India is a country with an increasing number of lifestyle diseases. It is all because of urbanization, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity and inherent genetic characteristics. In this post about Indian diet plan for pre-diabetes, we will be tackling the most common lifestyle disorder, diabetes.
The pre-diabetic stage is when your blood glucose levels and HbA1C are higher than normal. Though, the levels are not alarming high to conclude that the person is already a diabetic, but is on the higher side of the normal range. This is a warning stage, and if not taken care of, You might land up as a complete diabetic. Act before the problem arises!
Before we see the Indian diet plan for pre-diabetes we need to see how we can stop this from becoming an illness.
There are 2 steps to control pre-diabetes
Meals if skipped leads to overeating in the next meal. This causes excess caloric intake. Excess calories are stored as fats in the body. More fat storage more is insulin resistance. Divide your meals accordingly and try to consume 5 – 6 small meals in a day.
Indian diets are rich in carbohydrates. This causes glycaemic overload and may lead to excess sugar in the blood. This worsens insulin resistance. The proteins balance the glycaemic load of the meal and also help in the slow release of sugars in the blood. Include good quality of low-fat proteins. Consume low-fat dairy products, egg, and poultry, lean meat, fish, dals and pulses, nuts and soy.
Read – Indian Low Carb Diet
– Top 10 Low carb Indian Recipes
Blood sugars are greatly affected by glycaemic index foods. Consume whole-grain cereals, pulses, whole fruits, fresh vegetables, oats, chia seeds, and millets. These are high in satiety value and have added the benefit of reducing weight. Low glycaemic index foods reduce the sugar load and thereby control the blood sugar levels.
Read – Fruits and vegetables allowed in Diabetes ( You can follow the same list, till blood sugar comes to normal.)
The foods that are high in fiber reduce the glycaemic index of food. More the fiber more is the control over the blood sugars. Fiber also absorbs excess fat from the intestines itself and restricts its absorption in the blood.
Fiber also helps reduce the food intake, has high satiety value and keeps you full for a longer period of time. Include lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains cereals, multigrain flours, millets, brown rice, quinoa, chia seeds, flaxseeds, etc.
Read – Different types of millets that help in diabetes and weight loss.
– Different types of rice that help in diabetes and weight loss.
Nuts are fiber and omega 3 rich foods. Omega 3 helps to reduce insulin resistance. Also nuts are the best option for the small hunger between the meals. It reduces hunger pangs, avoids overeating in the next meal and controls blood sugars too. Walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds are a good choice.
Read – Benefits of Almonds
Avoid consumption of trans and saturated fats. It worsens insulin resistance. Consume more of MUFA and PUFA rich oils. Include omega 3 rich foods in your diet. Omega 3 helps to correct the insulin resistance. Consume rice bran oil, olive oil. Include walnuts, flax seeds, fish and egg in your daily diet.
Read – Benefits of Flax seeds.
This is the stage where with a little caution you can avoid the onset of diabetes. Restrict the portion size to the recommended allowance. This helps in weight reduction, sugar control and avoids fat deposition in the body.
Read – How to stop food cravings?
Obesity is the classic manifestation of pre-diabetes. Once you get rid of excess weight the symptoms of pre-diabetes will reverse. With prominent obesity, you can consult a doctor and start with pre-diabetes medicines which will help reduce weight.
In initial stages, only diet modification and some exercise will help to reduce weight. The decrease in weight dramatically reduces insulin resistance, fat deposition, and blood sugars.
Read – 1200 calories Indian diet plan for weight loss.
– Top 10 basic tip for weight loss
Oats have beta-glucan that reduces body fat, weight and controls blood sugars. Methi seeds if added in the diet also helps in all the above three issues. Cinnamon in small quantity also helps to reduce insulin resistance. Psyllium husk also helps to reduce weight, reduce fat deposition and controls sugars.
Read – Benefits of Methi seeds in diabetes and weight loss
– Benefits of Psyllium husk / Isabgol
– How does Bhindi help in diabetes?
Junk food and soft drinks are too high in fats and sugars respectively. These foods increase weight and cause insulin resistance. Also, these foods have an immense impact on blood sugars because of their high glycaemic index.
Before we move on to the Indian diet plan for Pre-diabetes, we need to look into the second Important aspect that will help you in getting the elevated blood sugars to normal.
Start with any physical activity. Aerobic activity will help to reduce the insulin resistance and thus control pre-diabetes. Take up walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, dance or yoga. Combine your workouts with strength training to tone the body.
Here are some important reads that will help you in choosing an appropriate workout that suits you.
Here is a sample diet chart of Indian diet plan for pre diabetes.
water with lemon and a pinch of cinnamon powder + 1 tsp soaked methi seeds.
1 cup oats with 2 walnut halves in milk (no sugar)
or
2 Egg white Omelette
+ 1 cup tea/ coffee / milk (no sugar)
1 Fruit (Avoid banana) / 1 cup green tea ( without sugar)
sprouts salad (2 – 3 tablespoons) or vegetable salad – 1 cup
+ 2 Chapati or 1 cup Brown Rice or 1 cup broken wheat daliya
+ Any Vegetable – 1 cup
+ Dal – 1 cup
+ Curd -1 cup
Non-veg options – 2 pc chicken or 2 egg whites or 1 pc fish in gravy with 2 whole wheat chapati.
1 glass warm water with lemon and 10- 15 mins walk.
1 glass buttermilk / Ambil ( ragi kanji) / 1 cup sol kadhi
1 cup Tea/ coffee (no sugar)
+ Roasted low-fat soya beans
or Puffed rice with Roasted chana
Salad -(1 cup )
+ Nachni Roti / bajra roti / jau ( Barley flour) roti – 1 in no.
+ Vegetable (1 cup )
+ Green leafy vegetable (1 cup )
+ Curd (1 cup )
1 glass warm water with lemon and 10- 15 mins walk.
1 cup Milk
Here is a detailed 1200 calorie diet plan for diabetes. this too will help you if you follow in place of above mentioned Indian diet plan for pre-diabetes.
Perfect lifestyle modification can cut the risk of developing diabetes in the near future. You can always start with baby steps like by choosing healthy food options, controlling portion size and increasing physical activity. Even if anyone of the readings of blood sugars is normal, it will cut down the risk of developing by half. Hope this Indian diet plan for pre-diabetes helps you in avoiding the medicines and getting your blood sugar to normal.
This post was Last Updated on February 19, 2020
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Hi,I am Male 30,6 feet tall been diagnosed as prediabetic since then I am trying to balance my blood sugar level but now mostly at night after dinner my level tends to be low around 80.so can you please suggest me a diet plan to maintain my sugar level
Hi Abhishesk , we need to analyze your lifestyle and your diet to be able to help you properly . please check this - https://www.dietburrp.com/diet-services/
Hi Payal,
I am really happy to see all your videos and it is of great help to the people who are following your videos.
I have a question for my wife, she has thyroid and her tsh is in range when consuming thyronorm 75mg daily one before breakfast, however i would like to know if there is any diet plan for her.
She neither loses weight nor gain weight and we don't know whether she is falling under hypo or hyper. Her weight is 50kg.
Waiting for your response.
Regards
Ahmed
Hi Ahmed , you wife has hypothyroid. Her tsh is normal with the help of thyronorm. don't judge her thyroid issue by her weight. it just means that she has a risk of her metabolism slowing down and putting her in the weight gain scenario. hence she must take utmost care of her thyroid. She doesn't need to worry about weight loss right now , but ofcourse she must concentrate on getting her thyroid functions back to normal. check this - Thyroid remedy - https://youtu.be/2_6sP6gBEHU ask her to do the yogas and pranayama specific to thyroid health. they really help a lot.
Hi Payal
i take thyroid medication (desiccated) i have read methi interact with thyroid med. how should i take methi in the morning then.
take your medicines first thing in the morning and after 30- 45 mins take the methi seeds
Hi Payal. Can you please post a sample diet for prediabetic plus hypothyroidism? Thank you for your nice website and helpful tips.
Hi Asha ,
Thank you for reading at Dietburrp. I m afraid , i dont have any plan ready for this condition , however, we can pln a personalized diet for you on t his condition. please ceck this - https://www.dietburrp.com/diet-services/
Mam.,Please can you share a pcos diet plan
Hi , we have very very useful articles on pcos , and entire section on it . check this - https://www.dietburrp.com/category/pcos-and-thyroid/
Hello Ms Payal, due to early morning shift we are unable to cook food in morning, In that case, can I prepare my lunch (Roti,, Dal and Vegetable) in night and keep it in refrigerator and have it in next day afternoon? Is it helathy? Also if I heat it in microwave, does it loose its nutritional value?
well if you keep them covered it will not harm .. see there is no comparison of fresh food. But when time does not permit this is better than eating out.
