The largest risk factor for type 2 diabetes is being overweight. Research has found that, of all the individuals who develop type 2 diabetes, eighty to ninety percent of them are overweight.
Fat changes the manner in which your body cells respond to insulin by making them more resistant to the effects of insulin. This lessens the amount of sugar that can be passed from your blood to your cells and increases the amount of sugar in your blood.
However, if you lose the fat, your cells will again respond to insulin, as they should. For many individuals with type 2 diabetes, just losing weight will return their blood sugar to normal.
Weight loss is particularly important for people who carry the weight around the middle. Men who measure more than 40 inches and women who measure more than 35 inches around the waist are at increased risk for many health problems.
But the weight loss has to involve a total lifestyle change. The kind of weight loss that results from fad diets, use of diet pills, etc.
is not successful. To be effective in controlling or avoiding diabetes, you have to lose the weight gradually by developing a pattern of healthy eating habits. These healthy eating habits will then ensure that you are able to maintain your ideal weight once you achieve it.
You will also need to implement a regular exercise routine to accompany your diet and to help maintain your ideal weight once it is achieved.
This involves changing many of the habits you now have which is why successful weight loss requires a lifestyle change.
Society today is programmed for weight gain. Cars take us where we want to go. Our homes and work places are filled with labor saving devices. We spend many hours watching television or sitting at a computer.
Our lives run at a fast pace which means we often opt for a quick stop at the fast food outlet rather than prepare a healthy meal. Many people for varied reasons eat out often. At all American restaurants, large portions are the norm.
High calorie foods are the most readily available and they taste good. People tend to multi-task so they eat while using the computer, talking on the telephone, or sitting in front of the TV.
All of these practices combine to make it easy to gain weight and difficult to lose it. Yet, to lose weight successfully we have to take eating off our automatic pilot and think about it. We need to plan our food intake so that we expend more energy than we consume, or burn more calories than we eat. This is the key to successfully losing weight and maintaining a healthful weight.
You also need to increase the amount of physical activity you engage in during the day. You can double your weight loss with proper physical activity. You will also find it much easier to keep the weight off if increased physical activity becomes a way of life.
For people who have sedentary jobs, increasing physical activity may be more difficult than for people whose jobs involve substantial movement.
However, sedentary individuals can develop habits such as walking a couple flights of stairs instead of using the elevator and parking at the far end of the lot. By adding these habits to their regular exercise program, sedentary workers can develop the lifestyle which will not only prevent diabetes but will also ward off many other illnesses.
