Management of diabetes involves a triad of diet, exercise and regular medications.

• Don’t forget to take your medications/pills or insulin (depending on the type of diabetes you have).
• Regular meals at appropriate intervals are important for all type of diabetes, however this is more emphasized in type I diabetes.
• Exercise also plays an important role in managing the blood sugar levels in the body.

A diet plan for every person with diabetes is individualized depending on his age, sex, control over blood sugar levels, type of diabetes, medications and lifestyle. However remember the following points to have a good control over your blood sugar levels –

• Have frequent divided meals and avoid fasting or binging of foods.
• Emphasize on complex carbohydrates and whole cereals and pulses this will suffice the fiber requirement which is a very important component to control your sugar levels.
• Avoid refined carbohydrates, junk foods, oily foods, sweets and carbonated beverages as far as possible.
• If you have cravings for sweet go for fruits. Fruit is a sweet way to satisfy your sweet taste buds. But remember to avoid fruit juices and have whole fruits preferably with skin.
• You can include fish, de skinned chicken, lean meat, egg white in moderate amounts however try to avoid organ food like liver, kidney brain and chicken with skin or egg yolk due to the high fat and cholesterol content. Cooking methods also play an important role for example to gain maximum nutritional benefits from fish choose cooking methods like baking, steaming or shallow frying on a non stick pan instead of deep frying.