left for you to eat.
For diabetics, the best rule of thumb is to stay away from foods that are heavily processed and sugar-heavy. This much is fairly common knowledge, especially among the diabetic community.
This means you shouldn’t load up on things like cereal, fries, sweets, white bread, soda, and more. For many people, though, some of these items are major parts of their diets, unhealthy as they may be.
This makes getting used to diabetes really difficult for those people, because on top of the new lifestyle changes of exercise and keeping track of blood sugar levels, they now have to completely change their eating habits.
Foods that are safe for diabetics aren’t as hard to come by as they may seem at first. One great option is certain fruits and vegetables. These two food groups have a ton of variety, so you’re sure to find at least one thing that you like among them.
However, be sure you’re getting the right kinds of fruits and veggies. You want your fruits and vegetables to be fresh, ideally. This doesn’t mean that they have to have been picked within the last 24 hours, but just don’t get anything canned or processed with heavy syrup.
Also, don’t assume that things are okay for diabetics just because they contain fruit. Things like fruit punch, juice, and jellies are all very poor choices for a diabetic because they contain high levels of sugar.
The other food group that will be your main source of food as a diabetic will be grains. Many of us are already familiar with this category in the form of foods like rice, bread, and more.
Much like fruit, not all grains are healthy for diabetics. Try to stay away from white, or processed, grains. You instead want products that are whole grain, like brown rice, whole grain bread, and oatmeal.
These two food groups alone give you a pretty decent selection of options to work with. In the morning, you might be able to have oatmeal with berries for breakfast. In the afternoon, you could have a sandwich made from whole wheat bread, some meat, and some vegetables, and in the evening for dinner, some brown rice and vegetables.
