Healthy Food Choices

Knowing what to eat can be confusing. Everywhere you turn, there is news about what is or isn’t good for you. Some basic principles have weathered the fad diets, and have stood the test of time. Here are a few tips on making healthful food choices for you and your entire family.

• Eat lots of vegetables and fruits. Try picking from the rainbow of colors available to maximize variety. Eat non-starchy vegetables such as spinach, carrots, broccoli or green beans with meals.
• Choose whole grain foods over processed grain products. Try brown rice with your stir fry or whole wheat spaghetti with your favorite pasta sauce.
• Include dried beans (like kidney or pinto beans) and lentils into your meals.
• Include fish in your meals 2-3 times a week.
• Choose lean meats like cuts of beef and pork that end in "loin" such as pork loin and sirloin. Remove the skin from chicken and turkey.
• Choose non-fat dairy such as skim milk, non-fat yogurt and non-fat cheese.
• Choose water and calorie-free "diet" drinks instead of regular soda, fruit punch, sweet tea and other sugar-sweetened drinks.
• Choose liquid oils for cooking instead of solid fats that can be high in saturated and trans fats. Remember that fats are high in calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, watch your portion sizes of added fats.
• Cut back on high calorie snack foods and desserts like chips, cookies, cakes, and full-fat ice cream.
• Eating too much of even healthful foods can lead to weight gain. Watch your portion sizes.

Developing Healthy Habits In Kids A Shared Responsibility

The American Dietetic Association calls for local support among schools and communities to work together and provide healthy and affordable meals to children as a means to help them develop and practice healthy behaviors for life. This was published as a position paper in the August issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. This position paper also represents the official stance of the association.

The association believes that schools and communities should be working together to share in the responsibility in providing children with access to nutritious and affordable foods and beverages. School based nutrition services such as the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program should also be an integral part of a total education program. Such programs and other wellness policies may help promote and help students to develop healthy behaviors that they can follow all through life.

ADA believes that nutrition programs in schools can be vital to help children stay healthy and prevent them from gaining excess weight or become obese. When healthy dietary habits are practiced early in life, it is easier for children to follow them later in life. That is why teaching kids proper nutrition as early as possible can help prevent a number of health problems in the future.

In the said position paper, ADA emphasizes that schools and communities have a shared responsibility to teach and help children develop proper and healthy eating habits by providing high quality, affordable and nutritious meals. This applies to all food products and beverages sold and served to students during school days. Not only will such programs help provide adequate nutrition to students, they may also provide positive influence in kids in trying to develop healthy eating habits.

Diabetes - Take Control With Physical Activity

When you should eat and what you should eat depends on how much you exercise. Exercise is an important part of staying healthy and controlling your blood glucose. Physical activity should be safe and enjoyable, so talk with your doctor about what types of exercise are right for you. Whatever kind of exercise you do, here are some special things that people with diabetes need to remember:

• Take care of your feet. Make sure your shoes fit properly and your socks stay clean and dry. Check your feet   for redness or sores after exercising. Call your doctor if you have sores that do not heal.
• Drink about 2 cups of water before you exercise, about every 20 minutes during exercise, and after you finish,  even if you don’t feel thirsty.
• Warm up and cool down for 5 to 10 minutes before and after exercising. For example, walk slowly at first and  then walk faster. Finish up by walking slowly again.
• Test your blood glucose before and after exercising. Do not exercise if your fasting blood glucose level is above  300. Eat a small snack if your blood glucose is below 100.
• Know the signs of low blood glucose (hypoglycemia) and how to treat it. Signs to look for are feeling weak or dizzy, sweating more, noticing sudden changes in your heartbeat, or feeling hungry. If you experience these symptoms, stop exercising and test your blood glucose.

