Making The Most Of Weight Loss Benefits
In general, Rinker recommends choosing lifestyle changes you can sustain rather than relying on fad diets for weight loss and weight management.
For example, the ADA suggests starting with the pillars of healthy eating: adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet, as well as lean meats and plant-based protein, and limiting processed foods and added sugar. Before you know it, youll be a pro at managing your weight as well as type 2 diabetes and its complications.
Get More Healthful Carbs Throughout The Day
Eating carbohydrates low on the glycemic index is important for maintaining stable blood sugar levels. Folding healthy carbs into your six meals per day plan may help you gain weight, but its important to keep an eye on your glucose levels.
Adding a protein or fat each time you eat a carb may help increase caloric consumption, without causing your sugar levels to spike.
Examples of healthy carbs include:
- whole grains
- soy
- eggs
Talk to your doctor about the appropriate serving size of protein for you, based on your kidney function and weight gain goal. For example, if you currently eat three to four ounces of protein per day, you may need to kick it up to seven ounces.
Getting Blood Sugar Back To Normal
The good news: When we shed the body fat, insulin often starts working again. Thats because our bodys cells often start working again. Their doors kick open when insulin comes calling. Once again, insulin can ferry glucose out of the bloodstream and into our cells. As a result, blood glucose falls into healthy, normal ranges.
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Determine Your Ideal Weight
Its important to know what your current weight is, as well as establish how much weight you want to gain overall. Setting weekly gain goals can help you chart your progress.
You should also know what the appropriate BMI is, for your frame and height. Plugging your height and weight into a BMI calculator can help you get an idea of where your weight should be.
Your doctor or dietitian can provide you with more specific information about your ideal weight. They can also help you determine what your daily caloric intake should be.
Weight Loss Options For Diabetes
For many people with diabetes, exercise and dietary changes arent enough to lose significant weight. Here are some other weight-loss approaches that work:
Medically managed weight loss. This approach involves a team of health care providers, including physicians, nutritionists and more, who create a weight-loss program uniquely suited to you. Support includes a reduced calorie diet that may feature meal-replacement products such as OPTIFAST®, an exercise plan, behavioral counseling and medication.
Weight loss medications. There are many types of weight loss medicationssome work by making you feel less hungry, others by making it harder for the body to absorb fat. Its important that you follow your doctors advice, as some diabetes and weight loss medications have serious side effects. Weight loss medications are typically prescribed and monitored through a medical weight loss program.
Bariatric surgery. Also known as weight loss surgery, this approach permanently alters the digestive tract to limit the amount of food you can eat at one time. It has proven to be an effective option, particularly for people with diabetes. Like any significant surgery, there are risks that you should weigh. There are also some lifestyle changes that go along with this type of surgery. Consult your doctor to see if bariatric surgery is right for you.
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Why High Fat Diets Alone Wont Work
The high fat/low carbohydrate diet has its positives and negatives, yet as a stand-alone nutrient source it doesnt hold up. Here are two big time pros to this diet strategy:
So then why not go all in with fat? Here are two even bigger cons to the singular approach of fat consumption only:
Diabetes Cause Weight Gain And Weight Loss In Others
Are you overweight and have diabetes as well? Or should I ask, your obesity led you to diabetes? The answer can be anything. And sometimes diabetes and weight loss are also observed in some patients. You must have heard about how diabetes is associated with being overweight or underweight. Obesity is a condition in which the diabetic may have to experience the worst outcomes.
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What Is The Link Between Obesity And Diabetes
BMI has a strong relationship with diabetes and insulin resistance. More than 90% of patients with diabetes are obese. The American Medical Association designated obesity as a chronic disease caused by multiple factors.
When people have too much fat, especially in the belly part, it increases the risk of diabetes. Because abdominal fat causes body cells to release chemicals that increase insulin resistance in the body. When the cells do not respond to insulin properly, the sugar accumulates in the body causing diabetes. Having a large waistline is a particularly high-risk form of obesity. Obesity also affects the metabolism of the body.
In type 2 diabetes, too much fat and sugar are already present in body cells which makes them develop insulin resistance. And as carbs are already present in the body, consuming more increases the fat in the body. Hence making the person overweight or obese.
