Tips on Managing Thanksgiving Dinner and Your Diabetes!

From One Diabetic to Another, This is My Plan for This Coming Thanksgiving!

Before I was diagnosed with Diabetes, Thanksgiving was one of my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving used to be an all access pass to gluttony and guilt-free eating. With the holiday approaching I have developed a plan to keep my blood sugars in control and my cravings too!

Avoid or limit breads and gravies.

Turkey is good by it's self. Don't add carbohydrates to something that has NO carbohydrates. Leave the gravy off the turkey and off your plate completely to minimize your carb intake. If you must have gravy consider watering the gravy down a bit. I know it may not taste as good but if you must have it at least try to limit some of the carbohydrates in it.

Bread is full of carbs, but bread is also delicious, especially dinner rolls! So here's what I do. I pick the smallest dinner roll can find, if it is soft I merely separate it into two pieces and eat only one piece. If it's a hard dinner roll I open it up and pull of the bread out of the inside and just eat the outside! This also works for hamburger and hot dog buns.

Pick Turkey Breast as your main meat.

Turkey breast is good for you! It has a very small amount of fat in it and no carbs or sugars. By loading up on the turkey breast it will fill you up and will not affect your blood sugar levels. Because you have diabetes you should limit ham to a bite or two during Thanksgiving dinner. Ham has a lot of fat in it, not to mention trace amounts of sugar because of the way it is cooked. Most hams are prepared sweet, and as we all know when something is sweet it has sugar in it and should be avoided if possible when you are diabetic.

Compromise on side dishes high in carbohydrates.