Properly controlled diets are one of the most effective ways to treat diabetes and lessen its impact on your day-to-day life. One diet which is growing increasingly more popular among diabetics is the vegan diet. Like vegetarians, vegans do not eat any meat, but their dietary restraints go one step farther – vegans do not consume any animal products at all, including eggs, milk, honey, and anything else produced by an animal.
While many vegans choose this lifestyle out of personal conviction for animal rights, the vegan diet can offer significant health benefits to diabetes patients. In one pilot study, Georgetown researchers and representatives from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that diabetics placed on a vegan diet lost twice the weight that diabetics on an American Diabetes Association diet did in a three-month period. The vegan dieters also reported that their blood sugar levels improved significantly, as well as asthma symptoms and cholesterol levels.
So, what does a successful vegan diet look like? Let’s look at the diet that the study participants had so much success with and see what lessons we can learn.
- The vegan diet is made up primarily of produce, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and beans.
- All foods should be unrefined, meaning that they are as little processed as possible. For example, whole grain bread is preferable over white bread. The more natural the food, the better.
- A successful diabetic vegan diet should be low-fat to help further promote weight regulation. In the Georgetown study, no more than 10% of the participants’ total daily calorie intake came from fat.
- The more fiber, the better. The participants in the pilot study aimed for 60-70 grams per day.
- Meat and animal products are avoided completely.
This may sound like a lot of factors to watch initially, but the diet is more simple than it seems. By avoiding animal products and focusing on consuming plant products, these requirements are relatively easy to meet. Most fruits, vegetables, and beans are low-fat naturally and contain high amounts of fiber. They tend to be unrefined, complex carbohydrates which are released slowly into the bloodstream as blood glucose, helping you feel more energized and more satisfied throughout the day. Maintaining a steady blood sugar level is also crucial for diabetics because consistently fluctuating blood sugar levels can further complicate diabetic symptoms.
Also, if you’re trying to lose weight on a vegan diet to help your diabetes, it’s important to remember that managing weight is a game of calorie balancing. If you eat more calories than you burn in one day, you will gain weight; if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. If these numbers are equal, you will maintain your current weight. You can find calorie calculators online to figure out how many calories you need per day to maintain weight. By eating just 500 calories fewer per day, you can lose about a pound a week. Keep an eye on your total calorie consumption on this diet, and you will see the pounds just melt away.
References: http://www.pcrm.org/health/clinres/diabetes.html
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