Life is full of challenges for all teens, but having to follow a healthy diabetes diet plan can sometimes seem like one stress too many for teens with diabetes.
Here are our 5 favourite tips to help teens make the diabetes diet a natural and easy part of everyday life. In most regards, the diabetes diet closely follows the recommendations in Canada’s Food Guide. This is a guide designed to help everyone, not just those with diabetes, stay at their healthiest and feel on top of life. It’s a great way to end up with nutritional balance, reduced risk for chronic disease, weight management and may positively impact mental health. Now that’s not a bad goal to aim for, right?
1. Stop looking at it as a ‘special diet’.
As a teen, you will benefit from the same healthy eating principles that apply to everyone. This includes a balanced intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Thus, the focus is on healthy, mindful eating habits rather than a restrictive or specialized diet.
2. Think about portion control
This is one area where the diabetes diet can be a little more demanding than Canada’s Food Guide. Make it easy on yourself by learning to use the Plate Method. This is a virtually fool-proof way of dividing up your plate, ensuring you end up with the right proportions of foods every meal.
It works like this:
- Half fill a regular plate with non-starchy vegetables. These include most veggies except white potatoes, peas, corn and winter squash.
- Fill the next quarter of your plate with grain foods or starch foods, such as whole grains cereals and breads, rice and pasta, or starchy veggies.
- Fill the final quarter of your plate with proteins like low-fat meats, poultry or fish or low-fat meat alternatives.
Don’t stack or heap up the portions!
3. Plan ahead to make life easier.
If you know you are going to be eating out with friends at a restaurant chain, go online ahead of time to check out the menu. Most chain restaurants include a nutritional count on their websites, so you can easily decide on the most appropriate choice. Choosing ahead of time makes life much simpler when you come to order with your friends.
You may be interested to read our expert dietitian’s blog article Eating out can work!
4. Got a sweet tooth? Talk to the dietitian
Learn ways to include occasional small servings of sugary foods in your diet. For most people with diabetes there are no ‘forbidden’ foods…just some foods that you may need to save for smaller portions on special occasions.
5. Brown bagging it for school lunches? Take an extra portion from your healthy supper
Have some leftover chicken, fish, whole grain pastas, or veggie and protein dishes? Take them to school ‘as is’ for lunch the next day, or mix with some salad leaves and fresh tomato slices to make a tasty salad.
Remember that as a student with diabetes, you should be allowed to eat and drink whenever necessary during the day. This should be covered in your Diabetes Care Plan, which will be lodged with the school admin. You may also like to check out Diabetes Canada’s publication Guidelines for the Care of Students Living with Diabetes at School.
Check with the dietitian on your diabetes team for specific recommendations for your personal diabetes meal plan. They will likely also have additional tips to help you master the diabetes diet through the teen years.
