Nutrition
Nutrition plays a significant role in our daily life. Food or liquids affect our body and health because each food or liquid contains particular nutrition necessary for our physical and mental growth. …
DASH Eating Plan
DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is a flexible and balanced eating plan that helps create a heart-healthy eating style for life.
The DASH eating plan requires no special foods and instead provides daily and weekly nutritional goals. This plan recommends:
- Eating vegetables, fruits, and whole grains
- Including fat-free or low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans, nuts, and vegetable oils
- Limiting foods that are high in saturated fat, such as fatty meats, full-fat dairy products, and tropical oils such as coconut, palm kernel, and palm oils
When following the DASH eating plan, it is important to choose foods that are:
- Low in saturated and trans fats
- Rich in potassium, calcium, magnesium, fiber, and protein
- Lower in sodium
- Limiting sugar-sweetened beverages and sweets
Eat this: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy, fish, poultry, beans, nuts and seeds, vegetable oils.
Limit this: fatty meats, full-fat dairy, sugar sweetened beverages, sweets, sodium intake.
Diet plans for overweight / obesity
First change is to make a small plate size of every meal. That means to decrease our meal calorie intake by 250 to 400 kcal daily.
one can start your morning with 2 glasses of warm water followed by raw vegetable juice. Many people have habit to skip breakfast in the morning, especially teenage girls do more often, which is very wrong.
Generally, our stress hormone blood levels, cortisol are higher in the morning when we wake up; by starving or skipping breakfast, can increase sugar levels, can have weight gain because of fat storage and breakdown of muscles, can suppress immune system with digestive problems & also prone for heart disease.
Breakfast:
Vegetarian – Sprout moong chilla / nachni / ragi dosa / bhakri with sprout bhaji / cereals/ Oats/ Musli can be consumed only once a week, when it’s like no time to prepare food when you are in hurry, as that counts as a packed food.
Say NO to packed/ processed/ & frozen foods.
Non- vegetarian – good stuffed omlette with veges with a small phulka. Here you get full for next 3 hours, if you are having tea / coffee with very less sugar, & the milk has to be homemade skimmed milk.
After 3 hours – Consume a healthy fruit like an apple or pear or pomegranate or orange.
The basic idea is having low glycemic index foods with high fiber like veg, sprouted grains, fruits like apples, apricots, legumes giving enough fullness.
Avoid high glycemic foods like potatoes, corns, rice, wheat, processed sugary foods, bananas, whites like excess salt, sugar, maida white breads.
Drink lot of water, around 2 to 3 litres, always keep a full bottle of water next to your desk.
Lunch –
Vegetarian – Salads – sprouts, carrot, cucumber or steamed veges which is like ½ portion of plate & ½ portion with different dal preparations, you can make it with spices or tamarind or kokum but with less oil.
Here the question arises that in South East Asian countries, people only eat rice, but yet they are thin built, how? The thing is they eat boiled rice with boiled veges & we eat rice with spicy oily curries full of oil, that means trans fat.
Non – vegetarians – Chicken in grilled/tandoor/roasted form or eggs.
More ideal is eating 3 meals a day at regular interval including healthy complex carbs like whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes( beans, peas or lentils) & last meal c/a dinner little early around 7 – 7.30pm, after which should not eat anything c/a intermittent fasting method; where you don’t eat for 12 to 14 hours from night till morning. For this we need to eat good amount of proteins at night for
the ‘fat loss’ & to avoid ‘muscle loss’.
You can consume homemade buttermilk (from curd made out of homemade skimmed milk) in b/w as zero calories.
80% is your diet what we eat is important for weight loss so high fiber foods like flax seeds, nuts, vegetables, fruits, complex carbs, good healthy fats like fish oil or fish, avocados, almonds, walnuts. Avoid fried or frozen fish.
Along with all these healthy foods; other nutrients are also equally important like
Vit D –
- Helps in production of insulin in pancreas.
- Helps to increase follicular development to regulate menstrual cycle.
Source of Vit D – egg yolk, fish oil, mushrooms, liver, fish.
Should take weekly supplement of Vit D3.
Diet in Diabetes
- Overweight
- Family history of Diabetes
- PCOS
- High density lipoproteins cholesterol levels lower than 40/50 mg/dl
- H/o high BP
- Gestational diabetes
- > 45 years of age
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Weight Management,
- Healthy weight loss with maintenance lifelong by modifying lifestyle.
- Healthy diet.
- Exercise protocols.
- Diet high in fresh nutritious foods like whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, low fat skimmed milk and dairy products, healthy fats like nuts.
- Avoid high sugary foods that provide empty calories like sweetened sodas, fried foods, high sugar desserts.
- Refraining from excessive amount of alcohol, smoking.
- 45 to 50 minutes of exercise at least 5 days a week.
- Slow steady weight loss goals for a long term benefits.
- 10% of weight loss brings down sugar levels, helps to control to keep them in normal range.
- Avoid high glycemic index foods.
- Regular breathing exercises with yoga to overcome daily stress, which can give rise to high sugars.
Following a diabetic diet means to consume healthy nutritious food in moderation at regular intervals.
The proper diet plan will control and regulate blood sugars, manage your weight control heart disease risk factors, such as high cholesterol and high blood sugars.
When you eat extra calories and fat, will create uncontrolled high blood glucose levels. The persistent high glucose levels will lead to long term complications like nerve, kidney and heart and retinal damage.
Here in Acuslim wellness clinic, after taking out blood investigations, you will be given a proper diet plan based on your health goals, taste and lifestyle. A general list of foods to have and not to eat will be explained to you.
| Foods to Eat | To Avoid | Portion Size |
Grains | Whole grains, brown rice, oatmeal’s | White bread, white Pasta… All Maida foods | Less carbs per meal, more of fibres |
Dairy | Skimmed/ low tat milk LOW sodium cottage cheese | American cheese buttermilk, whole fat milk | 1 serving only per day. Rice milk is preferred. |
Proteins | Fresh meat, poultry. Fish and seafood. Starchy beans (black, pinto, kidney, beans) Lentils Unsalted nuts and seeds Low sodium fresh fish Eggs | Fried and processed meats, Frozen non veg products with PHOS | Kidney disease: limit animal proteins to 3-4oz or 1-2 eggs per meal. Consider choosing more plant-based proteins such as nuts, beans or lentils instead of animal proteins. |
Veggies Non Starchy | Low potassium broccoli. Cauliflower. carrots, lettuce, onions, yellow beans High Potassium : Avocados, Beet, Sprouts, Greens, Spinach, Tomato, Zuccini | Frozen / canned with salt | Choose low potassium it blood levels are high* no portion limit |
Starchy | Low Potassium : Turnips High Potassium : Pumpkin | Frozen / canned with salt | Diabetes: 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw = I Serving of carbohydrate. |
Fruits | Low Potassium: apples, apricots,berries,cherries,cranberries,fruit cocktail, grapes,lemon,limes,oeaches,pears,pineapple,plums,rhubarb, tangerines, watermelon High Potassium : Bananas, dates,figs,kiwi,mango,papaya,pomegranate,prunes,raisins | Fruit canned in heavy syrup, | Kidney disease: If the amount |
Fats | Olive or Canola oil small amounts of unsalted butter | Salted butter Coconut ail
| Aim for 1-2 teaspoons of fat with meals. |
Desserts | Fruits, Favorite Desserts 1-2 times per week | Be mindful that Ice- Cream and pudding are dairy desserts | Diabetes: ½ cup of ice- cream/sherbet/sorbet, 2-inch piece of cake or 2 Oreo-sized cookies = 1 serving of carbohydrate. |