How To Lose Weight With Diabetes
Obesity is a serious worldwide problem and is associated with the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Obesity combined with a genetic predisposition are high risk factors for type 2 diabetes to develop.
Today, more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and 312 million of them are obese.
It is the amount of calories we eat that contributes to weight gain.
Make small changes. Learn portion sizes and reduce the amount of snacks in your day to reduce the total amount of calories you consume each day.
It’s no secret that losing weight and keeping it off isn’t easy. But it is possible, and the benefits for those with diabetes are great.
A well-balanced blood sugar level is crucial to your overall fitness and well-being, regulating your hormones, triggering your body to burn stored fat, and increasing your metabolism to help you lose weight.
Unfortunately, most people’s blood sugar is not properly balanced.
If you’re getting too much glucose, it leads to high blood-sugar levels, which your body can’t break down and stores as fat.
Ironically, not getting enough sugar can also lead to putting on extra pounds!
Eating too little glucose can lead to a low blood sugar level, causing your body to go into “starvation mode” where it burns your lean muscle instead of the fat.
When we eat, our body converts carbohydrates into blood sugar (glucose), our main source of energy. Blood sugar levels can affect how hungry and energetic we feel.
Glucose also determines whether we burn fat or store it.
Diabetes is a single name for a group of disorders.
All forms of the disease develop when the pancreas is unable to supply enough insulin to meet the body’s needs.
In some cases, the problem is a low supply, in others, the body resists the insulin it has, and in still others, it’s both a low supply and insulin resistance.
The initial assessment of people with diabetes should include the following measurements: height, weight, calculation of BMI (kg/m2) and waist circumference (WC) to assess the degree of abdominal obesity.
If you adopt a diabetes diet you may find yourself losing some weight, because high blood sugars make us more insulin resistant and that causes weight gain.
But there’s another reason why diabetes diets can help you lose weight , when you flatten out your blood sugar after meals, you eliminate the overwhelming hunger that comes with blood sugars that go very high and then drift back down.
It is the carbohydrates you eat that raise your blood sugar. If you cut back on carbohydrates, your blood sugar will come down. It’s that simple.
Use your blood sugar meter after each meal to determine how many grams of carbs you can eat and still meet a healthy blood sugar target.
If you’re not diabetic or have normal blood-sugar numbers, you may be unfamiliar with the glycemic index.
For those of us who have to constantly measure or be vigilant with our blood-sugar levels, the glycemic index is an important tool.
The glycemic index was created in the 1980s to help people manage and prevent diabetes.
It ranks food based on the amount of time it takes glucose to get into the bloodstream.
Those foods which release glucose rapidly have a higher GI; those that release glucose more gradually generally have a lower GI.
Lower GI scores are better because foods that release glucose quickly can cause spikes in blood-sugar.
This diet contains a mix of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
It focuses on carbohydrates that are lower on the glycemic scale.
The diet is built upon the belief that too many carbohydrates from the wrong sources can cause the body to produce too much insulin.
Choose foods that are higher in fiber and monounsaturated fat, enjoy seafood that contains beneficial omega-3 fatty acids more often, and decrease the amount of saturated fat, trans fats, cholesterol, and sodium that you consume.
Fortunately, low-glycemic fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains already meet these heart-healthy nutrition guidelines, so simply incorporating a variety of these low-glycemic foods into your diet each day can help protect you from heart disease.
Knowing which foods to eat before, during, and after exercise based on their glycemic index level helps people maximize their energy and recovery time.
Consuming a protein source and a fat source at each meal is a great way to slow down your body’s digestion and conversion of carbohydrates into sugar to provide long-term fullness and nutritional health both of which are keys to long-term weight loss!
Your body needs a certain amount of essential vitamins and minerals to function properly.
Taking vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a balanced daily diet can give your body the nutritional support it needs for optimal metabolism.
There are specific vitamins, minerals, and all-natural supplements that can help you lose weight.
Vitamins and minerals act as catalysts, speeding up reactions which can result in weight loss.
Many of the vitamins which support metabolism and weight loss are water-soluble.
This means that they are not stored in great quantities in the body.
Therefore, to get the greatest benefit of vitamins for weight loss, you must be sure to eat a daily balanced diet that includes plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
With minerals, it may take your body some time before you begin to see results.
It is essential to follow the suggested usage guidelines for vitamin and mineral supplements.
The temptation may be that more is better for weight loss and health.
However, large amounts of any nutrient can potentially cause negative health impacts.
In addition, some vitamins and minerals may have adverse drug interactions.
Consult your doctor before adding any nutritional supplement to your diet.
Choosing medications for people with diabetes involves consideration of a number of factors, including effects on weight.
Improvements in glucose control are often linked to weight gain, but this does not have to be the inevitable result of diabetes treatment.
Adding a drug that either promotes weight-loss or is weight neutral to one that promotes weight gain should be considered.
The current approach to the treatment of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes is to achieve the best possible glucose control.
During the past 20 years, a number of new medications to control blood glucose have been introduced, and new approaches to the use of older medications have been developed.
Weight and diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes, are closely related.
Insulin is always the first choice for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, but there are multiple treatment choices for patients with type 2 diabetes.
It’s commonly known that people often gain weight when they start insulin .
But the same rules of exercise and good food habits apply to stay at a healthy weight.
It’s dangerous to fall into the temptation to skip insulin doses in order to lose weight.
It’s never the insulin alone that is causing people to gain weight, or prevents them from losing it.
And while taking less than the correct amount of insulin will lead to rapid weight loss, the weight lost will be mostly water and muscle being broken down, and not all fat… And losing weight that quickly is unhealthy not to mention the fact that keeping your blood glucose high makes you increasingly prone to long-term diabetes complications.
Although diabetes medications such as basal insulin, sulfonylurea and thiazolidinedione are associated with variable weight gain in some diabetics.
The newer drugs, such as pramlitide, extenatide, sitaglitin, or inhaled insulin appear to have a neutral effect on weight gain or to actually cause weight loss.
Pramlitide has been studied both in type 1 and type 2 diabetes and has been associated with modest weight loss.
Extenatide has been shown to cause weight loss in patients along with sustained decrease in HbA1C.
Less weight gain has been seen with inhaled insulin in diabetics on basal-bolus therapy, and the DPP-IVs have been associated with weight neutrality.
Exenatide (Byetta, Bydureon) and liraglutide (Victoza) are taken by injection, similar to insulin, but they’re not insulin.
These medications are in a class of drugs called incretin mimetics, which improve blood sugar control by mimicking the action of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1).
Among other things, these drugs stimulate insulin secretion in response to rising blood sugar levels after a meal, which results in lowering of the blood sugar.
Byetta, Bydureon and Victoza not only improve blood sugar control, but may also lead to weight loss.
There are many proposed ways in which these medications cause weight loss.
They appear to help suppress appetite. But the most prominent effect of these drugs is that they delay the movement of food from the stomach into the small intestine.
As a result, you may feel “full” faster and longer, so you eat less.
Regular physical activity is important for good health, and it’s especially important if you’re trying to lose weight or to maintain a healthy weight.
When losing weight, more physical activity increases the number of calories your body uses for energy or “burns off.”
The burning of calories through physical activity, combined with reducing the number of calories you eat, creates a “calorie deficit” that results in weight loss.
Most weight loss occurs because of decreased caloric intake. However, evidence shows the only way to maintain weight loss is to be engaged in regular physical activity.
Most importantly, physical activity reduces risks of cardiovascular disease and diabetes beyond that produced by weight reduction alone.
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