The macrobiotic diet has a variety of whole foods such as whole grains, lentils and beans, fruits and veggies, and unprocessed foods. Overall, the diet generally avoids foods that are high in saturated fat, salt, sugar, and artificial ingredients.
The macrobiotic diet offers a tremendous amount of health benefits and is full of nutrient-dense foods. It is also very high in phytonutrients that are also very beneficial for our health. A macrobiotic diet particularly helps in lowering blood sugar because it is loaded with fiber from whole grains and fruits and veggies and lentils and beans. The fiber intake improves the gut microbiome which leads to a reduction in insulin resistance, leading to an overall improvement in insulin sensitivity; in other words, it helps the body in sensing when the sugar is around for the uptake by the cells to be utilized for energy purposes.
Moreover, the fiber from a macrobiotic diet can create a gel around the intestine that slows down the transit time. This will slowly release the sugar into the blood for the uptake by the cells and this will also help in avoiding blood sugar spikes after meals and overall improving the post-prandial blood glucose numbers. Furthermore, this concept is backed up by research and many studies have shown that a diet high in macrobiotic nutrients has been proven to reduce blood sugar in diabetic individuals, overall lowering of the A1Cs over time in those individuals.
The key idea in having better sugar control is to try to incorporate a lot of whole grains such as brown rice instead of white rice, quinoa bulgur, barely, oats, whole grain pasta instead of white, whole grain bread instead of white, legumes and beans and fruits and a lot of nonstarchy veggies on daily basis. Be mindful of portions as well and have smaller portions for the starch part. A good trick will be to ensure adding macrobiotic foods to our diet would be adding half of the plate of nonstarchy veggies in each meal and always having a salad besides cooked veggies or whole grains or lentils or beans or complexed starch.
Besides that, it is also a good idea to add a good probiotic supplement as well to boost even further the microbiome in our GI tract as well. Finally, no matter what kind of diet we may have, always try to add exercises to our daily regimen for added health benefits and disease prevention as well.
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