Exercise for Diabetics

• Try to be active most days of the week.
• Whenever you can, walk instead of taking the car. If you have to drive, park in the spot farthest from the door.
• Start slowly and gradually increase the amount of effort; for instance, progress from strolling to brisk walking.
• Talk to your diabetes healthcare team to learn how to adjust your insulin and food to prevent low blood glucose levels while exercising.
• Take precautions against low blood glucose while exercising. Carry some form of carbohydrate and extra food with you when you are active. If you feel symptoms of low blood glucose, stop and test your level.
• Wear a MedicAlert® identification and carry a record of the names and amounts of insulin you use and any other medications you use regularly.
• Wear comfortable, well-fitting shoes and socks.
• Stop exercising if you are in pain or feel tired.

The Low Glycemic Index (GI) Diet

Probably, your mind will ask you what is Glycemic Index Diet.

The Low Glycemic Diet Index is a combination of of lean protein and low glycemic carbs. The major purpose of this diet is maintain and stabilize blood sugar. More so, the diet aims to reduce hunger.

This particular diet involves a complete 4 week eating plan accompanied by wide number of food-substitute. This diet provides about 1100 calories per day. All diets are based on the gender, age of the person and how much the weigh should me removed.

Keeping one’s weigh especially for diabetic have proved and extended the lives of diabetic patients. What are high-glycemic carbs? Basically, high glycenic carbs would include sugar, potatoes, pasta, white rice, and white bed. Nothing is wrong eating these food groups however, given you are at risk because of your diabetes. It is always recommended by health practitioners for patients of diabetes to slow down on their glycomic diet.

The low-glycemic weight loss produced by greater reduction in triglyceride levels, insulin resistance, and blood pressure than in the low-fat group. It is likely that the key to the beneficial effects seen with the low-glycemic diet were due to avoidance of the spikes in blood glucose – and thus in blood insulin levels – seen in diets that allow high-glycemic carbohydrates (such as low-fat diets). Spiking-then-falling insulin levels are known to produce great hunger.

Further, insulin keeps people from metabolizing fat they’ve already stored, and when they’re hungry they have trouble burning that stored energy – and consequently they consume more energy. The low-glycemic diet avoids this pattern of eating-hunger-eating-hunger.

The bottom line is that losing weight is still a matter of reducing the calories you eat and increasing the calories you burn up. But it turns out that what kind of calories you do eat when losing weight makes a lot of difference.

Controlling your GI Glycemic index (also glycemic indexcarbohydrates based on their immediate effect on blood glucose levels. It compares carbohydrates gram for gram in individual foods, providing a numerical, evidence-based index of postprandial (post-meal) glycemia., GI) is a ranking system for.

For people with diabetes, healthy eating is not simply a matter of "what one eats", but also when one eats. The question of how long before a meal one should inject insulin is one that is asked in Sonsken, Fox and Judd .

The answer is that it depends upon the type of insulin one takes and whether it is long, medium or quick-acting insulin. If patients check their blood glucose at bedtime and find that it is low, it is advisable that they take some long-acting carbohydrate before retiring to bed to prevent night-time hypoglycemia.

A low GI food will release energy slowly and steadily and is generally appropriate for everyone, especially diabetics, dieters and endurance athletes. A high GI food will provide a rapid rise in blood sugar levels and is suitable for energy recovery after endurance exercise.

How a Low-Carb Diet Works

For diabetics, lifestyle changes are pretty common. One of the most significant lifestyle changes that a diagnosed diabetic will go through is a dramatic change in diet habits. One of the things that a diabetic must look out for is the amount of carbohydrates that he or she takes in each and every day. That is because if their carbohydrates increase, their blood sugar levels also proportionately go towards the same direction.

Therefore, the solution for this dilemma as a diabetic is to adhere to a strict low-carb diet. This is for the reason that if people, most especially diabetics, maintain a low-carb diet, they will not become fat nor will they stay fat. These people will be able to manage their triglyceridess as well as LDL cholesterol level. There have been studies which have proven that over time, people who are slimmer naturally live longer lives compared to those people who are fat or even just on the heavy side.

