Can One Plate Make a Difference?

When someone is diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes, it can be scary and overwhelming. Could one plate really make a difference? If it’s our Healthy Plate for Diabetes, we think so!

For most people, learning how to eat for blood sugar control is an ongoing process. If this process ends when they leave your office or class, they’re not going to make much progress.

But when they take home the Healthy Plate for Diabetes, they’ll have a tool to help them build diabetes/prediabetes-friendly meals by:

  • Increasing intake of non-starchy vegetables, which take up half of the plate
  • Limiting grains and starchy vegetables to one quarter of the plate
  • Keeping lean protein to one quarter of the plate
  • Mastering portion control without weighing or measuring food
  • Using the Healthy Plate for Diabetes/MyPlate concept as a guide when eating mixed dishes, casseroles, sandwiches, etc.
  • Visualizing their Healthy Plate when eating away from home

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

PS: Here’s a fantastic new handout to help your clients put these ideas into practice: Diabetes Handout

Behind the Scenes: New Cooking and Prediabetes Posters

Hey, do you remember that Chop Test article you saw a while back? How about that Prediabetes Guide?

If you do, then you’re not alone. Lots of people reached out and told me that those were two of their favorite posts. So many, in fact, that I decided to take those posts to the next level and turn them into nutrition education materials.

The Chop Test offers a simple and memorable guide to cooking with vegetables, so I decided that the key points would make a marvelous poster that could be hung in a commercial kitchen, posted in a health fair booth, propped up for a cooking demonstration, or incorporated into a nutrition display.

This guide to properly preparing vegetables is as versatile as it is useful. With a simple test to tell which kind of vegetable is best for which cooking style, this bright and informative poster will help your audience gain kitchen confidence while introducing new vegetables into their eating plans.

Will this poster make your life easier? Learn more about it!

Now let’s change gears and take a closer look at the new Prediabetes poster.

The statistics on prediabetes are astounding. My hope is that we can help our practitioners help people avoid diabetes entirely — heading it off before prediabetes turns into full-blown diabetes. This poster offers an excellent screening tool that is done in an engaging infographic style. With information on what prediabetes is, how it affects the body, what symptoms it displays, and what the average consumer can do to reduce his or her risk of prediabetes (or treat the condition itself), this poster offers a bright and simple way to educate your audience. Throw it in a display, use it to pep up a shared space, add it to a wellness fair booth, or hang it in your office — it will be a great educational resource for whatever you need.

This poster uses colorful graphics, simple sentences, and clear diagrams to appeal to a wide range of learning styles, promoting participant engagement while boosting information retention. It draws its information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), so you know that the research that backs it is supported by the latest peer-reviewed science.

Intrigued by this poster? Get the details today!

And, because I love ya, I want to share the handout that accompanies the Chop Test poster. Here it is, in all it’s glory! Download the free PDF today!

Chop Test Handout

We’re here to help you look your very best, right now! So which resource will make your life easier?

Nutrition Bootcamp: PowerPoint and Handout Set

Chop Test Poster

Elementary Nutrition Workbook

Diabetes Education – One Size Doesn’t Fit All

When it comes to nutrition education, one size doesn’t fit all. This is especially true for teaching people about diabetes.

As educators, we have to think about who we’re teaching:

  • Are they newly-diagnosed?
    • There’s a lot to learn.
    • They may be in denial, scared, motivated, overwhelmed, or all of the above.
  • Are they “veteran” patients?
    • They may think they know everything, but their numbers show otherwise.
    • Good habits can slip during times of stress (or a pandemic).
    • There’s always something new to learn.
  • Do they have pre-diabetes?
    • They may be motivated to do what they can to avoid or delay diabetes.
  • Are they caregivers or family members of someone who has diabetes?
    • They may want to learn all they can to help their loved one.
    • They may resent having to make changes to accommodate the person with diabetes.

We also have to consider things like motivation level and learning style. So you can see that one size definitely does not fit all!

