If you or a family member has been diagnosed with diabetes, you may be wondering what foods to include in your diabetic diet plan. Luckily, a diabetic food list contains many foods you normally eat. The best diabetic diet contains healthy foods in moderate amounts eaten at regular times; a pre-diabetic diet follows the same principles, but with a little more freedom.

Diabetic Diet Basics

By following a diabetic diet plan, you'll be able to maintain a healthy body weight and keep blood sugar levels as normal as possible. Meet with a nutritionist or dietitian to plan a diabetic diet that will meet your needs. Following are some basic caloric diabetic diet guidelines:

• Type 1 diabetics: Aim to consume about 16 calories per pound of weight.
• Type 2 diabetics: Aim for approximately 1,500 to 1,800 calories daily to reach and maintain an ideal weight. To avoid losing weight too quickly, very overweight individuals may want to start with a higher calorie diet until they're able to reduce their weight.

Men, as well as those who exercise heavily, will need a higher calorie diet, due to higher muscle mass. Those with a very low activity level, on the other hand, may need fewer calories. Your doctor or nutritionist will determine the best diabetic diet for your individual weight goals, body type and activity level.

Diabetic Diet Guidelines

Once you determine your daily calorie requirements, use a diabetic food list to examine the nutritional make-up of each item you'll be eating. Most foods you eat eventually breaks down to glucose, so the more simple sugars or carbohydrates a food has, the faster that glucose enters your blood.

Diabetic diet guidelines aim to avoid spikes and dips in your blood sugar, and the proper balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats will help keep levels steady. Recommended percentages of each for a diabetic diet plan include:

• Carbohydrates: 45 to 65 percent
• Fats: 20 to 35 percent
• Proteins: 15 to 20 percent.

Carbohydrates raise blood sugar faster than protein or fat based foods, so the best diabetic diet plan usually limits carbohydrate intake to 50 percent of daily calories.

Your nutritionist can give you a diabetic food list that classifies many common foods, and the amount of carbohydrates, fats, protein and calories contained in each. With this diabetic food list, you'll be able to choose foods you like that will comply with your diabetic diet guidelines.

Resources

Mayo Clinic. (2010). Diabetes diet: Create your healthy-eating plan. Retrieved May 30, 2010, from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes-diet/DA00027.

Vertical Health. (n.d.). Treatment of diabetes. Retrieved May 30, 2010, from http://www.endocrineweb.com/diabetes/treatment.html.