Diets for people with Diabetics - benefits.

So the different types of diets that we talk about in the management of type 2 diabetes have been around for a very, very long time. But the good news is that there's been more and more evidence and research coming out on these diets that have shown to improve the outcomes of type 2 diabetes. I'm going to focus more around type 2 diabetes now because evidence is that if you lose a certain amount of weight so anything between 5 to 10 to 15 kilograms you can actually improve your type 2 diabetes management, come off some of the medications that you're taking for type 2 diabetes and even put your diabetes remission which means pausing your diabetes where you don't need so many medications for type 2 diabetes and also for for blood pressure control. And this is a lot of intense weight management where you require a lot of support from your healthcare professionals and ongoing support from your team as well. So going to the basics of these diets, there are three commonly themes and diets that are more popular at the moment. The first one is the very low calorie diet. Very low calorie diets have been around for a very long time. And this basically is going down to 800 calories per day. The easiest way that we have shown to sort of make this diet more a success is through something called soups and shakes, also known as very low calorie diets because it's a prescriptive diet. And when you have a prescription of a particular diet, it helps you not to worry about what to eat and what not to eat, how to cook, what to cook. It takes away that burden of knowing calories, carbohydrates, et cetera. And you have a prescription of an 800 calorie diet for 12 weeks. What the evidence shows is that if you stick to a 12 week diet of soups and shakes, you can lose up to anything between five and 15 kilograms. And that has shown as a very positive impact on people's overall diabetes management, their confidence, their quality of life, improving their sleep, their exercise, their activities, their joint pain, et cetera. So huge benefits of following the very low calorie diet, but it's very, very important that you do do this with your healthcare professionals because they need to monitor your blood glucose and your blood pressure because that can drop quite quickly and you can be on certain medications which can cause low blood glucose as well. If you are on insulin, you need a lot more support because you'll need a lot of titration with your insulin as well. The second most popular diet is the low carbohydrate diet and this has been endorsed by Diabetes UK. Low carbohydrate diets are basically less than 130 grams of carbohydrate per day. And what this means is that you have to have a bit of understanding of where the carbohydrates in your foods are coming from. The first key principle of low-carbohydrate diet is to reduce your portion of carbohydrates, so for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then avoiding carbohydrate-based snacks, so biscuits, cakes, crisps, chocolates, crackers, and opting for more high-fat protein snacks, such as nuts, seeds, eggs, and also sort of Greek yogurt style and berries foods. The low-carbohydrate diet is very popular because people find it much easier to follow, particularly if you're a large family, if you are on budgets, and also if you struggle to cook individual meals, and also if you find it very difficult to not knowing what to prepare. The easiest thing to do as a family to follow a low-carbohydrate diet. It is not advised for people under the age of 18 so if you're 18 and above it is quite safe to follow a low-carbohydrate diet. The only thing we do encourage in a low-carbohydrate diet is to avoid highly processed foods so that's frozen meals, packaged meals, things like biscuits, crackers and also takeaways so that's something that we don't encouraging in low carbohydrate diets. And then the third most popular diet at the moment is something called intermittent fasting, which again, is has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, people still do it on a regular basis. And the benefits of fasting is basically one, you are reducing the amount of calories that you consume in a certain period of time. And two, it's almost like you're resting your your pancreas not to produce excess amounts of glucose. and when we do that we are burning more energy from our liver and we end up using more of our fat stores and rather than producing more and more insulin. So intermittent fasting, there are two types of intermittent fasting and for the first most commonly intermittent fasting is where people will have a window of fast so for some people it will be a 12 hour fast or a 16 hour fast, and they will not eat anything. And it doesn't matter what time you start or end this fast. But the most important thing is that you do not have anything to eat for the period of either 12 hours or 16 hours, or even some people will prefer to do an 18 hour fast. And then the remaining window, whether it's a four hour, six hour or an eight hour window where you can eat, you will probably be eating two meals. But again, that when you are eating, you are limiting your intake to anything between 800 to 1200 calories. And that has been proven very, very popular in terms of weight loss, improving your diabetes management, blood pressure control, cholesterol improvement, huge benefits of intermittent fasting. People find this quite easy to follow because they don't have to follow a particular diet, or they don't have to restrict too many foods. The only thing is that sometimes it can be quite challenging if you are eating out or if or if you're socializing, excuse me, or if you are working, if you're working on a shift pattern, but we often encourage people who are working night shift that while you're working, you could be eating in those hours and while you're resting, that will be your fasting as well. The benefit of intermittent fasting is that you can drink plenty of water, you can drink lots of herbal tea and you don't have to restrict the fluid intake. So that's something which some cultures find very, very useful and easy because they practice it throughout the year as well. So whichever diet you choose to follow, remember the important thing is that you do get the support that you need from your healthcare professionals or from online, you get the support from the right places. There are lots of websites, resources. We have a really good website called the No Diabetes website, which gives you information on low carbohydrate diets, intermittent fasting, and the very low calorie diet. Lots and lots of areas will offer you programs which offer very low calorie diets. We know that there is a national campaign going on at the moment to offer people very low calorie diets. So there are lots of information out there. You just got to find out what's useful for yourself and then see for your, and then lots of online programs as well. So some of the online organizations include the Low Carbohydrate Program, Aviva, which is very popular with the very low calorie diets. And Second Nature, which is another app, which is very popular with the intermittent fasting. It all depends on what suits your needs. These programs will help and tailor your diet according to your lifestyle.