Eating in the Zone for Diabetes
Continuing with our look at eating low-carb for diabetes, today’s post is about using the Zone diet for managing your blood sugars and overall health.
The basis of the Zone diet is that it focuses on eating protein, carbohydrates and fats in proportions. Within each of these categories there are foods listed as favorable and unfavorable.
While these diets are thought of as being for weight loss, they are also great at getting your health back in line. When it comes to diabetes, eating something that won’t spike your blood sugars is best and the side benefit might be that you lose weight too.
With the Zone diet there are no Phases as the Atkins and The South Beach Diet both have. Instead, you are given guidelines to follow each day.
Zone Guidelines
On this diet you will be eating five meals each day along with two snacks. Each meal or snack must consist of a good carb, fat and protein selection. You must eat within one hour of getting up in the morning. Each meal must not go over 500 calories and you should eat on a regular basis. It is advised to not go too long without eating something which falls in line with diabetic thinking. Going to long without eating can cause your sugars to drop too low.
Your First Steps
Before you get started with the Zone diet you need to determine how much protein your body requires each day. This will be different for each individual and is based upon your body fat percentage.
You will discover what your Lean Body Mass is and then tie this in with physical activity and a prescribed amount of protein each day. This method is highly recommended for anyone who has concerns over their insulin and glycemic levels.
Proportions
Basically you will be eating 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 30% fat. In the book you will be shown how to customize these proportions to suit your body shape.
This above method is known as the simple version and it will still work for you.
If you want to start directly with a more customized version it will take a little time to understand how to calculate what your body actually requires each day. For some this can be a little too complicated so you may prefer the simple solution at first!
The Zone Diet can be compared with The South Beach Diet. Both follow very similar principles along with similar food choices. The Burn the Fat diet is another similar diet where you need to determine what amounts of protein your body requires each day.
If you take the time to calculate these amounts you may see faster results. But switching to eating more protein with more high fiber, low carb vegetables is a good method of jump starting any weight loss efforts.
The Zone Diet offers a more scientific approach to losing weight. If you think using a structured program would help you figure out what to do for yourself or your kids, then this could very well be the perfect way for you to manage your diabetes permanently.
