The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Oatmeal with Milk and Almonds

Oatmeal with Milk and Almonds

Ingredients:

Milk, low fat and unsweetened, about half a cup or 120 grams

Oats, old-fashioned or quick, 120 to 150 grams

Cinnamon

Almonds, whole or sliced

Seasonal fruit for toppings e.g. bananas or strawberries (optional)

Preparation:

If using whole almonds, chop them roughly or run them quickly through a food processor making sure not to crush them too much.

In a medium pan, bring the milk to a simmer. Stir in the oats and a pinch or two of cinnamon. It usually takes 2 to 3 minutes for quick oats to be done cooking and 5 to 7 minutes for regular oats. If you want your oatmeal to be runnier, add water. Mix in the almonds about a minute before the oats are completely done. Serve on a bowl and top with some sliced bananas or strawberries or blueberries.

Fruits can go into the vegetable portion while almonds go into the protein portion.

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Breakfast Burrito

Breakfast Burrito

Ingredients:

Spinach (or other preferred leafy greens)

2 large eggs (The rule of thumb is a large egg is about 50 grams)

Tomatoes (for the salsa)

Pineapple (for the salsa)

Cilantro (for the salsa)

Cumin (for the salsa)

Cayenne pepper (for the salsa, optional)

Chicken broth

Whole-wheat tortilla

Preparation:

The great thing about this recipe is that everything can be prepared beforehand and you can just put the burrito together in the morning.

First, prepare the salsa. Core the tomatoes and cut into quarters. Remove the seeds until you’re only left with the outer fleshy part of the tomato. Dice the tomatoes until they’re about half a centimetre large (though you don’t have to be exact). Peel the pineapple, carefully removing the ‘eyes’. Slice a part of the fruit thinly then dice them or roughly chop. Chop up the cilantro, stem and leaves. Combine all of the ingredients together, adding the cumin and cayenne in small amounts until you get the salsa flavour that you like. Only add the spices in pinches, never in large amounts, so that you can control the heat and flavour. If you don’t like hot salsa, don’t add cayenne; use small amounts of white pepper instead. You can place the salsa in a jar and store it in the fridge.

You can add the spinach raw but for wraps and sandwiches, I prefer spinach blanched. To blanch the spinach, just drop them into salted boiling water until they wilt then scoop them out and squeeze the excess water out. You can blanch the spinach the night before and just place it in the chiller.

The scrambled egg is something you’ll have to do a la minute or last minute but it shouldn’t take too long. Add a few drops of olive oil in your non-stick pan and place on medium heat. Wash the egg, crack into a bowl, and scramble with a fork. Regular scrambled eggs will have milk but you’ll have to skip that part in this recipe. When the pan is hot, add the egg, and jostle with a silicon spatula until it is cooked and set aside.

To assemble your breakfast burrito, toast your tortilla inside a toaster or above a flame on your stove. Heat up a portioned amount of the spinach and the salsa (both should add up to complete the vegetable portion of the meal). You can place the ingredients on the tortilla in layers or you can mix them up in a bowl and place on the tortilla before wrapping it up into a burrito.

You can replace the egg with other kinds of protein like chicken breast or lean beef cuts which you can actually prepare the night before. You could even boil the chicken and use the leftover liquid as your chicken broth. Just remember to keep the protein portion at around 60 to 90 grams. 

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Breakfast Recipes

Breakfast Recipes

Finally, we’ve come to the best part – delicious, diabetes-friendly recipes. Any diet plan for anyone starts with breakfast and it’s no secret why. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it sets the tone for the rest of your meals. As a diabetic, skipping breakfast will skew your blood sugar levels right from the start which will take a toll on your body.

A lot of people end up skipping this important meal because they’re in a hurry. To make things easier, a lot of our recipes have been made for fast preparation or can be prepared beforehand. 

And if you do find a recipe that’s more elaborate than the rest, you can trust that it was worth slipping it in with the rest of the recipes. Who knows, you might want to cook for that special someone one of these days.


This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Diabetes and Alcohol

The one thing you can’t have though is alcohol, even if you’re hanging out with your best friends. Alcohol is a big no-no for those who have diabetes because it can actually lead to both hyperglycaemia and hypoglycaemia.

 In the initial stages of drinking alcohol, the glucose levels in your blood will rise. But once you’ve taken in an excessive amount – which, for diabetics, is a mere one to two cans of beer – your blood sugar will actually drop, causing a hypoglycaemic attack. 

Alcohol also poses an added danger because it interferes with both injectable insulin and oral medication for diabetes.

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Portioning Properly

Now that you know the good from the bad, it’s time to start learning just how much of each kind of food you’re expected to eat per meal. Just like any other plate, your meals should have starch (but the good, complex carb type), protein, and greens or vegetables. To properly portion these three components, a lot of diabetics turn to the ‘create a plate’ method.

To create a plate, imagine a line right down the middle of your plate then imagine another horizontal line that goes through the left side of the plate. This leaves you with one large portion of a plate and two small portions. The largest section of the plate should be filled with non-starchy vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, mushrooms, bok choy, or peppers. One of the small sections is for the grains and starchy food like brown rice, whole wheat bread, whole grain cereal, green peas or sweet potatoes. The other small section is for your proteins such as chicken (without the skin), salmon, shrimp, lean cuts of beef or pork, or even tofu or low fat cheese.

The ‘create a plate’ method is a pretty effective way to help you visualize just how much of each kind of food you should be eating for every meal (as long as you remember to keep the food off of the rim). But the problem with ‘create a plate’ is that it’s not very accurate. To get a more exact idea of how big your portions should be, use a digital scale or even a regular, kitchen weighing scale.

