The best blood sugar diet for reversing type 2 diabetes is a sensible low carb diet with low glycemic load and some other healthier choices. Such a low carb diet includes higher fiber foods with many vegetables and some complex carbohydrates and healthier fats like olive oil. It should limit less healthy saturated fats or processed foods. In terms of carbs themselves, the faster that a carb is absorbed into your system, the faster it can shoot up your blood sugar. And what goes up must come down – fast. You want to avoid doing that roller-coaster ride with your blood sugar levels.
And, for someone with type 2 diabetes, your body cannot handle a big load of carbs. Even if your pancreas can make insulin (unlike someone with type 1 diabetes), your cells are resistant to its effects. The net effect is to leave the blood sugar in your blood – able to age your cells prematurely and eventually cause a variety of undesirable complications. This leads to a simple but effective strategy – don’t ask your body to process carbs that it cannot handle in the first place. Your blood sugar will not rise too high, giving you a better chance to sidestep the complications of type 2 diabetes.
So, what can you eat on a good low carb diet? The foundation of such a diet includes the reality that your food choices need to tilt toward foods with good quality protein and healthier fats. With what experts call macronutrients, your food comes in with protein, fat, and carbohydrate components. Reduce carbs and you will need to boost up the others – but do so in a health-promoting way. Avoid creating an imbalanced diet just to claim you have cut down on carbs.
For instance, many vegetables are low carb and good for you. Green leafy vegetables and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli are low in carbs and deliver many key nutrients to your cells. Certain proteins contain fats that are better for you than others, e.g., omega-3 fatty acids from certain fattier fishes like wild salmon or sardines. Obviously, in addition to healthier sources of protein, a good low carb diet will include foods that contain carbohydrates, but ones that are lower on the glycemic index and glycemic load scales.
Glycemic index (GI) is a rating of the speed with which a specific food can raise your blood sugar level. A high GI food would be white bread or white potatoes. A lower GI food might include certain beans and nuts or raw apples. The low GI food may contain carbs, but ones that take a longer time to get into your system and raise your blood sugar level. Obviously, if a food does not contain many carbohydrates, its GI rating will be low.
Nutritionists often prefer to look at foods in terms of their glycemic load, however. Glycemic load value helps you rate a food based on the portion you eat (grams of carbs in the food multiplied by its GI rating divided by 100). When you eat foods from grains, you will find that whole grains tend to be more nutritious than refined grains (white flour), e.g., with natural B vitamins and fiber that is good for you, and whole grain glycemic index and load values are often lower.
So, while 1 cup of brown rice may have a glycemic load of 23 (versus 1 cup of white rice at 33), the brown rice is still higher in that value than a medium sized apple at 6. Need a better sweetener? Check out stevia, which comes from a natural plant source. You can find stevia in dry and liquid forms for sweetening beverages and foods.
The bottom line here is that you can eat a healthier low carb diet by making food choices that will help you control blood sugar levels in diabetes, without resorting to completely carb free foods. Sensible low carb food choices for blood sugar control lead to the best blood sugar diet for reversing type 2 diabetes.
Related Links:
Diabetes Diet to Lose Fat
Normal Blood Sugar Diet
