The Diabetic Heart Lifestyle™ is not a diet. It is a framework for managing the combination of diabetic eating, heart healthy eating, and the process of changing your lifestyle. With a diet, someone tells you what to do: how many calories or servings you can have, what foods to eat, and what to avoid.
With this plan, your doctor will tell you “what”; we’ll teach you “how.”
What is the Diabetic Heart Lifestyle System™ plan then? It’s a plan for:
- Purging your pantry:getting the things out of your kitchen that will tempt you or derail your progress,
- Stocking up on new ingredients:replacing them with foods and seasonings that will support your new lifestyle
- Learning new strategies:a new combination of cooking strategies that allow you to work with your allowances, and make substitutions for foods you want to avoid
- Gathering Resources:gathering the resources you need to support your lifestyle and continue to learn more.
Your Allowances
If you are a diabetic heart patient, you doctor has advice and recommendations for you. We expect that the eating advice covers some key issues concerning:
We are not here to tell you what those limits are. Why not? Because that needs to come from your doctor, taking your specific health condition and circumstances into account.
- Just as one example, your maximum sodium intake will be affected by things like the condition of your heart, and your kidney function.
- As a second example, when you limit one substance, it is just as important to evaluate the risks of what you are replacing it with and whether the risks of the replacement are equal to or greater than the risk of the thing you are replacing.
- Finally, not all doctors agree on what the optimal dietary changes are, even in two patients with the same health issues. We want you to talk to your doctor and make up your own mind with his or her advice.
Your Food Plan
- Core meals:you’ll develop a repertoire of core meals and recipes, based on the foods that are best for you. These will be the “go-to” meals you design, based on your decisions and your doctor’s recommendations. These should be the meals that will never get you into trouble, based on the healthiest foods you enjoy.
- Adjustments:you’ll learn how to expand your menu beyond your core meals by:
- Using your Allowances wisely, to get the maximum benefit from them,
- Making substitutions so that you have more options for foods close to what you love, and
- Doing “makeovers” of recipes you love, to make them compliant with your recommended foods and allowances.
- Exceptions and splurges:making quality decisions as to when it is time for an exception or a splurge, and minimizing the damage when those times come.