Now that you know how important it is to eat foods that help keep your blood sugar steady, you’re probably wondering, “So what’s for dinner?” We’ve given you some heavy hints already, but it’s time to spell it all out so you know exactly how to eat the Diabetes Quick-Fix with Magic Foods way—and can start doing it today. Get ready for the ultimate sugar-busting, health-enhancing diet. You’ll feel so good, you’ll never look back.
In this chapter, you’ll discover the Seven Secrets of Magic Eating and how to put them to practical use. The great news is that it’s easier than you may think. In fact, changing just a few of the foods you eat every day can help you feel more energized and prevent the chronic diseases that slow us all down as we age.
This is not a “diet” in the dieting sense. It’s a delicious, practical, long-term strategy for healthy eating.
This is not a “diet” in the dieting sense. It’s a delicious, practical, long-term strategy for healthy eating, one that will not only help stabilize your blood sugar but also make it easier to leave that extra weight behind. The best part is that you can start by making as many or as few changes to your current diet as you’d like. You can decide to do only one or two new things—for instance, switching from rice to barley and snacking on hard-boiled eggs instead of pretzels—until you’re ready for another change. Or you can be a bit more ambitious right from the start. Our goal is to give you the tools you need to eat for better blood sugar, to use as you wish.
With the Magic Foods approach to eating, you don’t have to give up bread, although you will want to navigate the bread aisle carefully and eat a little less. You don’t have to swear off potatoes and white rice, although you’ll definitely eat them more sparingly than you do now. You can also have pasta, in moderation (we’ll explain which types are best for better blood sugar). And we encourage you to pour yourself cereal for breakfast—assuming it’s one of the kinds we describe in this chapter.
You’ll enjoy eating more protein-rich foods to keep you full and help keep your blood sugar low and steady. And while you’ll say goodbye to unhealthy fats, your diet will actually contain plenty of fat in the form of “good” fats to add appeal to meals and blunt the blood sugar effects of the carbs you eat.
Along the way, you’ll learn a few clever tricks of the trade, such as how to top your salad with a dressing that can lower the blood sugar impact of your entire meal, how to use a little-known Middle Eastern spice to pull the plug on blood sugar, which sour fruit has a sweet benefit, and which little seeds pack a powerful health kick.
We’re not asking you to throw your current diet out the window—just to tweak it a bit. Magic eating is really a series of very small, simple steps, such as adding a chopped apple to oatmeal, choosing sourdough bread instead of regular white bread, and making sweet potato fries your fries of choice (try them; you’ll love them). Whether you make one change a meal, one change a day, or only one change in all, your blood sugar will benefit.
Although the changes are easy, the rewards are real: more energy, less weight, a healthier heart, lower risk or greater control of diabetes, protection against certain cancers, and greatly improved quality of life.
If you remember only one strategy from this book, remember the Seven Secrets of Magic Eating. Some of them may sound unusual, while others seem like the good old rules of healthy eating you already know about. But each one was chosen for a specific reason: to keep your blood sugar levels steady throughout the day. You may even want to jot down the seven secrets and post them on your fridge as a daily reminder to keep you on the Magic Foods course. Here’s a quick summary. You’ll read more about each of these secrets shortly.
1. Choose low-GL carbs and limit carb portions. Carbohydrate-rich foods, especially grains and starchy vegetables, are the main contributors to high blood sugar. By choosing “slow-acting” (low-GL) carbs instead of “fast-acting” (higher-GL) carbs, you can help keep blood sugar low and steady. You’ll also want to limit your portions no matter what kind of carbs you choose.
2. Make three of your carb servings whole grains. You’re not eating as many carbs, so make those you do eat count by choosing whole grains, which help prevent heart disease and diabetes independently of their effects on blood sugar.
3. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Aim for at least seven to nine servings a day. That may sound like a lot until you learn what a “serving” really is. See, “What Does a serving Look Like?” Most fruits and vegetables have little carbohydrate and are packed with vitamins, fiber, and health-protective compounds, with few calories. Eating fruits or adding vegetables to carbohydrate-rich dishes helps make your diet blood sugar friendly.
4. Eat protein at every meal. Protein lowers the GL of meals and helps curb hunger, making weight loss easier.
5. Favor good fats. “Bad” saturated fats can interfere with your ability to control blood sugar, but “good” unsaturated fats help your body control it better. Good fats also lower the GL of meals.
6. Add acidic foods to your meals. It’s an amazingly simple way to blunt the blood sugar effect of a meal.
7. Eat smaller portions. We’re talking not about just carb-rich foods here but about all foods. Even when you eat a low-GL diet, calories count. Cutting calories can help you fight insulin resistance—and of course, along with exercise, it’s still the way to lose weight.
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Choose Low-GL Carbs and Limit Carb Portions
Most of the carbs we eat are the kind that send blood sugar soaring. We eat lots of potatoes, mostly fried. We consume enormous quantities of bread in all forms, but mostly bread that’s made with refined white flour and has little fiber. We eat a lot of rice, most of it white. We treat ourselves to muffins, cakes, and pastries made with white flour. We snack on bags of potato chips and pretzels (it’s true pretzels are low in fat, but they’re also high in refined carbs). And we wash it all down with sugar-sweetened sodas and fruit drinks.
If you’re going to tackle your dietary weak points, this is the place to start. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to make improvements. Because we eat so many of these foods to begin with, any change is a change for the better!