A digital scale would be ideal to use because it is more precise and it can measure small amounts that would be tough to read on a manual weighing scale. Keep these measurements in mind while preparing the recipes below. Some are made for bulk preparation and can be kept in the chiller so the recipes aren’t scaled per plate but portions should reflect the scaled portions above.

The real challenge to portioning your meals is when you eat out with your friends and family. You can’t exactly tell the restaurant to measure out your portions and to change them accordingly. But don’t start refusing to go out with friends; I say grab every change you get to hang out with great company.

In these situations, just ask for a doggy bag beforehand so that you can portion your plate yourself and save the rest for another meal. If you’re having dinner at a restaurant, you can also ask if the chef can prepare a lunch-portioned plate for you which is usually a lot less than what a dinner plate would have.

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook 

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Best and Worst Food Choices

Admittedly, packaged food is more convenient. You open a can of spaghetti sauce, toss it in with pasta and you have a meal; what could be easier? But easy and convenient usually don’t mean healthy and good

 for your body. Have you noticed how affordable packaged food is? Packaged food companies cut corners where they can to give you cheap and easy to prepare food that also tastes good and that usually means loading it up with saturated and trans fat, salt, sugar, preservatives, and simple carbohydrates. That’s what you have to keep in mind the next time you find yourself reaching for that bag of frozen chicken nuggets.

If you’re not quite sure which kinds of food are the best choices for you right now and which food are the worst, we’re going to give you a list of both so that you always know exactly what you’re getting into.

That’s quite a list of food that you have to avoid at all costs. But don’t despair; there’s also a list of food that are ideal for your diabetic diet plan. They might not be what you’re used to but they’re just as good and, with a few tips and tricks, just as satisfying to your appetite.

Here are some of the best food for people who have diabetes:

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Food to Stock Up On

As a diabetic, you want a constant rotation of food in your daily diet. Aside from portion size, variety is the most important thing that you need to consider when you’re planning out what to eat and when. But there are still certain go-to food that are usually present in any diabetic’s kitchen, good and healthy food that are easy to prepare and make for a great meal.

Some of them are:

You shouldn’t limit yourself to the food that are listed above but they make a good guideline for what should be in your kitchen. Think fresh food and produce, possibly purchased at a nearby farmer’s market so that they’re cheaper but still of good quality. If you must have pre-packaged food, always opt for the frozen variety and not canned food which you have to avoid because of their high sodium content.

While sodium (found in salt) isn’t completely banned from a diabetic diet, a high sodium diet is not something that you can indulge in. That’s why you also need to stock up on herbs and spices to compensate for the reduced amount of salt you can have in your food.

You can pretty much have your choice of proteins whether it’s pork or seafood but remember to avoid eating too much fat. A high fat diet doesn’t help with insulin production and can slow your digestion, making it even harder for what little insulin you have to kick in. Because fat, or to be more precise, trans fat, can add complications to your diabetes, it is also best to not overindulge in red meat. As a diabetic, there is no room for trans fat or hydrogenated fat in your diet so be sure to check the labels of food that you buy in the grocery store. 

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Eating Healthy and Well as a Diabetic

Eating Healthy and Well as a Diabetic

If we haven’t said it enough, eating healthy and well is the key to living a normal life with diabetes. That means saying goodbye to fast food favorites like burgers and fries loaded with ketchup and that large coke to go with it. You and that ice cream sundae with chocolate fudge? Never gonna happen. Your days of eating breakfast at a McDonald’s or a Taco Bell are behind you and belong in another life. But how exactly should you get started on eating better quality food? What makes for a good diet plan for a diabetic?

The first thing you need to do is to walk over to your pantry and fridge and look at what you’ve got. If it’s bare, then it’ll be easier on you because the first step towards a diabetic diet is to throw out any food with refined sugars and carbs. That includes the frozen hash browns, the ice cream, the fruit juice in a box or bottle, and the leftover candy from Halloween. And while you’re at it, throw out your high-sodium canned food too.

Better yet, place all of the food that you can’t eat anymore in a box and give it to the nicest, friendliest neighbour you can think of. Let’s not throw food in the trash just because it can’t be part of your life anymore

What you need in your kitchen and in your diet are unprocessed food that contain complex sugars and carbohydrates that aren’t as easily broken down by your body and offers a heck of a lot more nutritional value. When you eat a marshmallow for example, you’re basically eating sugar in its most basic form which calls for a lot of insulin that your body can’t provide. You have to start replacing junk food with real food that you buy in the market and cook for yourself.

You may be asking, if you can’t have those instant, pre-packaged food in your pantry anymore, what should you be replacing them with?

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook 

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Digital Scale

Digital Scale

There is no better way to properly portion your meals than with a digital scale. It gives you unmatched accuracy and you’ll have no trouble navigating recipes that are based on the metric system. 

Because of the importance of portioning, a digital scale is a must for every diabetic cook.


This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook 

The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook – Measuring Cups and Spoons

A lot of people take their kitchen measuring tools for granted but they are particularly essential for a diabetic’s kitchen. 

A good and healthy meal hinges on proper portioning and you need to measure out practically everything to make sure you’re not overeating. 


The cups are for measuring juice and other beverages and you can even use them to measure food as well (though I would recommend the digital scale). You will need the measuring spoons for seasoning and for spices.

This is an excerpt from the book: The Easy Diabetes Diet Plan Cookbook