Diet for Diabetes: 6 Common Food Tips to Ignore

Diabetics hear a lot about the foods they should and shouldn’t eat. Here’s a list of common tips you should actually ignore. Read more here.

A person cutting a sandwich while making a healthy lunch

Where do you go for your health and diet for diabetes information? According to Google’s own blog, one in twenty searches are for health related topics. Out the 3.5 billion searches each day, that’s a whopping 175 thousand searches.

The world in which we live is chock full of false information. This includes Google.

And since we don’t have Morpheus standing over us with his palm out explaining what is what, it’s easy to swallow the wrong pill and believe in fantasy without even knowing you’ve done so.

Living with diabetes may not always be a cake-walk, but it doesn’t have to be torture either.

Here at QuickCash4TestStrips.com, we want to set the record straight about food.

Diet for Diabetes Myth 1: Don’t eat carbs.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m going on a carb-free diet.” Or even, “carbs are bad for you.”

It seems to the be the “in” thing these days.

But, let’s actually think about this for a moment. Did you know that your brain uses twenty percent of the energy you put into your body?

That’s more than any other organ in your body!

What’s more, your brain’s main source of energy is (you guessed it!) carbohydrates.

According to the American Diabetes Association, you shouldn’t avoid carbs altogether, but make them count.

How do you do this?

It’s fairly simple. The closer to the earth, the better. Eat whole food. Whole grains, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, barley, real fruit.

If you portion these foods correctly, you have complete permission to add them to your diet.

“But whole foods are more expensive,” You might say. And although this may not always be true, it is true some of the time.

But with diabetes comes the need to test your blood, and thus comes the need for test strips. Isn’t it fortuitous that you are in the perfect place to make some cash for your extra test strips?

Now you can afford the little bit of cost to eating healthy.

Diet for Diabetes Myth 2: Don’t eat sweets.

Ah, sweets, that sugary temptation at the end of every potluck table. And sure, if you pig out on grandma’s famous german chocolate cake, that’s bad for everybody.

But you don’t have to give up your favorite desserts altogether just because you have diabetes.

In fact, sometimes it’s good to substitute a small, well portioned sweet dessert over something more carbohydrate dense.

Because it’s the number of carbohydrates in a food, not the amount of sugar that increases your blood glucose.

One of the few foods that remain something to avoid at all costs, however, are sugary sodas.

Sugary drinks like Coca-cola and Pepsi are linked to the development of Type 2 Diabetes.

Did you know that one mere 12-ounce can of regular soda can have up to forty grams of carbohydrates? That’s equal to ten teaspoons of straight sugar.

Can you imagine?

Diet for Diabetes Myth 3: Eat “sugar-free”

When I was a kid, sugar-free was all the rage. Sugar makes kids hyper, and so it follows that anything without sugar won’t over energize your children.

But what many people don’t know is that sugar-free versions of your favorite foods may not be carbohydrate free.

And what do carbohydrates turn into when your body breaks them down? Glucose, which is basically sugar.

Isn’t that tricky? Remember, a food company can put anything they want on their packaging outside of the nutrition label. Sugar-free may not always mean what you think it means.

Count carbohydrates, not sugars. Your glucose levels will thank you for it.

Diet for Diabetes Myth 4: Eat more often to lose weight.

It’s a common misconception that snacking during the day instead of eating three square meals increases your metabolism.

A study of 16 obese men and women in 2010 found that no increased weight loss occurred in those who ate more often during the day.

A quick search on the internet will show you that many more studies have been conducted since, and all the results are the same.

In fact, they found that those who snacked throughout the day ate little to no breakfast and their snack sizes increased near the day’s end.

And for a diabetic, this practice could prove dire for glucose regulation. And for anyone else, skipping breakfast has always been a bad idea.

“Breakfast” is exactly what the word breaks down to mean: a break in your fast.

Think about how long you generally sleep. If it’s as long as you are supposed to sleep, you’ve not eaten for a solid eight hours.

The longer you go without food, the more you body thinks it’s starving, the more it begins to prepare for famine, and your metabolism drops.

Weight loss is one of the best ways to control your diabetes. And if you are skipping breakfast every morning, you are inadvertently adding pounds to your body.

Diet for Diabetes Myth 5: Eat all the healthy stuff you like.

“But what I’m eating is healthy, so I can eat as much as I like.”

But remember, portion control is king! Especially when it comes to type 2 diabetes.

You might be eating close to the earth with your whole foods like we mentioned earlier. But if you are eating ten slices of that whole grain bread to sop up your large portion of Ratatouille, you’re probably not eating healthy the right way.

You may have bought all the right stuff, but knowing how much to prepare for yourself can be a challenge.

If you’re having trouble with portion control, talk to your dietician about a meal plan.

Conclusion:

You’re human. You’ve probably bought into many falsehoods throughout your life. Most of us h

Many ignorant people think they know the truth when in fact they themselves have been deceived.

Double check your sources before you take what you read on the internet about health and diabetes at face value.

But feel free to go out, exercise, eat healthy, and treat yourself every once in a while. Because living with diabetes doesn’t necessarily mean living in misery.

6 Common Diabetes Food Tips You Should Forget