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Holidays can present special challenges for those who live with diabetes, particularly as people look for ways to either avoid temptation or make better choices while they navigate all the indulgences of the season.

Whether its dealing with busy schedules, extra stress, family gatherings or holiday eating, the holiday season brings many extra gatherings, social events and shopping, which leave us with even less time for healthy lifestyle habits such as exercise.

Towards the end of the year, many people really do celebrate a holiday season with multiple holidays occurring from October to January, many of which have a heavy focus on foods that are often high in sugar, sodium, fat and calories. Since research shows that weight gained during the holidays doesnt usually come off later in the year, its important to focus on weight maintenancethrough quality diets and physical activity during the holidays.

This not only helps our waistlines, but also helps us manage other health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

With that in mind, Jenny Lobb, a specialist with Ohio State Extension Service, and other food and nutrition experts offer the following tips to help you enjoy the holidays while managing your diabetes:

Manage your stress. Stress causes our bodies to stay in a constant state of fight or flight. In response, our bodies release hormones that affect the way our bodies release and use glucose. This can cause blood glucose (or blood sugar) levels to remain high and be more difficult to manage. Exercising, relaxing, meditating and yoga with deep breathing exercises are good.

Dont take a holiday break from physical activity. A regular exercise program improves blood sugars, decreases the risk of heart disease and helps you lose weight. Thirty minutes a day five times a week is good. Every day is better. You dont have to do it all at once. Break it up throughout the day.

Plan ahead. Stick to your healthy meal plan, plan menus in advance and take diabetes-friendly foods to gatherings.

When eating a holiday meal, try to consume only the amount of carbohydrates that youd normally consume, and dont skip meals or snacks earlier in the day to save carbs for later. This will make your blood glucose more difficult to control.

Keep desserts in check. Share a dessert, make desserts that youve modified to be healthy or politely decline dessert when you know youve reached your limit.

Watch your meal portion sizes.

Kathy Smith is a Texas A&M AgriLife extension agent.

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Diabetes and the holidays | Columns - Weatherford Democrat

This entry was posted on December 2, 2019 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |