Meals and meal planning (adapted from the National Dairy Council):
- Measure your food. Keep records of how much you eat, when and where you eat, what
you’re doing while you eat, who you’re eating with, and your mood. Look
for any patterns or bad habits and seek help from a registered dietitian, if necessary
(www.eatright.org). People with diabetes
can seek a dietitian who is also a certified diabetes educator at
www.diabeteseducator.org. Before meeting with a diabetes educator, be sure
to check your health plan benefits.
- Consider dessert as an occasional treat and not part of a daily diet.
- Plan daily meals and snacks to avoid haphazard high-calorie eating and drinking.
- Try to eat meals at the same time each day and maintain an even level of carbohydrate
intake. That way, you condition your body to expect food at certain times, which
helps to regulate insulin and keep your blood glucose level steady. If blood glucose
drops, your ability to control your appetite drops, too.
- Eat breakfast. You don’t save any calories by skipping breakfast and then
snacking later. Also, putting a starvation monster on hold may cause it to burst
out in the afternoon or late at night.
- Make your meal last longer than 20 minutes by eating slowly and putting your utensils
down between bites. If you are tempted to eat more, wait at least 20 minutes. That’s
how long it takes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s full.
- Don’t skip meals. That puts your body on starvation alert that makes it extremely
efficient at absorbing calories. A full day’s amount of food eaten in one
meal results in more weight gain than if the same amount of food is divided into
three or more meals.
- Freeze extra portions from one meal for another meal.
Snacks
- Know your vulnerable times and be ready with emergency munchies -- perhaps mid-afternoon,
returning home from work or the beach, or after working out at the gym or playing
sports.
- Have several choices of ready-to-eat, low-calorie snacks (less than 200 calories
for women or 300 calories for men). Snacks higher in protein or fat are better for
reducing hunger than carbohydrates.
- Don’t snack after dinner or while watching TV. It’s that simple.
Drinks
- Make your own low-calorie drinks in restaurants by squeezing lemon, lime or orange
wedges into your water and adding a little sweetener.
- A cup of hot liquid in the morning such as miso soup, tea or decaffeinated coffee
helps stimulate the gastro-colic reflex, which can help prevent constipation.
- Low-sodium, low-fat soups are a good way to simultaneously satisfy hunger and thirst.
- Herbal teas are usually free of caffeine and are delicious iced.
@ 2008 Amy Brown. Dr. Brown is an associate professor of Medicine in the Department
of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, John A. Bums School of Medicine, University
of Hawai’i at Manoa.