Eat a Healthy Diet and Follow a Meal Plan
Eating right and exercising more often is good for everyone. But it's especially important for people with type 2 diabetes because they often have more body fat than they should. When people put on too much body fat, it's because they're eating more calories than they use each day. The body stores that extra energy in fat cells. Over time, gaining pounds of extra fat can lead to obesity and diseases related to obesity, like type 2 diabetes.
Getting to a healthy weight — even losing just a few pounds of extra body fat — goes a long way in helping to keep blood sugar levels under control. How do you do it? Eating healthy foods is one thing people with type 2 diabetes can do. They also have to pay attention to the amount of carbohydrates (or carbs) and calories in the foods they eat.
Eating certain foods will cause blood sugar levels to go up more than others, which can make controlling blood sugar more difficult for people with diabetes unless insulin and other diabetes medications are taken at the proper times and doses.
The three major nutrients in food are carbs, proteins, and fats. Foods that cause blood sugar levels to go up contain carbohydrates. Foods that contain mostly protein and/or fat don't affect blood sugar levels as much as foods with carbs. But they still contain calories and can cause people to gain too much body fat if they eat too much of them.
For people with type 2 diabetes (and everyone else, too), it's best to not eat too many sugary treats or fast foods. They're not really healthy food choices, and they can make them gain too much body fat and get cavities. They also might need to eat smaller amounts of food.
A balanced, healthy diet doesn't mean giving up your favorite foods or going on a starvation diet. But you'll probably have to limit junk food and sweets and eat smaller portions of foods if you're overweight.
To help you eat right, you and your diabetes health care team will create a written diabetes meal plan. Meal plans usually consist of guidelines for preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner with scheduled between-meal snacks.
The diabetes meal plan won't tell you specific foods to eat, but it will guide you in selecting choices from the basic food groups and help you eat nutritious, balanced meals. Each meal and snack in the plan contains a certain amount of carbs, which works with the types and amount of insulin you take.