One approach is to simply eat less of these high-GL foods. In the past decade or two, we’ve started to eat more calories, nearly all of them from carbohydrates—and nearly all of those carbohydrates are high GL. So it’s time to dial down the carbohydrate mania: Eat fewer salty snacks out of bags, fewer French fries, less bread, and fewer pastries, and drink a lot less soda and other sweetened drinks. Ask yourself, “Do I really need that sugar-coated cereal, that whole takeout container of white rice, those French fries on the ‘side’ (which take up half the plate), or that giant slice of leftover birthday cake?”
We’re not talking about a “just say no” approach but rather a “just say less” approach.
Let’s say you start your day with a great big bowl of cornflakes or Rice Krispies or Corn Chex. If you measured how much you poured, it would probably be at least twice the serving size suggested on the box. So the “just say less” approach is to pour out less cereal. Fill the rest of the bowl with berries, low-GL fruits that will bring down the overall GL of your breakfast. And like many fruits, berries are rich in fiber that can help fill you up.
Even better, why not choose a lower-GL breakfast cereal? If you fill your bowl with a single serving of a medium-GL cereal—such as Kashi, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, or Life—instead of a high-GL one, your blood sugar will be lower after breakfast. And it’ll be even lower if you choose a low-GL cereal, such as All-Bran, Bran Buds, or Alpen Muesli—or, if you like hot cereal, oatmeal. Keep watching portions and slicing berries or an apple into your bowl, and you’ll really lower your blood sugar response to breakfast. Plus, you’ll give yourself a seriously healthy start to the day.
If you like numbers, consider this: One cup (1 ounce) of Kellogg’s Cornflakes has a GL of 24; a 1-ounce (1/2 cup) bowl of All-Bran cereal plus a whole medium apple has a GL of 14—more than 40 percent less. That means your blood sugar could rise 40 percent less as well.
Here’s another example. At dinner, instead of a potato, you might decide to make pasta since it has a lower GL. That’s a good substitution. A 5-ounce (140-g) baked potato has a GL of 26; the same size serving of pasta has a GL of 17. So the switch itself lowers the GL of that side dish by 9 points, changing it from a “high” to a “medium” GL choice. You could serve the pasta with a little olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and a tablespoon of Parmesan cheese and never miss the potato a bit.
Now, to lower the GL of your pasta side dish even further, you could cut some red bell peppers into strips, microwave them for a minute, and toss them with the pasta, oil, pepper, and cheese. Because the vegetables add volume to the dish, if you serve yourself the same 5-ounce (140-g) portion, you’ll eat half as much pasta, so the GL of the dish has been cut in half—to 4.5. This means the GL of your side dish is only 20 percent of what it would have been if you’d had the baked potato, which means it should raise your blood sugar 80 percent less!
Take a look at “The Glycemic Load of Common Foods” and “Magic Eating Carb Options”. Pick out a high-GL food that you eat frequently and figure out ways to eat less of it—such as substituting a low-GL or a medium-GL food for it and eating small portions. Now you’re cooking.
A final note: Even if you’re choosing lower-GL foods, it’s still important to watch your portion sizes. That’s because if you eat twice the recommended portion of the food, the GL will double. It’s a simple concept, but one that many people miss. Even if you choose beans—a low-GL food—doubling the serving size will double the GL.
It is also important to know that each of us responds differently to the glycemic load of certain foods. Because of this individual variation and especially if you have diabetes, you need to work with your doctor and diabetes educator to keep track of how your blood sugar responds to the carbohydrates you eat.
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Make Three of Your Carb Servings Whole Grains
If we are gorging ourselves on refined carbs, we’re doing it largely at the expense of whole grains. And that’s a shame because when it comes to preventing chronic disease, there’s nothing like whole grains. There’s clear, strong evidence that if you eat at least three servings of these foods a day, you’ll substantially lower your risk of developing metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Most of us, though, have less than one serving a day. A serving is about an ounce (30 g)—one slice of 100 percent whole grain bread or 1/2 cup of cooked grains.
Eating more whole grains has been shown to cut heart disease risk by 25 percent in women and 18 percent in men and reduce diabetes risk by 35 percent in both. One key way grains may protect against these diseases is by helping to prevent a root cause: metabolic syndrome (described on here). In one study of more than 750 men and women over age 60, those who ate about three servings of whole grains a day were 54 percent less likely to have metabolic syndrome than people who ate less than one serving a day. Their fasting blood sugar levels were lower, and they tended to have less body fat. They also had 52 percent fewer fatal heart attacks. In fact, just six weeks on a whole grain diet can markedly improve insulin sensitivity, according to one study of overweight men and women.
Why are whole grains so good for us? They contain all the parts of the grain, not just the starchy low-fiber center (endosperm) but also the nutrient-rich germ layer and the fiber-rich bran layer on the outside. Whole grains are rich in fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and a wide range of plant compounds that protect against chronic disease in many different ways.
Most whole grains have lower GLs than most refined grains, but there are exceptions. Finely milled 100 percent whole wheat bread, for instance, actually has a fairly high GL, while some refined foods, like pastas made from white semolina flour, have medium GLs. In general, though, you’re better off with whole grains, which offer benefits to blood sugar that are totally unrelated to their GLs.
When it comes to the grain-based carbs you eat, don’t be a perfectionist. As long as you get three servings of whole grains a day, there’s room for some refined grain foods, especially if they’re low GL. Just watch portion sizes no matter what kind you’re eating.
How many carbs should you eat in total? In the Magic Foods approach, your goal is to get 45 to 55 percent of your calories from carbs every day. Turn to the Magic Meal Plans in Part 4 to see what this looks like in an actual menu.