Insulin resistance will increase your chances of getting prediabetes. It's a warning sign that you're on your way to type 2 diabetes. But you can avoid these two altogether by switching to a healthy lifestyle choice with regular exercise and the proper diet.
Your Diet
Always choose whole and unprocessed foods and avoid highly-processed foods as much as you can.
Examples of food that are highly-processed are white bread, rice, pasta, and soda. These can raise your blood sugar levels fast. This gives your pancreas a lot of stress, stimulating the production of excess insulin.
Your body can also block the insulin from working properly so your blood sugar levels to be normal.
Saturated fats have continuously been linked to insulin resistance. Choose unsaturated fats and high-fiber foods. There are still so many foods that are both healthy and nutritious.
Vegetables are great examples of foods that are low-calorie and high-fiber. Choose vegetables that are fresh and low-sodium. Your options are tomatoes, asparagus, green beans, carrots, peppers, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.
Fruits
Fruits are a great source of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Do not go for canned varieties as much as possible.
High-fiber fruits are apples, berries, bananas, grapes, plums, and peaches.
Artificially-sweetened fruit juices are really bad for your blood sugar. Don't always trust a label that says no sugar added.
Dairy
Dairy will give you the calcium you need for stronger teeth and bones. If you're going to choose yogurt, choose the low-fat and unsweetened one.
If you happen to be lactose intolerant, go for options like soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk.
Whole Grains
It's also impossible to avoid all carbs. One way or another, even people with diabetes get to eat carbs. As much as possible go for the ideal which is whole and unprocessed.
Examples are whole-wheat bread, whole oats, brown rice, corn meal, whole-grain barley, whole rye, wild rice, quinoa, and buckwheat.
Beans are a great source of fiber. They raise your blood sugar slowly, which is great for people with insulin resistance. Go for beans like pinto, lima, red beans, and black beans.
Fish
Fish is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and reduce your risk for conditions like heart disease. Your delectable options are salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, tuna, and trout.
You can also go for tilapia, cod, flounder, halibut, lobster, scallops, shrimp, oyster, clam, and crabs.
Chicken meat is a great way to enjoy food even as a diabetic. They say that chicken skin has more fat than meat, but I say, go for it. That crunch will give you more health than eating canned food or a bag of chips.
Other protein sources are also pork tenderloin, veal loin, lamb chops.
Vegetarian sources are soy, tempeh, beans, tofu, and legumes.
Healthy Fat
You need to start choosing healthy, unsaturated fat sources if you're doing this for the long-run.
Buy some nuts and seeds. These are rich in healthy fats, magnesium, protein, and fiber.
Nuts don't have a lot of carbohydrates which are great for managing blood sugar.
It also has omega-3. But always eat these in moderation as they are high-calorie.
Other sources of healthy fat are avocados and olives.
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