Managing Diabetes with Meal Timing
Having regularly scheduled meal times can help prevent blood sugar fluctuations and improve overall nutrition habits. Planning your meals ahead of time can help you create more balanced meals.
When you don’t plan your meals and wait until you are really hungry to eat, you might find yourself choosing any type of food that is closest to you and eating a bigger portion than you would normally eat.
So what exactly does a “planned” diabetic nutrition plan look like?
- Eat breakfast within 90 minutes of waking up
- Eat your second meal 3-5 hours after your first meal
- Eat your third meal 3-5 hours after your second meal
- If you become hungry in between meal times, eat a snack within a timeframe of 2 hours after your previous meal and 2 hours before your next meal
- Avoid going more than 10 hours overnight without eating.
Featured Food and Health Benefits: Cranberries
Cranberries have many different health benefits and can add nutrition to lots of different recipes. Cranberries are hard, round, red berries that are often described as bitter or sour. Cranberries can be enjoyed raw, cooked, frozen, and dried. Eating 1/2 cup of dried cranberries has about 4 grams of fiber (yay for gut health!)
Cranberries are a good source of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Manganese and lots of other antioxidants.
Health benefits include…
- Improves urinary tract health
- Lowers blood pressure
- Protects against liver disease
- Improves eye health
- Reduces risk of cardiovascular disease
There are some risk with consuming too many cranberries. For example, if you are on Warfarin/Coumadin be cautious of eating/drinking cranberries because they contain a good amount of Vitamin K. Warfarin/Coumadin is a prescribed blood thinner and if you consume too much Vitamin K (blood thickener) it can have some adverse interactions. Also, studies have shown that consuming high levels of cranberry juice can make you more prone to getting kidney stones.
All in all, cranberries are a great food to add some extra nutrients to your recipes, especially for the holidays! Check out the recipe below that you can share with your friends and family this holiday season!
NEED HELP with improving your health through better nutrition habits?
Unsure of how to set nutrition goals that are realistic and will work with your budget, schedule and lifestyle? Work with Samantha the Dietitian to help you figure out what types of goals you should be striving to achieve based on your chronic conditions and/or health needs. Registered dietitians (like Samantha!) can help make improving your health less overwhelming!
