Following a Diabetes Diet Away From Home.

You can still manage your diabetes well even when you move around your social circle. The following are suggestions on enjoying nutritious diabetic meals when you have to be away from home.

A carefully planned diet is essential for a diabetic to control blood sugar levels and avoid the complications linked to diabetes. Certainly, you know that the meals in your own home are under your control and so is your diabetes. However, on social occasions, there may be the need to eat at a wedding, a birthday party, a friend’s house or in a restaurant where the food is not within your control and you have to decide what to consume.

Fortunately, managing your diabetes does not necessary limit your social life. The opportunity to mix around with family and friends at their functions is always there if you can remember a number of suggestions on ways to adhere to the diet suitable to you.

Diabetes Diet Needs

Regardless of your type of diabetes, consuming nutritious food and blood glucose control are necessary to achieve good management of your diabetes. The guidelines for good diabetes management are:

• Type 1 diabetes:

Since type 1 diabetics are unable to produce their own insulin to assist the cells to change blood sugar into energy, they have to inject insulin into their body. Consuming the right foods can reduce the need for diabetes medications and the quantity of insulin.

• Type 2 diabetes:

Insulin resistance is normally a result of obesity or poor diet. A nutritious diet can control blood glucose levels and assist weight loss. It can also lessen the need for diabetes medications and delay, if not prevent, the need for insulin.

• Gestational diabetes:

This is the diabetes which happens when a woman is pregnant. Normally, it goes off once the baby has been delivered. Consuming the right foods can have the mother avoid possible diabetes in future and keep the fetus healthy.

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Eating Out and The Diabetes Diet

Here are ways to stay safe whenever you need to eat away from home:

• Eat something light before you go for an outside meal to avoid probable overeating.
• Eat smaller portions of all the food on the table. Do not worry about leftovers.
• Avoid fried or breaded foods. Eat those which are grilled, broiled, roasted or baked.
• If possible, eat only vegetable, poultry or fish dishes.
• Request for salad dressing to be served separately.
• Do not touch the rolls and bread.
• Alcohol must be limited to one serving.
• Do not use condiments or heavy sauces which contain lots of fat, like sour cream, mayonnaise, tartar sauce and salad dressings.

Below are more suggestions for particular social happenings :

At a restaurant:

• Make sure that the restaurant has many dishes to choose from.
• Find out at the restaurant or through the internet whether nutritional information on the dishes they serve.
• Do ask for foods such as baked potato or French fries to be substituted with salad or vegetable dishes, even when the menu does not offer such options.
• Ask for healthy desserts such as low-fat frozen yogurt or fruit.

At a wedding or some other celebrations:

• Choose healthy foods, but allow yourself a little sweet or starchy food that you like.
• Spend more time on the people and have a conversation with them rather than concentrate on the food available.
• Eat for your own health and do not compete with others for the food. Your needs are different from theirs.
• However, if you do exceed your limit, there is no point in being angry with yourself. Go back to the right track the next day.

At a friend’s house:

• Request for the exact time for the meal so that you know when to take your medications.
• Find out if it is possible for you to take of dish of healthy food along so that you have a minimum of one healthy food to eat.

Following the above suggestions can assist you in sticking to your plan for diabetes management while enjoying the company of the people you love, to have a happy life.