The Best Prediabetes Diet -

Prediabetes also called borderline diabetes, is a condition that makes people begin to wonder what kind of food they should be eating.

You may not have been diagnosed with this condition, but records show that 90% of people don’t know they have prediabetes. This could create concern.

Your risk increases if you’re:

Above 45 years
Do not exercise enough
Having a family history of diabetes
African American, Native American, Hispanic/Latino, or Pacific Islander
Obese
Have high “bad” LDL cholesterol
Have low “good” HDL cholesterol

But you can improve all these risks with diet. A lot of prediabetic patients do develop diabetes; however, it can be altered. Prediabetes can be prevented. A healthy prediabetes diet can help you delay or prevent type 2 diabetes.

Being aware of prediabetes is important as you can select the right diet for your health and lifestyle. The decision to make healthy changes is successful with an active support system that works for you. And for information and accountability, a health app can be of help.

What’s prediabetes?

Here, the blood sugar level is higher than normal but less than what’s obtainable in diabetes.

According to the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), prediabetes is caused by the body’s malfunction in blood sugar regulation. This sugar can come from food metabolism. To know how much sugar there is in your body, you need a blood test London.

The right diet plan for prediabetes reversal

You can reverse prediabetes and in many cases without medications. The requirements may include the correct diet plan, healthy lifestyle choices like exercising, no smoking, lots of commitment and patience.

A prediabetes diet is not a specific diet. What’s important is that it should help you check your weight, supply the right nutrients to reduce the chances of diabetes and other severe conditions, and work well for your lifestyle.

Correct weight.

You can change your body weight significantly as a risk factor for prediabetes and diabetes. Your choice of a prediabetes diet should help you keep healthy body weight. A healthy body mass index (BMI) is less than 25 kg/m2 meaning it is 155 lb. for a 5’6″ woman and 179 lb. for a 5’11” man but reducing your risk doesn’t mean you should weigh less than this. Should you weigh 160 to 200 lb., you can lower the risk of diabetes by losing at least 5% of your body weight (or 8 to 10 lb.)
Correct nutrition.

Some nutrients can also lower the risk of diabetes and improve health. Eat more of beans, fruits, whole grains, and vegetables rather than white bread, sweets, pasta, fatty meats, and unhealthy fats from fried foods.
Correct lifestyle.

Your diet plan must match your lifestyle. So, your prediabetic diet should:

Covet your favourite food
Depend on the usual foods and ingredients available in your local supermarket
Make room for special occasions and indulgences such that you can eat party foods without missing your diet
Enable you spend just the right kitchen time you should instead of needing a gourmet recipe for all three meals

Diet plan for prediabetes

Are you looking for the best diet to reduce diabetes? The table below gives some recommendations.

Choice of foods: nutrients for prediabetes	Examples
Non-starchy vegetables: potassium, low-calorie, fibre	Fresh lettuce and salad greens; tomatoes; celery; cucumbers; onions; snow peas; mushrooms; broccoli; spinach; brussels sprout; eggplant; zucchini; bell pepper etc.!; frozen vegetables (without salt)
Whole grains: fibres	Whole-grain cereal, pasta, and bread; oatmeal; brown rice; whole-grain barley, farro, and quinoa
Legumes: fibre, potassium, and protein	Split and black-eyed peas; lentils; beans like kidney, black, garbanzo, and pinto beans; soybeans and soy products, like tofu, and soy milk; meat substitutes
Seafood: healthy fats, potassium, protein	Crab; shrimp; tuna; herring; clams; mackerel; tilapia; pollock; salmon
Fruit: fibre, potassium	Tangerines; apples; pears; berries; peaches; watermelon, cantaloupe; frozen fruit (without sugar)
Low-fat dairy: calcium, vitamin D, potassium, protein	Skim milk, plain yoghurt; low-fat cheese; fat-free cottage cheese
Water-filled beverages: Low-calorie, water	Decaffeinated black coffee and unsweetened tea without cream; water with mint, lime, cucumber or lemon, water

Seeking the correct prediabetes diet

A diet plan for prediabetes can place your blood sugar level very close to or within the ranges that are healthy. Prediabetes, as the name implies, happens when your blood sugar is greater than the usual, but not high enough to reach diabetes (a condition called insulin resistance).