One of the reasons why a low-carbohydrate diet will be able to help a person who is diagnosed with diabetes is that it will effectively slow the rate by which one’s blood sugar level increases. This is because less insulin will be produced by your body because of the limited amount of sugar in your bloodstream.

The less insulin there is in your body, the fats that one eats will not be automatically stored but it will be immediately metabolized. It will turn out that you will either pee the fat away or will experience them being metabolized. If one wants to start with a healthy diabetic low-carb diet, one could follow these steps in order to get a head start with controlling the amount of carbohydrates that enter the body.

Get a guide – People who are new to low-carb diets will most probably blame lack of guidance with regard to low carb diets. If you are able to get your hands on a copy of a book that discusses low carb diets such as the Atkins diet, you will be well on your way to starting to make concrete changes in your diet.

Get a blood test – This is for the purpose of setting a base line where you will be able to compare your "after" results. If you are worried about other things such as your cholesterol levels, you may be able to see these details in your blood tests.

Organize a party – As crazy as it may sound, it is important that all of your high carbohydrate foods be consumed-only not by yourself. This is what your friends are for-they will be the high carb eating machines who will most probably thank you for letting them eat all of your cakes and delicious high carb foods.

Make arrangements for your meals – If you have nothing else left since your friends consumed all of your high carb foods, make like a grocery addict and get the basic low carb foods such as meat, fish, eggs, cheese, cream, vegetables, sugar free jelly and peanuts.

After being able to get a head start in the different arrangements that you need to ensures your healthy eating habits, you are on your way to staring your low carb diet.

Diabetes Diet Plan

If a person has diabetes, it is very important that the person’s diet is closely monitored in order to properly maintain the blood sugar levels. There are a lot of differing philosophies regarding what is the most ideal diet for diabetic patients. Here are a few guidelines that will help a patient have an idea of what type of diet he or she should be eating.

People who have Type 1 diabetes will be needing an estimated daily intake of 35 calories per kilogram of body weight or if you prefer to look at the pounds unit, 16 calories per pound of body weight per day.

On the other hand, people who have Type 2 diabetes are approximately put on a strict caloric range of 1500-1800 calories per day in order to have them lose weight as well as maintain their current body weight and body style.

People who might seem to be more obese will have to take in more than 1600 calories because although maintaining a 1800-calories-a-day diet will undoubtedly make them lose weight, doing so will make them lose weight at such a rapid rate that it will not be healthy at all.

Therefore, obese people will need to have more calories than the ideal 1500-1800 range for normal people. This is even more true for men because men essentially require more calories because of their muscle mass. With this is mind, it is important to note that by the hour, muscle burns more calories compared to fat. This is one good reason why someone should exercise.

On average, the diets that diabetics need to be eating should be characterized by a carbohydrate-based diet. Fifty percent of their daily calorie needs should be composed of 50 carbohydrates. Generally, if one take in less amounts of carbohydrate, it naturally translates to lower blood glucose levels.

Nevertheless, the advantages of this diet may be negated by the dilemma of a higher fat diet which is used to offset the lower amount of carbohydrates in the diet. It essentially is a good idea if a person lowers his or her carbohydrate intake but it will also be a terrible thing for them to concentrate on a diet with high fat content. A workaround for this problem is by replacing the saturated fats with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

One of the most effective ways to come up with a good, solid diabetic diet is to actually sit down with a dietician or a professional nutritionist to consult about the most ideal types of foods that one can eat as well as the serving sizes that they require.

Because of their condition, it is essential for diabetics to be able to religiously count the calories that they take everyday in order to help balance their blood sugar levels accordingly. The diabetic should elicit the help of professional experts in order to strike a balance between what they want to eat and what they can eat.

Bottom line is, there should be a conscious effort on the part of the diabetic to consult professionals, stick to a specified diet and hope for the best.