Not Enough Physical Activity
Increasing the amount of physical activity you do can get stalled weight loss going again. The American Heart Association recommends that people with Type 2 diabetes perform a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week or at least 90 minutes of vigorous activity a week. Doing resistance-training exercises three times per week is also encouraged.
Keep in mind that if you dont currently do this much, you will need to build up to it gradually. Its also a good idea to get your doctors OK before increasing the amount or intensity of physical activity you do. Certain activities may not be advised for people who have diabetes complications such as eye or kidney disease. Also, because physical activity usually lowers blood glucose, you may need to take steps to prevent hypoglycemia while exercising. Some of the ways to do this include cutting back on insulin or oral medicines before exercising, having a snack before or during exercise, or changing your meal schedule to accommodate your exercise schedule. Checking your blood glucose before, during, and after physical activity will help you determine which of these steps may be most effective.
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Lose Weight With Type 1 Diabetes
Editors Note: Cliff Scherb, Founder of and , is a nutrition and fitness expert. He consults through virtually teaching his decision support system the app and its methodologies to aspiring T1 individuals and athletes. Cliff also creates custom training programs and insulin plans for endurance athletes, using Training Stress Modeling and real-time coaching. To inquire about coaching openings, , and general questions please email Cliff@glucoseadvisors.com.
Losing weight can be difficult add Type 1 diabetes to the mix with its daily management demands and its even more of a challenge. I know, because Ive been a Type 1 diabetic for 29 years and Im also an endurance athlete.
The internet is saturated in advice on how to lose weight with or without Type 1, so its hard to know what is worth while and what will just waste your time or worse, can negatively impact your health.
Im not going to declare all out war on carbohydrates, or tell you can or cant drink your calories in the form of olive oil, or feast and fast with cayenne peppers and maple syrup. No, the real distilled learning from my years of consulting and data analysis shows that a balanced, low-insulin diet with nutrient timing and activity is the best way to lose weight with Type 1 diabetes. It also helps you maintain brain and body function as well as energy levels.
Performing means living a longer or healthier life or if youre an athlete, it can also translate to beating out your competition.
How Diabetes Is Harmful
Most people dont really understand the way diabetes works, but a firm grasp of how it affects your body chemistry will help you better control the disease.
Your body is made up of millions of cells, and these cells use glucose as their energy source. Your body gets glucose from the food that you eat.
After a meal, your body secrets a hormone called insulin into your blood insulin works as a signal to let your cells know that glucose is on the way to feed your cells. But, for people with diabetes, the signals that tell the cells to absorb the sugar are defective, or the body does not make enough insulin. As a result, high levels of glucose remain in the blood, which is thought to alter the structure and function of many different types of cells in your body. This is why diabetes can cause so many different kinds of serious illnesses if not controlled.
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Give Meal Replacement Products A Try
Dunn says meal replacement shakes specifically for people with diabetes or calorie-moderated frozen meals can make it easier to follow structured, lower-calorie eating plans. You can feel comfortable eating the whole amount because its already portioned. Look for meals in the 220- to 300-calorie range. You can even eat an extra serving of vegetables, fruit or dairy with them and stick to your calorie budget.
For meal replacement shakes, Dunn recommends you:
- Make them yourself with whole foods and protein powder.
- Choose premade shakes that contain 15 to 20 grams of protein and under 250 calories per container.
Another diabetes and weight loss tip you can take to the bank? Try noshing some raw fruit or vegetables with your meal replacement shakes. They give you chewing satisfaction, which helps quell hunger, and can make you feel fuller and more satisfied than just having the shake alone.
When To See A Healthcare Provider
Sometimes, body weight can fluctuate naturally, so when should someone be concerned? The general consensus is that an unintentional 5% or more decrease in body weight over a six- to 12-month period is abnormal.
Sudden weight loss can be a sign of rising or uncontrolled blood glucose levels, says Lisa Moskovitz, RD, the CEO of NY Nutrition Group. Whether or not youre intentionally losing weight, any loss greater than two to three pounds per week should be reported to your healthcare provider.
On the flip side, obesity is a significant risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. People with a body mass index of 30 or higher often have a higher level of insulin resistance, potentially leading to Type 2 diabetes. Not every case of obesity leads to diabetes, but it certainly increases the chances of developing it. On top of that, obesity can exacerbate diabetes symptoms for anyone who already has it.
