One of the most overwhelming things for patients when they are first diagnosed with diabetes or are told that they have pre-diabetes is nutrition. According to the American Diabetes Association, there is no “one way” that they encourage patients to eat but rather to learn the fundamentals of management of blood sugar through the method that works for them.
It can be easy to get caught up in the latest fad that is popular such as ketogenic diets but that can be the opposite of what you’ve been told in the past in a course telling you to monitor your fats. You must find what works for you personally, but the overall theme is making sure that you are tracking what you are eating and making sure that you are making goals within that to change what you have been doing. If you do any approach consistently, you can see change in fat loss and manage your diabetes.
Counting carbs is typically the place to start in your journey. You want to learn the nutrition of various foods that you are regularly eating. This means not only the calories, but the protein, carbs, and fat grams. When you have diabetes and you start medication, you have to be careful to not bottom out your blood glucose levels, so you want to make sure that you are eating around 30g C / meal. For overall fat loss per the American Dietetics Association, you want to aim for carbohydrates to make up 35%-65% of your diet. If you eat 30g of carbohydrate for 5 meals per day then this is 150g carb which is 600 calories, so you would want to supplement your other calories in protein and fat grams.
A great app to use for tracking your intake is MyFitnessPal that has a large database to search the foods that you are eating at home and when you are at a restaurant. You can download this on your phone for free and start today.
We are currently enrolling for patients that are taking Metformin with an A1C of 7-10% and if you or someone you know might be eligible then we would love to talk with you.
Resources: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/37/Supplement_1/S120?ijkey=5b2ac895d852f5497923e402e7ceb8828e189586&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha