Type 2 diabetes is usually brought on by certain lifestyle factors. An unhealthy diet and little to no daily movement is generally the culprit.
Don’t beat yourself up over it, though. Our culture is basically designed in a way to make it difficult to live any other way.
Office parties happen weekly and 8-hour work days have you tied to your desk. You’d be lucky to eat one fresh vegetable per day or walk more than one mile in a day.
Just by getting your diet under control most of the time and making an effort to move for 30 minutes a day, you can seriously reverse your diabetes.
Here are 5 diets to get you started.
#1 The DASH Diet
The DASH diet is a plant-focused diet. Fruits and vegetables serve as the center of each meal so that you can get all your natural vitamins and minerals (and fiber!) with each bite. It also encourages eating lean meats, nuts, and whole grains to get a nice balance of all the best parts of food. Another way to look at it is this way: eat things that come from the Earth. Super easy, full of flavor, and the best diet out there according to the US News and World Report Rankings.
#2 The Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean Diet is all about fresh food, healthy fats, and very little red meats or sugar. There never really was a founder of this diet so much as an entire region (the Mediterranean, obviously). The reason that this style of eating has gotten so much attention is because people living in this region, and therefore eating this diet, generally live longer and suffer from fewer diseases than in the US.
#3 Vegan Diet
I hate to break it to you, but the vegans are on to something. A vegan diet is focused on fruits, vegetables, grains, and healthy fats. Coincidentally, all of these things are essential for optimal health! A vegan diet not only reverses diabetes (when done well) but can also significantly reduce the risk of heart disease. Be careful, though: just because it’s vegan, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Stick with plant-based foods that don’t come with a nutrition label or brand name, and you’re good to go.
#4 The MIND Diet
The MIND diet, as the name implies, focuses on brain health. It is like the love child of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, with great emphasis on the foods that support the brain. This diet is also extremely effective in reversing diabetes. Specifically, the MIND diet encourages lots of green leafy vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, fish, olive oil and wine.
#5 The Flexitarian Diet
Last, but certainly not least, is the Flexitarian diet. Yours truly practices this diet because it takes all the best parts of the first four diets listed here and basically lets you swap all the parts that you like. So if you want to practice a vegan diet, but you also really want to continue eating eggs, this “diet” says that’s alright!
Some people really like strict rules to keep them in line when it comes to dieting. In this way, a vegan diet or the MIND diet will serve them well. For others, a little bit of flexibility goes a long way. The Flexitarian diet recognizes all the amazing benefits of a vegan diet and the healthy fats that fish and eggs may provide.
So pick one that calls to you and head to the kitchen to try out some of the amazing recipes!
[expand title=”References“]
US News and World Report. URL Link. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
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