Symptoms of prediabetes may include:

An oral glucose tolerance test of 140 to 199 mg/dl
Glycated haemoglobin (A1c range) of 5.7 to 6.4%
Fasting blood sugar level of 100 to 125 mg/dl

Your body is still making and responding to insulin, even when you have insulin resistance. This is good as it allows you to plan a recommended nutritious prediabetes diet and hope to be in good health.

For a prediabetes diet to be healthy, it is not necessary it contains low carbs. The report shows that the modern style of diets are the two types of diet for prediabetes and high cholesterol levels in 2020. First on the list is the Mediterranean diet pattern. Next is the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.

What kind of diets is healthy for prediabetes?

Low-Carbohydrate and ketogenic diets for prediabetes

Low carbs have become famous as an approach to reverse prediabetes. Sugars and starches are the carbs in your food that brings about weight loss. Beans, grains, flour are sources of starch. Sweets, flavoured oatmeal, soda, ketchup and others are sources of sugar. Natural sugars are also present. Fruits and dairy products are sources of natural sugar.

When you eat little carbohydrates, your body burns fats instead of the carbs, and you lose weight in the process.

A diet low in carbs can reduce your calorie intake by:

Lowering your appetite since food choices are limited
Removing or greatly reducing the need for foods high in calories including refined carbs and sweets
Increasing food satisfaction as the need for more protein and fats increases

Low-carb diets and prediabetes

The glucose (a type of sugar released from your food) enters into your bloodstream. In people without prediabetes, the hormone insulin manages this glucose, but prediabetes is resistant to insulin, so glucose control is not possible – making it to rise.

Low-carbohydrate diets reduce glucose level in the blood as it stops more sugar from entering the bloodstream. If you’re on this kind of diet, then you’ll take more protein and fatty food than normal.

There’s a range of low-carb food: very low to moderate carb.

Take note of the following foods:

Zero-carb foods including fish, meat, eggs, meat, butter, poultry, oil
Low carb food including full-fat cheese and yoghurt, tofu, nuts and seeds, non-starchy vegetables
Moderate carb foods including lentils, berries, beans, and peas

Perks of low-carb diets

Reduce insulin resistance and blood glucose levels (A1c) in prediabetic and diabetic patients
Reduction in bodyweight since consumption of high-calorie food is reduced, more protein and fat is taken, low appetite due to limited choice of food
Reduced craving for sugars
Helps to reduce consumption of not-so-healthy processed sugary and fried foods

What foods should be reduced or avoided?

Peas, beans, and lentils (particularly ketogenic diet)
Starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, peas, etc
Low-fat dairy products like sweetened yoghurt (particularly ketogenic diet)
Sugar-coated drinks like sweetened tea and coffee, energy drinks, etc
Grains including oatmeal, rice, pasta, bread, etc
And many more

Drawbacks

It’s hard to reduce carbs since they taste good, and are in many common foods
Difficulty in keeping up with the diet on a long-term

The ketogenic diet for prediabetes

This is an extremely low-carb diet. Its purpose is to reduce carb so much that sufficient glucose won’t be found in the body to fuel the brain normally. The concept of the ketogenic diet is to cut off every too much carb in your food. It involves more of protein and fat, 20 to 50 grams of non-fibre carbs, and around 5 to 10% carbohydrate.

Mediterranean diet for prediabetes

This stems from the traditional eating styles of Mediterranean countries like Spain and Greece. It has heart-healthy benefits, reduces weight, and blood sugar. Mediterranean diet contains legumes, oils, vegetables, whole grains and nuts, a moderate quantity of fish and poultry, and less of red meat, sweets, full-fat dairy products.

Other prediabetes diet types include the DASH and DPP diets.

If you want to check your blood sugar level, then you can visit us Blood London for a private blood test London. We will be glad to help and provide world-class medical services.