… continued

There are four types of foods that are glucose producing. They are fruits, veggies, dairy and alcohol, which are quickly metabolized as glucose. When your digestive system senses that it is metabolizing glucose-causing foods, it signals the pancreas to secret insulin. Insulin is the hormone your cells use to change glucose into glycogen. Glycogen is the substance that produces the energy your body needs to function.

In order to use this metabolic process to your dieting advantage, you should plan your meals and snacks around a time schedule. This formula may appear complicated, but it very soon becomes habit and it is not very hard to fit your schedule around your blood sugar needs. Each of your meals should be a minimum of four and a maximum of six hours apart. Lunch should not be closer to breakfast than four hours and no further away than six hours. This means that your body has had adequate time to process your glucose-producing foods within that four hours, and your blood sugar will not dip too low until after six hours.

Within these timeframes are your snacks. Snacks are very important because they help control both your true hunger and your cravings. It is best to have two snacks. One snack should be between breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, and before bed. The old adage of not eating before bed is all well and good, but a glucose-producing snack before bed will help to make sure that through the night when you are fasting, your blood sugar will not dip too low. This can cause you to waken ravenously hungry and possibly causing you to binge.

Your snacks should be no closer to a meal than two hours. So your morning snack must be at least two hours from when you finished breakfast and at least two hours before lunch. Snacks are also great at those times when you are naturally very hungry; say mid-morning, or perhaps late afternoon. Add a third snack if you need it to get through the day with out an unplanned feast. Just make sure it is at least two hours from a meal.

You can customize this schedule should you be unable to eat one of your meals or snacks when necessary. If you are delayed in having a meal, then have a snack instead. But then when you do eat, either forgo carbohydrates or wait at least two hours after eating that snack before you eat your meal.

Also, if you eat dinner very late because of work schedules and/or children’s schedules, then you can switch your evening snack to mid afternoon. Sherry’s husband works two states away and must travel by train for about an hour and a half to get home. He usually doesn’t leave work till 6 p.m., so the earliest she can have dinner is usually 8 p.m. They go to bed at 11 p.m. While there is time for an evening snack in that scenario, it is a long haul between lunch and dinner, so she has her evening snack about 4 in the afternoon. That way, her blood sugar does not fall too low and she doesn’t get intense cravings that could way lay her diet. Plus dinner is late enough to prevent a nighttime blood sugar lows.

Secondly, you should balance out your glucose-producing foods, carbohydrates, to assure that your blood sugar levels stay balanced. If your intake of carbohydrates is very erratic, your body can produce too much insulin that can drop your blood sugar too. Remember, too low levels of insulin can cause cravings. If your intake of glucose-producing foods is erratic, your body is never sure how much insulin needs to be released. If you eat a meal containing a high amount of carbohydrates, your body will ultimately produce a large amount of insulin to counteract your high blood sugar. Then, when you eat a meal with a lower amount of carbohydrates, your body will produce too much insulin. Eating the same amount of carbohydrates at each meal helps assure that this never happens.

You can do this by counting your carbohydrates on a non-low carbohydrate, non-diabetic diet. If you are permitted to have 200 carbohydrates a day, you can divide this up very easily. A snack of 30 grams, a snack of 20 grams and three meals of 50 grams each. As long as you keep your intake to within 10 grams above or below these amounts, your blood sugar and insulin release will balance each other out. This will then prevent the low blood sugar cravings and hunger.

A typical example of this schedule of eating carbohydrates would be:

8 a.m. Breakfast: 55 carbohydrates
1 egg, poached
2 pieces of whole grain toast
½ cup orange juice
1 ounce of cheese
1 cup skim milk

10 a.m. Snack: 23 carbohydrates
1 medium orange
1 cup skim milk

12 p.m. Lunch: 43 carbohydrates
3 ounces of tuna
1 cup salad greens
5 Ritz crackers
2 tablespoons non-fat, non-creamy dressing
12 grapes
8 ounces skim milk

5 pm Dinner: 48 carbohydrates
4 ounces chicken
Steamed carrots
Green beans
1 small dinner roll with fat-free spread
½ cup mashed potatoes
8 ounces skim milk
½ cup sugar-free pudding

8 p.m. Snack: 37 carbohydrates
3 cups popcorn with cheese-flavored granules

By determining whether your body is truly hungry and in need of fuel and eating your meals in such away that you allow your body’s natural hunger fighting abilities to work in your favor you can help to reduce cravings and take back control of your life.

Tags: foods types, glucose, meals, plan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.