Space Meals Regularly Throughout the Day

The spacing of meals regularly throughout the day is the next main principle of healthy eating. Many people with no experience of diabetes in the family still stick to the hold habits of hardly any breakfast and two main meals each day. One is at lunchtime and one in the early evening, nowadays seated around the television with a tray on the knee instead of around the table with the rest of the family. The pros and cons of this latest social change in eating habits are still heatedly debated, but what matters to people with Type 1 diabetes is not where they eat, but what they eat, how much, and how often.

It is important not to miss breakfast, and to have three meals a day. If you stick to two (or even just one) large meals a day, much of that intake will be sugars, and your blood glucose levels will rise so steeply that you will need large amounts of injected insulin to cope with them. It is far better for you to have three relatively small meals, with little refined sugar in them, at regularly spaced times throughout the day. Then you can co-ordinate the food more easily with your insulin injections, so that you can keep the doses you need relatively low.

A ‘meal’ can mean anything from soup and a sandwich to meat, potatoes and vegetables, with a small dessert if you wish – just because I no longer eat them doesn’t mean this is the right decision for everyone. What matters is that the load of food you eat at the meal coincides with the amount and type of insulin you have injected a few minutes beforehand. For a more difficult to control diabetes, a snack between meals may be needed to keep the blood glucose level within the accepted limits. A snack last thing at night to avoid a hypo while asleep may also be needed.

It is fine for people with Type 1 diabetes to have the occasional treat – say a larger than usual meal while out, but if you do so, remember to increase your insulin does just before the meal to avoid hyperglycaemia. Take the advice of your diabetes nurse or dietician about the size of the increase you’d need with this type of meal.


HOW TO COPE SUCCESSFULLY WITH DIABETES, Dr. Tom Smith