If you’re wondering the best way to get started with a low carb diabetic diet, the simple answer is: JUST GET STARTED!
You don’t have to know everything in order to get started. You don’t have to get everything right or be scared of getting things wrong. You just have to JUST GET STARTED RIGHT NOW!
In a moment we’ll share some tips on where to start as well.
But, it’s important to emphasize that as you learn, just start putting new things in place every day. As time goes by every new thing you do accumulates and before you know it your blood sugar is under control and you’re in much better health. It’s that simple.
Step 1. Start from where YOU are
Don’t worry about anyone else, things you might read on facebook, or why it seems to be working for other but not you – you know, all the things we get caught up in when it comes to this stuff.
Just start from where YOU are right now and ease your way into a new diet routine in your own time.
Stop obsessing over how much weight you can lose, getting it all right, time management, meals, cooking, organizing, food, eating out…ahhhh…so much to think about it’s overwhelming!
Just realize where you’re at and work on it one step at a time, one food replacement at a time, one meal at a time.
The important thing is that you work on taking positive steps to improve your health everyday. So start small and just keep moving forward.
Change doesn’t happen overnight so have patience and enjoy the journey.
You’ll also find it helpful to review:
- How to lower your blood sugar naturally with diet
- Simple and complex carbs 101
- How many carbs per day
- And get the right numbers in your head – Blood sugar levels chart
Step 2. Give sugar the axe
The above list includes both sugar, natural sugar and non caloric sweeteners. Not all of them are bad, but you need to learn the difference and choose wisely.
The World Health Organization recommends that added sugar be limited to just 6 teaspoons per day, or 25 g.
This is not a lot of sugar and is more difficult to achieve than you might imagine.
Why?
Because sugar is found in literally every single packaged and processed food we find lining our supermarket shelves. Even things we don’t think would contain sugar, often do.
It’s crazy that sugar has more than 50 names it comes under – so you need to become a bit of a food label detective.
This is a problem because many people don’t even know they are consuming so much sugar – the average person now eating around 40 teaspoons per day!!
What type of products do we find sugar in?
- Many sauces and condiments
- Breakfast cereals
- Many crackers
- Microwave meals
- Ice creams & popsicles
- Cakes & cookies
- Pies and pastries
- Candy bars
- Pizza
- Jams & jellies
- Chocolate
- Milk & yogurt
- Dried fruit
- Breaded or battered foods
- Corn chips and crisps
So, starting with cutting down, or even better, cutting out sugar – it’s a great place to start if you haven’t already.
Step 3. Increase the veggies
Eating more vegetables is honestly one of the simplest things you can do. And there are lots of awesome veggies you can eat.
As a diabetic, vegetables are the BEST SOURCE OF CARBS for you to eat.
They provide a range of valuable components that help reduce inflammation.
Eating more vegetables also happens to be one of the easiest things you can do.
Skip the pasta and add some more veggies to your plate – plain and simple.
If you struggle to know how to make vegetables taste great, you might consider joining us as a member – and we’ll help you take care of all of this food stuff.
4. Change one meal at a time
Let’s emphasize this again: don’t try to overload yourself with changing everything at once, instead try to change one meal at a time.
For example, start with breakfast and then once you have a good routine and a few meal options for breakfast, move onto lunch, then dinner, then snacks.
It’s better to do it slowly and develop a long term habit that you can maintain.
5. Start planning ahead
Eating a low carb diet means you have to plan, otherwise you plan to fail!
There’s no way around this, so you need to learn to think ahead and plan – or of course, you could join us as a member for done-for-you weekly meal plans.
Eating a low carb diabetic diet does make it a bit more difficult to grab foods in a hurry. And if you’re busy or stressed you don’t want to reach for the naughty stuff. So meal and snack planning is essential to success.
The best thing to do is keep it simple. Know what carbs are best to eat.
Keep snack foods handy. Make up big batch meals so you have leftovers. Make freezer meals you can pull out when you need them. And map out an easy meal plan you can follow every week.
Let us help you
Let us do the planning, organize the easy meals, and give you some help and support along the way.
Seriously, you don’t have to go this alone when there’s a much easier way to do it.
Sound good? It really is.
Join us inside our exclusive members site
You’ll have everything you need at your fingertips to make eating easy, stress free, and even fun.
We’ve got food so tasty and lots of it – so you’ll never run out of ideas.
And, if you have a question or need a bit of extra help and support, visit our members library where you can ask our nutritionists questions too.
We know you’ll love it, and hope to see you inside as one of our members.
CLICK HERE to Join us a Member Today
loraine
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Issie
Thank you for your caring work About Diabetics.From experience i can tell how diet make the dufference i am african from Cote d’Ivoire.Our diet is based on carbohydrate.That is rice,yam,cassava,plantain.i notice that when dont eat white Rice at night my feet dont burn.Now a pay attention to my diner and my overall carbohydrate intake for allday long.i just hope some our african Nutritionist will Do the similar fantastic work you have done four our food.God bless you.Issie
Jedha
Thanks Issie, glad you find it helpful and so great to hear you’ve found that carbohydrate is the key to making you feel better.
Carla
I want and need to start with your help to get back on track with my diet, but I need to know what is the cost?
Jedha
Hi Carla – nice to meet you, we have a variety of different options.
I’d recommend the VIP Members Club, it gives the best value and you can ask questions in the members forum – it’s just $180 for a 12 month membership.
Or, if you want to follow a step-by-step system, the T2Diet Program might be a good option too. It’s just $99.
Beverly
Jedi, thank you for such an informative lesson. Diabetes is so common in this day and age but extremely difficult to get a handle on. I have learned more in your lessons than from Doctors and other nutritionist since being diagnosed,five years ago. I always felt confused at so much conflicting advice. THANK YOU
Jedha
Thanks Beverly. That is such a great compliment and is exactly why I started this site. I hear this stuff from people all the time, so it’s good to be able to help. If you’ve ever got a question or need a hand, just post a comment – we’ll always reply. :)
Terri Ortiz
This is a very well article for me, I will definitely digg it and personally suggest to my friends, thank you so much for writing it!
Diabetes mellitus is a complex chronic disease, but also a controllable and preventable disease. The main key is to finding healthy combination of diet and exercise that works for you.
Jedha
Glad you found it helpful Terri. Yes it is controllable and that’s exactly what we teach our readers and members here at Diabetes Meal Plans. :)
Sharon
I would like to join a few things,,what sort of payment do you take?
Jedha
Sorry I missed this question Sharon. You can use credit card or paypal at checkout for all our meal plans and menus https://diabetesmealplans.com/diabetic-diet-meal-plans/