Your Blood Sugar Levels Are Imperative For Healthy Living, Here's How

Do you know one in six people suffering from diabetes in the world are from India? The situation, wherein we Indians sit on the number 2 position when it comes to diabetes, is very alarming. Therefore, it is best we take prevention as it's always better than the cure.

According to what you eat, our blood sugar level rises. If you were to eat a chocolate cookie made mostly of white flour (i.e. high carbs and sugar and fat), energy levels would go from a scale of 1 to 100. I have a sweet tooth! Not only eating but, I also love baking yummy desserts. However, I knew for a fact that consuming so much sugar was going to be detrimental to my health. But, I didn’t realise exactly why I shall maintain a balance. As I looked more and more into what eating too much sugar means, I came to know quite a few important things.

If we have a large bowl of pasta, the rise in blood sugar would not be as drastic but would continue to increase gradually. On the other hand, sugar craving happens if for a longer duration you stay without eating food. It’s actually pretty easy to apprehend this concept once you understand the human body and how it functions. Here are a few things which might help you.

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Eat Regularly & Include Right Amount Of Carbohydrate In Diet

The idea is to eat foods that have a low-GI. Now GI in itself stands for a glycemic index that measures how fast food can make your blood sugar rise. This means that you choose your foods with awareness. Having a good, balanced meal makes it possible for you to lower down your GI. For example, if you were to make a toast for yourself, instead of choosing a white wheat toast with butter, add slices of tomato on whole-wheat bread. In this situation, your chances of having a lower glycemic index are likely to increase.

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A bowl of pasta with oil and black pepper has a medium GI, but if you were to have a little less pasta and add some healthy vegetables to it, you are reducing the portion of carbohydrate without reducing the size of the meal. As an added bonus you are also increasing your nutrient intake. The other thing about blood sugar is that energy levels are partly determined by what blood sugar is doing itself. When we have low blood sugar, we end up craving for things that will fix this energy deficit quickly. So we look for sugary foods instead of making better choices.

This is bad news if you are trying to lose weight because, you inadvertently end up eating a lot of calories that you don’t need. Also, you may also end up feeling guilty for not sticking to your diet. So, the best idea is to eat more vegetables and fruits that are loaded with natural sugar and are rich in nutrients like vitamin C and E. People who slip off the diet wagon by mid-afternoon are the kind that tends to follow the same dietary patterns: no breakfast, fruit, or some other kind of healthy snack mid-morning, followed by a low-carb lunch. I won't be surprised if by three in the afternoon they would crave for chocolate and some sweet juice.

After starving the bodies for so long, there is no doubt that the survival mode kicks in and the brain reaches out for something sugary even though your body does not necessarily require that. There is very little evidence that skipping breakfast will make you eat more calories but, there is no doubt that a tired mind has no space to make conscious decisions about the food intakes. Instead of starving through the day, if one decides to have a full breakfast followed by a balanced lunch, there wouldn’t be many cravings for sugar!

I suggest replacing white sugar with jaggery or honey as these are natural forms of sugar. I also suggest increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables especially, during this time where we are constantly under threat of Covid-19. We need to build our immune system not lower it so we should be more careful about what we are putting in our systems.

The author of this article, Shipra Khanna has many feathers in her cap. Not only she is the winner of popular cookery show MasterChef India (season 2), but she also wrote cookbooks and has hosted numerous cookery programmes.

To read more food-related stories by Shipra Khanna, stay tuned to HerZindagi.