Diabetic Weight Loss
by Steve Richards on November 2, 2008
It is always healthy to maintain proper body weight. However, if you are diabetic it could mean the difference between life and death. My mom had always struggled to lose weight. She would sometimes have limited success, but then gain the weight back. When we learned she had diabetes our outlook changed. Now the weight had to come off.
For a long time my mom was in denial about having diabetes, even though the doctor had clearly explained the situation to her. In what seemed like a very short time her diabetes progressed to the point of requiring daily insulin shots to keep sugar levels under control. She was deathly afraid of shots, but I told her that the situation was just that serious. Finally, she was really willing to listen to my advice on how to change her eating habits to lower her sugar levels that way. The first thing I did was to clear out her refridgerator and print out a glycemic index chart and tape it to the outer door. We went over what she ate every single meal, every single day and worked hard to use the foods which were lowest in GI value. Since she still had a fairly busy lifestyle, with a full-time job, by eating lower GI foods I predicted weight loss would begin to happen normally - and it did.
The second part of my plan for her was to try and work in a little bit of exercise or activity each week. My mom likes to walk, so what she would do is get up very early in the morning and take a ten to twenty minute walk before going to work. This was aerobic, so it helped with her high blood pressure. I also believed that it helped with her cell resistance to insulin, which is a key factor in being diabetic. The added physical activity strengthened her body, including toning and building muscle which naturally burns more energy.
Adding it all together we were able to see dramatically improved results in her blood sugar readings, as well as noticeable weight loss. The way I described this to her was similar to a domino effect. Everything is kind of linked together, so when you start to do better in one area, other areas are affected as well. That’s why diabetic weight loss is really not much different from regular weight loss. Your body will respond the same either way, because it’s always health to eat low glycemic index foods and perform moderate exercise. It’s just that you have to be a lot more careful with the kinds of foods you eat when you are a diabetic.
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