10 Tips For Maintaining a Low Carb Diabetic Diet

Carb counting takes a bit of practice, but it’s a great way to learn about eating well with diabetes. We’ve compiled a list of 11 ideas from which you can pick and choose, straight from people who deal with diabetes every day.

Accept Your Condition.

You can’t ignore that you have diabetes. You may feel fine, but uncontrolled diabetes can wreak havoc on your body that you won’t see for years. Learn how to treat it now. You may find it helpful to go to a nutritionist. Everything that you eat matters, it’s a pain in the ass that you can’t just stick anything in your mouth, but it’s a manageable disease if you choose to manage it.

Educate Yourself.

Attend classes at clinics and hospitals, Diabetes expositions or anything your doctor, endocrinologist, or certified diabetes educator suggests. Read everything you can get your hands on, visit websites and never stop learning.

Start Small.

There are just a handful of key things you need for carb counting. Know the insulin-to-carb ratio and  know what one unit of insulin does to your blood sugar without eating.
 
Begin At Home.

Start out at home and gradually work your way up to dining out. It’s always easier to eat at home than it is to eat at a restaurant because you always know the ingredients.

Test Often

After you eat, test how your body reacts. You may have to do an awful lot of testing at the beginning before and after meals. If you go on vacation or go out to eat, test before and after to see what impact something you've never tried before is having.

Ask For Help
Surround yourself with people that will help you.

Learn From Setbacks
If you do cheat, try to remember why you cheated and learn from it. Try to be ready for next time.

Learn The Inside Outs Of The Nutrition Facts Labels On Food.

Outside of fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy, do not consider buying a food without a label. It is easier to dose insulin when the carbs are listed on the outside of the package.

Keep It Simple.

Try to find things that you really enjoy. There is comfort in keeping it simple. For instance if you  have a certain salad dressing on my salad that you like, stick to it. It’s simpler that way.

Be Consistent

It’s not that you have to eat the same thing every day, but it pays to think twice before deviating from your normal food habits. The trick is to be consistent with the volumes of food you eat. If you eat 100 grams of carbs at one meal, you’re going to be injecting a lot of insulin and that’s where you get into trouble, risking these high errors.

Find A Technique That Works And Use It.

For instance, some might find a carb counting book inefficient. But there are apps that you can look up carbohydrate counts of food. They can tell you how many carbs are in everything, some will also do recipes for you. It will let you know all the nutrition information for one serving.