Roughly 8% of the US population has Diabetes and between 90-95% of these have "Type 2." This simply means the cells in your body go haywire with in the presence of insulin.
The first thing to really know is that this is an extremely serious situation and that you are essentially dying in slow motion. Progression of this disease will eventually shut down most of your important organs and you will die a fairly painful and slow death and experience very poor quality of the remainder of your life. This is simply the reality of the situation. But you can take immediate, massive action to change course in a hurry.
There is good news in all of this for many people. Disease in general is complex, but with something like Type 2 Diabetes you can make changes quickly that will result in improvement to your "clinical picture." Often, simply losing between 5 and 10 pounds will start to improve things.
At PEERtrainer, we see that people can make much bigger changes in their life than they ever thought possible. So expand your mind as much as you can and know that you can make dramatic changes in your health no matter what you currently think. It is rarely too late. But start this process one small step at a time to make it easy for yourself.
Getting in the best mindset you possibly can and developing the belief that change is possible is critical to change. It may be that you are surrounded by negativity with your friends and family. In fact, the odds of the people around you on a daily basis who negatively effect your decision making process are really high. Start thinking about that. Your doctor might even have some "limiting beliefs" about treatment and even reversal of this disease. You should have people around you who really encourage you and give you hope.
The following is a three step process for you to really get this situation under control. This is what we do at PEERtrainer- we help people make massive change, one step at a time, and we base this all in the reality of how people really live.
Step 1: Glycemic Control and Portion Control
The first step is obviously get the blood sugar under control. This is what your doctor just told you and we'd be very curious to hear the specific things you were told. Leave them in the comments in the bottom of this blog post, we really want to hear them. The ultimate treatment (and potential cure) of Type 2 Diabetes is a diet very high in plant based foods, especially greens.
However, first things first. You need to get your portions under control and do so in a way that brings your glucose levels inline. You might want to consider a meal delivery service like NutriSystem for the first few months. NutriSystem programs for diabetics like NutriSystem D are clinically proven to help get things under control for you.
The reason this might be a good idea is that for most people dieting is hard. NutriSystem makes it easy, and basically costs nothing for most people. You already spend money for food, more than you probably think. You simply shift the cost to this program. They also do a fairly good job of giving you support and also showing you how to start adding more plant-based foods into your diet.
It may be that you can adopt a healthy diet on your own instantly, but be open to making it easy on yourself and finding ways of boosting your odds of success.
Step 2: Get Massive Motivation and Support
You can make incredible changes in your lifestyle. But as we said earlier, the odds of your immediate friends and family being a negative influence in your life is pretty high. So you are going to need to look outside your immediate circle for daily influence and ideas. To plug PEERtrainer for a second, we have some incredible resources to support and motivate you. The single most effective free tool we have right now is the PEERtrainer Tip Of The Day Program. This will give you massive motivation and support via daily emails. Click on that link to learn a little more, but it is a really cool program.
There are a ton of other resources out there to help you, and just be open to new ideas as much as you can. One of the things we really focus on is helping build your level of belief that massive positive change is possible.
Step 3: Begin The Path To Nutritional Excellence
We firmly believe that people need to make the first steps towards weight loss as easy and doable as possible. That is why we view things like the NutriSystem Diet to be a very realistic first step. But down the road you are going to need to read Eat To Live Or Eat For Health and learn about the work of Dr. Joel Fuhrman. We go out of our way to credit Dr. Fuhrman with pioneering the field of "nutritional excellence." He is influencing the entire diet industry and has been instrumental in the development of Weight Watchers new Momentum Program and was a core influence of Dr. Ian Smith's Fat Smash Diet.
This three step process that we outlined will help you with both the short term and long term aspects of getting your Type 2 Diabetes in control. If you do start to adopt the high nutrient diet over time that Dr. Fuhrman recommends- only 10% animal protein, high amounts of greens and salads each day- make sure to see your doctor and make sure any medications you are taking are at the right levels.
No matter what you do, make sure to check out the PEERtrainer Tip Of The Day page. You also might want to join PEERtrainer and start logging your food and exercise each day to make sure your portions are really under control and you get support. And if you feel like you need some help getting started, don't be afraid to get some help with a company like NutriSystem:
