Calories, Calories - Count them..

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional or a dietitian or a nutritionist. All the contents in this post are my understanding from reading books and online material. There could be some points that were suggested to me by medical professionals. Do not use this as medical advice. 
My mother was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 12 years old (she was 44 then). She was shocked and being ignorant of the situation, she followed some of what the doctor said and some of what others suggested saying 'it is good for Sugar patients'. One of the things she did was to replace good part of rice from her diet with millet (Raagi) and broken wheat (Godhi Tari). Was that enough? Definitely not. I know that now but had no clue whatsoever at that time.

Being diabetic is a way of life. It will not be taken care of by replacing rice with wheat or millet or barley. It also matters how much of it is consumed. I have seen lot of people who are diabetic (my exposure is limited to Indians with this problem) eat 3 chapathis for lunch with some rice and call it a day. Is that correct? No. Diabetic people or people who are trying not to become one need to consume lower calories per meal. Key is to break them into smaller, more frequent meals. One of the biggest challenge we Indians face is not knowing how much we should eat and how many calories is in a particular dish. I am trying to put together some information about the regularly used grains, beans, flours. I will divide this between couple of posts.

The following table gives you the calories in commonly used grains. I obviously cannot give details of all the grains in this world, so limiting to the more common ones. If I have not given the details of some value, that means I couldn't get a reliable source for that information.

Along with these grains, we use many flours. Here are the details of that.

General rule of thumb is to eat 10 calories per pound of your weight. Depending on your metabolism, you might need more or less. Divide that total amount between 3 meals and 2 - 3 snacks. If you stick to that, you should be able to cut down on a lot without going hungry. I will give you the details about other ingredients in my next post.

Check out what all these ladies are writing ..

Diabetes Diet/Management: Srivalli, Champa, Harini, PJ
Kid Friendly Recipes: Kalyani, Shylaja, Veena
Seven Days of Soup:Usha, Sowmya
30 Minutes Meals: Priya Suresh 
Seven days of Cakes:  Anusha

Enjoy.