My sincere apologies for misspelling as PayPal !! . Autocorrection must have caused it..
Should extra calorie come from protein (dal etc) or fat (olive oil, butter etc) ?. As Fat contains more calorie, probably its easy to increase Fat to achieve calorie
I understand increase in protein via veg diet will also increase carb consumption, and protein increase can cause troubles to kidney.. At the same time increase of Fat may also impact LDL.. My LDL is also high ( 179 )
So which evil is better for me ?.. Sorry to call it a evil, but these are now turning like that to me :(
Hi Swaroop ,
That's ok ... actually, you are looking it the wrong way. decide total calorie intake you need to maintain, and then divide the macros. 60 % from healthy and complex carbs, 20 - 22 % from proteins and 22 % from fat.
for fats, you do not need to increase your ghee/butter intake. stick more to healthy fatty nuts and oilseeds, like flax seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, macadamia nuts, almonds, walnuts.
madam my HbA1c is 6.4% then please suggest me about diet plan
you can follow the one mentioned in the article . this will help
Thank you PayPal. I used healthily to count calories.
Diet plan given about accounts to about 1300 calories, with 150grm of carb, 55grm of protein, and 50grm of fat.. Is this calorie is not too low ?
So, I am confused on the objective on what should be my objective to reverse prediabetes. as my BMI is normal..
Whether it is to reduce the calorie along with carbo OR reduce carbo, but increase fat such that overall calories come close to 2000
hmm, the above-mentioned diet plan was made with an objective to induce weight loss too. But because you are in the correct weight, you should increase your calories and consume around 1700- 1800 calories everyday . and those should come from protein. so increase the number of protein foods in the diet, like add black channa flour to your roti, have more of dals/legumes and pulses if you are a non- vegetarian, include more of fish and eggs in the diet. Or simply look at the above mention and increase the quantity of protein foods where mentioned. along with this, if you can do some resistant training/strength training, it will do wonders in terms of boosting your health and increasing lean body mass, while decreasing your body fat % which could be high, unlike your normal BMI.
Hi Payal, thanks a lot for putting this together, which simplify a complex thing. My fasting blood sugar is 123, and am 75kg, 181cm tall.
I read many internet sites about reversing diabetes. It all talks about loosing weight by low carb high fat diet. But as my BMI is normal, I don't think loosing weight will help me.. Please advice.
The diet plan you have suggested is easily doable, as it does not enforce on low carb. But few questions..
1. Dal contains 20% carbo. So won't 1 cup of dal gives too much of carbo?
2. How much carbo, fat, protein each main meal is supposed to provide?
3. I used calorie meters online, and it says I would need about 2000cal. But when I translate this to food items, i sounds too much of food. What's the disconnect?
Hi Swaroop,
Thanks for your words of praise. we make it a point to plan the diets that are practical and doable for our readers to benefit from.
Regarding weight loss - Most people who are being diagnosed with diabetes now days are obese / overweight, hence you will find a mention about weight loss in all the articles. But it is not necessary that all pre-diabetics are overweight. if your BMI is normal , then just try to maintain your weight , as a possible weight loss / weight gain may follow owing to the blood sugar level .
1] There is a difference between low carb and "NO "Carb. the diet plan we have mentioned is "Low Carb ". hence you find some complex carb giving foods mentioned. as "no carb "diets are impractical to follow for life long. No matter how much the internet hypes it.
2] Along with the quantity of carb, it is very imp to check the source where the carb is coming from. if you are a non - vegetarian , you can simply avoid these carbs by eating an egg curry / fish curry / chicken curry . but if you a vegetarian , you need to keep your protein intake intact, and hence pulses and lentils become necessary.
3] the usual distribution is carb : protein : fat = 65:20:15 but in case of diabetes it changes.
very-low-carbohydrate diet: 21–70 g/day of carbohydrate
moderately low–carbohydrate diet: 30 to 65% of kcal as carbohydrate
So the choice is entirely yours.
4] which app are you using for calorie counting ?
Hi Payel,
Thank you for replying back to my earlier post. I have two questions:
1. Can having methi seeds in the morning lead to gas problems?
2. Can you please suggest some healthy late night snacks? I eat dinner by 9pm but I generally stay awake until 2am and get hungry before going to bed.
Hi ,
1] if you have soaked methi seeds , then it will not lead to gas issues . Make sure you drink enough water through the day if you have gas.
2] You can have a glass of milk and 12- 15 soaked almonds, 1 apple , or 1 whole wheat khakra with curd .