One of the hardest parts of being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes is the fact that you have to make dramatic and drastic changes to your lifestyle. If you don’t make these changes your diabetes will be impossible to live with due to the fact that your blood sugar levels will be out of control. After years of unhealthy diets, smoking, physical inactivity, and other poor lifestyle choices, it may be hard to make the necessary changes to manage your diabetes.
Being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes ought to serve as a major wake up call. It is a sign that your lifestyle was harming your body. Over time, your body could no longer handle managing your blood sugars on its own and in many cases this was due to problems such as obesity.
While you cannot cure your Type 2 diabetes, you can take steps to make sure that your symptoms are as minimal as possible. The best idea is to start by making changes that lead to a healthier lifestyle. You can start off with small changes, and you will be surprised to see what a difference even these can make.
The first lifestyle change you should make is to focus on improving your diet. Shoot for a diet that is well-balanced with foods from all five food groups. Try to make sure that you aren’t eating too much of any one food category, and that you are eating enough fruits and veggies rather than a great deal of fatty foods. Give calorie counting a try, and make sure that you are not eating more calories than you burn.
Once you are on the right track to eating a healthy diet, you will find improvements in other areas as well. Improving your diet makes weight loss much easier. An emphasis on losing weight, even just a small amount, should be your other major focus. Research has shown that losing just 10-20 pounds can help people reduce their chance of becoming a Type 2 diabetic, or make managing their diabetes easier to handle. Finding out that you have Type 2 diabetes can come as quite a shock. It is hard to admit it to yourself that some of the lifestyle choices you made could have contributed to the development of this disease. As difficult as this may be, you have to realize the importance of changing your lifestyle. You don’t need to change everything at once… start off small by changing just one habit, and you will be on your way to controlling your blood sugar levels and your weight.
