Every time I go to the hospital for diabetes, I am asked, "Are you careful about what you eat?" Even if you are told to be careful, you may get lost when you think about what to eat. Here, I will explain what you should pay attention to in your diet for the treatment of diabetes.
Contents
1. Calorie intake 2. Carbohydrate intake 3. Should dietary fat be reduced in diabetic diet therapy? 4. Is abstinence necessary in diabetic diet therapy? Nutrition 6. Examples of Diabetes Menus 7. How to Easier to Manage Nutritional Balance 8. Tips for Continuing Diet TherapyMr. Sonoda was diagnosed with diabetes at a hospital after an abnormal value was pointed out during a medical examination. "She should change her life," she was told, but she wasn't quite sure what to do. Should I lose weight? Should I not eat sweets?
1. Calorie intake
Diabetic diet therapy restricts the calorie content of meals to an appropriate range to prevent blood sugar levels from rising too high.
Bigger people burn more calories. Also, people doing physical labor need more calories. Therefore, the number of calories you should take in a day is calculated based on your height and work load.
First, calculate your ideal weight, which is considered standard for your height. The ideal weight (kg) is height (m) x height (m) x 22. Also, if you are 65 years old or older, it is better to think a little loosely, height (m) x height (m) x 22-25.
Next, multiply your ideal weight by a number determined by the intensity of your work to get your calories per day.
Let's do some calculations as an example.
If you are 160 cm tall and work at a desk, your ideal weight is 1.6 x 1.6 x 22 = 56.3 kg. Multiply this by 25 to 30 to get approximately 1400 kcal (kcal) to 1700 kcal per day (rounded to the nearest ten).
It can be calculated in the same way by applying height and labor intensity. Calculate some combinations as an example.
It is good to use this number as a guideline for diet therapy, but the goals may differ depending on the severity of the disease and the presence or absence of complications. If you listen to doctors and administrative dietitians at medical institutions, you will understand more.
2. Carbohydrate Intake
When you hear the name diabetes, you might think that sweets are bad for you. It's true that sugar is high in calories and it's easy to overeat, so it's easier to keep your calorie intake in moderation. Sugar is a type of carbohydrate, and the same can be said for rice and bread, which are high in carbohydrates.
However, carbohydrates are essential nutrients for the body, so it is important to consume them in moderation even during a diabetic diet.
It is considered good to consume 50-60% of your total daily calorie intake from carbohydrates. If you calculate the daily calorie intake as 1600kcal, you will get 800kcal to 960kcal from carbohydrates. This corresponds to 200g to 240g of carbohydrates.
Check the Nutrition Facts label to see how much carbohydrates are in the foods you usually eat.
Eating carbohydrates raises blood sugar levels. So it sounds like you should avoid carbs to lower your blood sugar. Why can't we say "less is more"? In fact, carbs are more beneficial in the long run.
Carbohydrates are broken down in the body into glucose (glucose). Glucose is the energy source necessary for life. Without glucose, the body is starved for energy and unable to do the work it needs to sustain life, so it tries to make glucose using protein stored in muscles.
For this reason, if you continue to eat a low-carb diet, your body will consume protein and you will lose muscle. If you lose muscle, not only will you lose muscle strength, but your basal metabolism will also drop, making it harder for your body to consume energy.
There are many parts that are not yet clear medically, but the appropriate amount of carbohydrates is 50-60% of the total calorie intake. The remaining 40-50% comes from proteins and fats.
Recently, the concept of the glycemic index (GI) is also considered important.
GI is a numerical value that compares how much blood sugar levels rise for each food when eating a food containing 50g of carbohydrates. The value is calculated with the power of glucose to raise the blood sugar level as 100. The higher the GI of a food, the sooner it will raise blood sugar levels.
Compared with staple food, it looks like a table.
| GI | Food examples |
|---|---|
| Expensive | Bread, white rice |
| Medium | Udon |
| Low | Pasta, soba, brown rice< /td> |
*GI may vary slightly depending on the method of measurement.
From the standpoint of focusing on GI, buckwheat and brown rice, which are less likely to raise blood sugar levels, are considered preferable for diabetic diet therapy. Sweet things such as sweets have a high GI, so be careful. However, some experts disagree on this point of view.
As long as you have the right amount of calories and carbohydrates, you can consider choosing low GI foods.
3. Should diets for diabetes reduce dietary fat?
From the image that obese people are more likely to develop diabetes, a diet high in fat may seem bad for diabetes. yeah. Certainly, too much fat is not good. But simply avoiding fat isn't really enough.
Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA, DHA, etc.) are abundant in fish fat, and although it is currently unknown whether they have any benefits for managing diabetes, they are said to have the effect of lowering triglycerides. It is There is a drug called Epadel® that is used to lower triglycerides. The main ingredient of this medicine is the omega-3 fatty acid EPA (icosapentaenoic acid). The act of taking fatty acids to reduce blood fat may seem contradictory at first glance, but this treatment actually lowers triglycerides.
Also, the amount of cholesterol taken in from the diet is small compared to the amount of cholesterol synthesized in the body. Therefore, strict restriction of dietary cholesterol does not directly reflect cholesterol in the blood.