For this reason, healthcare providers and dietitians will often develop diets or weight loss programs for patients with diabetes or prediabetes. These programs often include meal plans and physical activity routines that help patients achieve and maintain a healthy weight, reducing the risk or severity of Type 2 diabetes. Typically, this involves analyzing the patients current eating and exercise habits, then laying out practical lifestyle changes that will help achieve personal weight loss goals.
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What Is Diabetes
In order to understand diabetes-related weight loss, we first need to understand how diabetes works.
Glucose, or sugar, is the body’s main source of energy. The body converts the compounds in food into glucose, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The hormone insulin moves glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells, which use it for energy.
But people with diabetes either don’t make enough insulin or can’t use insulin properly. This leads to a buildup of glucose in the bloodstream, resulting in high blood sugar a potentially dangerous health condition.
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What You Can Do
Diabetes food plans are often geared toward helping people lose, rather than gain, weight. This can make it harder to figure out how to gain weight in a healthy way.
Before trying the tips below, talk with your doctor or dietician. They can help you set the right diet and exercise goals for you, as well as answer any questions you may have.
There are many apps available to help you manage your condition and make the right food choices. Look for apps that help you track blood sugar and BMI.
Some options include:
GlucOracle: This glucose forecasting app uses crowdsourcing to analyze the estimated amount of carbohydrates, protein, fat, calories, and fiber in each meal. It also predicts what your glucose level will be after eating.
SuperTracker: This app helps you gain weight by providing comprehensive nutritional information on over 8,000 food items. It also tracks your nutritional targets, diet, and activity levels against your goals.
If these dont appeal to you, weve also rounded up the best diabetes management and calorie counter apps of the year.
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Reason #: Type 2 Diabetes Medications Can Drive Weight Gain
Remember how your bodyâs own insulin is a fat-storage hormone? Thatâs also true for insulin that has been prescribed to you, whether delivered by injection or by pump. Thatâs why a common side effect of prescribed insulin is weight gain. Another class of medicine for type 2 diabetes, Sulfonylureas, work by stimulating the pancreas to produce more insulin. And once again, more insulin in your body means more fat storage and more weight gain.
More Weight Loss More Diabetes Remission
The scientists found that the more weight lost, the greater the likelihood of diabetes remission:
Among those who gained weight: 0% achieved remission of diabetes
- For those who lost 0 to 11 pounds: 7% achieved remission
- For those who lost 11 to 22 pounds: 34% achieved remission
- For those who lost 22 to 33 pounds: 57% achieved remission
- For those who lost more than 33 pounds: 86% achieved remission
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Medical Management Of Diabetes
One final note: Many diabetics rely on medications to keep their blood sugar in a normal range.
Because their bodies dont produce insulin, people with type 1 diabetes need insulin therapy to survive. Most people with LADA and some with type 2 diabetes also require insulin eventually.
If youre diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, your doctor may also prescribe oral medications to help your body use carbohydrates more effectively. The most common one is metformin, which slows glucose production in the liver and increases insulin sensitivity.
Other medications work by increasing insulin secretion, lowering blood sugar or increasing the rate at which sugars are excreted in the urine .
Regardless of your medication needs, a healthy diabetic diet is a very important part of treatment. In some cases, weight loss may even reduce the need for medications.
Summary: If youre diagnosed with diabetes, your doctor may prescribe medications to help you control your blood sugar. Those with type 1 diabetes require insulin therapy for life, and many people with LADA or type 2 diabetes may eventually need it. Oral medications like metformin are commonly used in type 2 diabetes. Diet is also an important part of diabetes treatment, and weight loss can often help lower the need for medications for those who are overweight or obese.
Losing Weight And Insulin Resistance
Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels in the body and helps your cells convert blood sugar into energy. In some people with diabetes, however, blood sugar levels are high for a sustained period of time, causing the pancreas to produce more and more insulin. Eventually, the cells stop responding to that insulinbecoming insulin resistant. Losing weight with insulin resistance is more difficult because your body converts blood sugar into fat instead of energy.
The solution? For a start, reducing the sugar and processed carbohydrates in your diet while increasing healthy fats along with vegetables and whole grains. Even a small improvement can make a big difference. Studies show that a weight loss of just 57 percent is enough to reduce the risk of diabetes by 58 percent in a person who has a high risk of the condition.
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