The Importance of Weight Control for your Type 2 Diabetes

If you’ve been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, your doctor has probably stressed the importance of maintaining a healthy weight.  However, where do you start?

If you’re like most individuals, losing weight can be a very difficult task. Compound this task with the fact that you must maintain a healthy diet with diabetes, and it becomes all that more overwhelming.  However, losing weight is essential to staying healthy, particularly when you have Type 2 diabetes.

Tips for Weight Control with Diabetes

• Start with a visit to your doctor. Your doctor is the first person you should talk to regarding your weight loss goals and your diabetes. Your doctor will likely help you establish a weight loss program and help define your weight loss goals.
  
• Don’t get ahead of yourself. Keep your goals realistic, and take them one day at a time. Overzealous goals are not productive, as most people cannot realistically stick to them. Instead, make goals that you are comfortable keeping so that your weight loss program is successful.
  
• Make exercise an integral part of your weight loss program. Strict gym routines are simply not realistic for most individuals, so choose an exercise program that appeals to you. A walk around the neighborhood, swimming at a local pool, or taking up a fun active sport, such as tennis or golf, may be just what you need to motivate you to exercise.
  
• Aim to exercise at least 20 minutes a day, three days a week. If you are new to exercise, take it slow and build up to the recommended number of times per week. Make exercise an integral part of your life: take the stairs instead of the escalator; walk instead of drive to the local store; and incorporate light weights into your exercise routine.
  
• Track your calories and eating habits to better manage your weight. There is no better way to understand how much you’re eating than to keep track of it through a food diary.
  
• Make it a point to restrict your fat intake to no more than 30 percent of your daily caloric intake. Aim for monounsaturated fats and avoid trans fats all together. Trans fats are often found in processed snack foods and may appear in the ingredient list as “partially hydrogenated oil.”
  
• If you are having difficulty losing weight through a reduced-calorie diet, your doctor may prescribe weight loss medications for you. Many of these medications are suited to individuals with Type 2 diabetes.