Our 12 Lessons of Diabetes Program can help. We’ve put together a dozen PowerPoint presentations that can be used in different ways depending on who you’re teaching and what they need to learn. The 12 topics are:

  1. Diabetes basics
  2. Goal setting
  3. Know your numbers (A1C, blood pressure, cholesterol)
  4. Weight management
  5. Exercise
  6. Healthy eating
  7. Importance of breakfast
  8. Diabetes plate
  9. Carb counting and label reading
  10. Food shopping
  11. Snacks
  12. Sugar substitutes

You could use the program to offer a 12-part series. By the end, your clients will learn everything they need to live a healthy life with diabetes. Presenting information in “chunks” makes it less overwhelming. In between sessions, there’s time to digest the information and put it to use in the real world.

For clients who don’t need the entire program, you can pick and choose which sessions will be most beneficial. If they are resistant to learning, letting them choose what to cover might help.

Most importantly, the information in our 12 Lessons is always presented in a light-hearted, positive, and supportive way.

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Diabetes & COVID-19

While having diabetes doesn’t make you more likely to catch the novel coronavirus, it does increase your chance of getting very sick if you do become infected. So how can we help people with diabetes who are anxious and afraid of COVID-19?

The American Diabetes Association has lots of helpful, practical information:

Another way to help people with diabetes is to recognize whether they are newly diagnosed or have lived with diabetes for years, the coronavirus pandemic could be a turning point for them. They might be motivated to learn more about their disease and to change their diet and lifestyle in hopes of controlling or reversing their diabetes.

With individual counseling or online group sessions, you can make sure they understand diabetes, how it progresses, and how it can be reversed or at least improved. Our new Diet and Type 2 Diabetes – Progression and Remission PowerPoint shows cover these concepts in detail. The three shows are:

  1. Diabetes Overview – this show covers the basics. It’s perfect for the newly diagnosed, but even those who have been living with diabetes will learn lots.
  2. Optimal Diet for Type 2 Diabetes – this show goes beyond food exchanges and carb counting. It teaches a Mediterranean- or DASH-style of eating that has the potential to reverse type 2 diabetes or at least keep blood sugar and weight under control.
  3. Guide to Losing Weight with Diabetes – this show goes into more detail on strategies for losing weight and keeping it off to improve or even reverse type 2 diabetes.

Don’t miss this chance to help people with diabetes take steps to a healthier life!

Exercising at Home to Stop Prediabetes

Physical activity is one of the keys to fighting prediabetes. Our Prediabetes Exercise poster outlines a three-prong approach based on recommendations from the American Diabetes Association.

It seems simple enough: exercise for 150 minutes per week, throw in some strength training, and don’t sit too much. But for many folks, just the thought of working out can be overwhelming. One solution is to do exercise videos at home.

There are plenty of free exercise videos on YouTube, but your clients need direction to find the right ones. Here are some good choices to go along with the three prongs on our Prediabetes Exercise poster:

150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week:

Resistance/strength training 2-3 times per week:

Three minutes of light activity every half hour while sitting:

And here are two bonus recommendations:

Prediabetes = Preventdiabetes

“Prediabetes = Preventdiabetes” – this phrase on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website says it all. A diagnosis of prediabetes is serious, but you CAN take steps to prevent or delay the progression to diabetes.

Use our Prediabetes Poster and Prediabetes Color Handout Tearpad to get these important messages out:

  • What is prediabetes? If your blood sugar is higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes, you have prediabetes.
  • Who has prediabetes? One in three U.S. adults has prediabetes. The CDC says that 90 percent don’t know they have it.
  • How does prediabetes affect me? It can lead to type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Over time, uncontrolled high blood sugar can cause kidney, nerve, and eye damage.
  • What can I do? Research shows that doing just two things can help you prevent or delay type 2 diabetes: Lose 5-7 percent of your body weight (10-14 pounds for someone who weighs 200 pounds) and get at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, such as brisk walking.