How to Prevent Adult Diabetes

It doesn’t matter if everyone in your family has come down with type 2 diabetes. A family history of diabetes is not the determining factor for whether or not you will suffer from adult onset diabetes--you are. Follow these tips to improve the quality of your life by keeping you from developing type 2 diabetes.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. The most important component to preventing Type 2 diabetes is exercise. Whether you come from a long line of couch potatoes or not, when you develop fat cells, you may also develop diabetes. Start simple by using a pedometer, a simple device that measures steps. Make a point of doing whatever it takes to take at least 10,000 steps per day. Walking is easy and it’s good family time. Ten years from now, your kids won’t remember if they ever saw an episode of their favorite show but they will remember those family walks after supper. If you want to prevent diabetes from taking away your abilities in life, start walking, or find another sort of exercise you like and spend at least 45 minutes every day doing it.
2. Change your eating habits. You don’t have to limit your diet to wheat grass and grape nuts with a side of tofu salad. A well balanced diet that includes fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, and even dessert is key to a healthy and happy lifestyle. The big key here is to avoid processed food as often as possible. Our bodies function best on food that has not been pre-digested by chemicals and machinery. Put down the French fries, and to pick up a forkful of salad. Green leafy vegetables are your best friend when it comes to diabetes prevention and to longevity in general. It’s fine to have fries now and again, but having fries now and again is very different from choosing the salad now and again. Replace 2 or 3 meals of red meat per week with some sort of unbreaded fish. It’s easy to find fresh and boneless fish of many varieties in your grocery store. Replace one more meal of red meat with chicken, and plan one meal per week around vegetables rather than meat. Relax. That means you can still have steak or pork once or twice per week. Your body loves a strong variety of healthy foods. When you have enough healthy food, it is better able to process the toxins from the junk foods our taste buds crave but our bodies hate.
3. Stop eating so much. It doesn’t matter how good a meal is for you if you eat too much. Quantity equals calories and calories equal excess weight. Excess weight is a leading cause of diabetes, fatigue, and heart disease. Studies have shown that those extra 10 pounds are in fact a big deal, especially if they hover at your midsection. Forty pounds of extra weight can kill you. If you don't believe it, go buy a large bag of dog food and take that with you everywhere you go for a day. No fair putting it down to do a chore! At the end of the day, evaluate how your muscles and joints feel. The fact is that if you are hefting around an extra 40 pounds, you may as well be hefting around a big bag of dog food everywhere you go. It’s hard on your body and it simply wears out faster. Keep your weight down and you will be less prone to adult onset diabetes.

Tips & Warnings

• Preventing diabetes is not easy--it requires a commitment to yourself. However, it is worth it to live a long life, to see your kids and grandkids grow. It’s worth it to be able bodied throughout that life, and it’s worth it to model for your kids what living healthy looks like.