November 14th is World Diabetes Day this year's theme is protect our future so diabetes as I'm sure you know is becoming an epidemic with estimated nine million Canadians being diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes which means that even more people are probably living with diabetes but don't yet know it diet an important part of either managing your diabetes once you have it or preventing diabetes from coming one typical thing that we like to say is the healthy plate model and this applies to everybody so the whole family not just people with diabetes healthy plate model consists of a balance of protein starch and vegetables, plates are getting bigger as time goes on so we like to use our hands for portion control portion of starch should be about a fist or small softball depending on your fist size about a palm size or deck of cards of protein the thickness of your pinky finger and then two hand fulls of vegetables or basically as many vegetables as you like they're not going to affect the blood sugar for your starches you want to make sure that they are high in fiber so choosing whole wheat whole grain products over the white product and this is because the fiber so fiber takes a long time to go down through our system not actually absorbed by the body and so it helps to slow down how quickly the glucose from the food is absorbed into your bloodstream and helps to maintain better blood glucose values and helps to keep you full balancing your meal facing your meals no more than four to six hours apart helps to maintain healthy regular blood glucose levels in your body as well as to maintain a healthy weight physical activity is another important part as well both aerobic and resistance activity doesn't mean you have to go to the gym but using what you have available maintaining a healthy weight is a good sign that your food you're eating and exercise you're doing is all balancing out if you have diabetes checking your blood glucose two hours after a meal is a good way to know has the food worked for you or maybe it's a little bit too much a little bit too sugary the Canadian Diabetes Association says if the blood glucose is last than 10 then it's fine but above 10 you may want to reconsider something that the meal or maybe look at the medication you're taking there are lots of different risk factors some of which you can't control so age having high blood pressure high cholesterol family history certain ethnicity their high-risk but definitely what you can control is diet and exercise making sure you have a balanced diet eating healthy food eating regularly and regular exercise 150 minutes a week aerobic activity is recommended plus some resistance activity those are doing your steps that you can t either prevent diabetes or to manage it if you have it you're healthy go see your doctor for regular check-ups very important especially over the age of 40 is that when your risk for type 2 diabetes increases or earlier if you have family history of diabetes