In this way, reducing fat and lipids does not necessarily directly lead to diabetes treatment. The guideline is to take 20-30% of your calorie intake from fat, but you don't need to limit your intake significantly below that.
4. Is Abstinence Necessary in Diabetic Diet Therapy? However, there are other diseases that can be caused by overdrinking, such as alcoholic liver disease, so if you take into consideration aspects other than diabetes treatment, it can be said that moderate drinking is good. As a guideline, consider the upper limit of alcohol intake to be about 25g per day. 25g of alcohol is about 1 go of sake, 0.6 go of shochu, and 1 medium bottle of beer. Also, some alcoholic beverages contain carbohydrates, so it's a good idea to be careful about what type of alcohol you're consuming.5. Other Nutrients to Eat
It is known that eating dietary fiber lowers blood sugar levels. Aim for at least 20g of dietary fiber per day. In addition, vitamins are also important in terms of nutritional management, although it is unknown in which body the vitamins are effective in diabetes. Regardless of diabetes treatment, care must be taken not to deplete the nutrients previously ingested in the diet. However, it is dangerous to drink large amounts of supplements and energy drinks, so please stop.
Some people say that coffee lowers blood sugar levels, but some people are skeptical.
6. Example of Diabetes Menu
Mr. I don't know how much I need to eat to get the right amount. What does a moderate amount of food look like on the menu?
Consider that a person with a desk job consumes 1800 kcal per day.
Carbohydrates account for 50-60% of the calories, so let's say 1000kcal (250g of carbohydrates).
Calculated using the food exchange table, as an example of a day's meals,
This makes for a roughly balanced 1800kcal meal. This is just one example, so please consult a registered dietitian who is a specialist.
7. How to easily manage nutritional balance
I gave you one example, but it is hard to calculate and think about what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. Few people know exactly how many carbohydrates are in a bowl of white rice. It is not realistic to try to know the nutritional content of all the foods you use in a day in order to plan your daily menu.
It's a lot of work to do all the math, but there are ways to make the actual diet easier. There are 3 key points.
In order to control your diet, there is a "food replacement table for diabetes diet therapy" created by the Japan Diabetes Society. It is commonly called "food exchange table".
The food exchange chart lists the amounts of the same type of food that have the same number of calories. For example, 30g of bread and 60g of soba are both about 80kcal. If you refer to this, you can figure out how much the calorie calculated from the height and the amount of work will be in terms of food.
Furthermore, the food exchange table lists foods high in carbohydrates, foods high in protein, and foods high in fat.
Using this information, you can first calculate the amount of food you eat per day from calories, and assemble your diet by replacing foods with the same calorie so that the ratio of carbohydrates:protein:fat is appropriate. You can keep going.
The food exchange chart is useful for controlling calories and carbohydrate:protein:fat ratios. You can buy it at bookstores and shopping sites, so please get it and use it.
In terms of carbs, don't worry about going below 10g. If you try to calculate too accurately, it will be too hard and will not last long.
100g of white rice contains about 40g of carbohydrates. However, depending on the cooking method and quality, the carbohydrate content may be 35g or 45g. Even if you calculate finely, there is an error of about 10g for each meal. As a whole, do not exceed the target amount significantly, that is, do not eat too much, as a minimum, let's keep it important.
Various information is useful for nutritional management.
But food is complicated. We often have so much to think about that we don't know where to start. Sometimes there are so many numbers that I don't understand the calculations. Even if you work hard to improve your diet every day, you may still be unsure if what you are doing is right.
A registered dietitian can help you with that. A registered dietitian is an expert in nutritional control. If you are unsure about what to eat, consult a registered dietitian for nutritional guidance. Guidance by registered dietitians is also effective in the 2019 Diabetes Treatment Guidelines. In addition, the effect will be enhanced by receiving guidance as early as possible, or by receiving guidance multiple times.
8. Tips for continuing diet therapy
So far, I have introduced ways to improve your diet. There are effective methods, but you need to go one step further to put them into practice. In other words, people who want to treat diabetes themselves must change their behavior.
What should I be careful about in order to avoid overeating and unbalanced eating habits and to continue my diet for a long time? I will make a point.
Another important thing is to be "agnostic to method". Everyone has times when they can't avoid going out to dinner, or they just let things go. In such a case, it is a positive attitude to think, "Sometimes it can't be helped, let's do our best again." Even if you think you've failed once, you can keep trying by changing your method.
If you overeat, you can also make up for it by gradually eating less over the remaining six days of the week. First of all, please think about how to continue for a long time, and think flexibly about the details.
There is data from overseas that the mortality rate from diabetes and cardiovascular disease is reduced by proper dietary intake. The data suggests eating more whole grains, fruits and nuts and less sucrose and red meat. In addition, according to domestic data, it is believed that taking dietary fiber and protein first can moderate the rise in blood sugar levels.
Although there are still many uncertainties, it is highly likely that continuing the diet will improve the control of the disease. On the other hand, many people may not be able to continue a diet that is too strict. You may be able to expect the best results by arranging your own long-lasting methods while incorporating the opinions of medical professionals.