Weight Cycling and Diabetes
By · CommentsAlthough some scientists studying weight cycling have measured glucose and insulin levels, few studies have focused on people with diabetes. A study in Health Psychology in 1990 was an exception. This study looked at medical records of 327 male veterans with type 2 diabetes. The records spanned an average of 3 1/2 years.
The researchers found that about a fifth of the men stayed at a roughly constant weight. They did not gain or lose more than 10% of their starting weight at any time during the study. Some other men gained or lost more than 10% of their weight and stayed there. The rest of the men – about two-thirds of the subjects – weight cycled. At the end of the study, they were within 10% of their starting weight, even though they had gained or lost more than 10% some time in between.
When the researchers compared men who didn’t cycle with men who lost and then regained weight and with men who gained and then lost weight, they could find no effect of cycling on diabetes control. All three groups of men had similar fasting glucose and HbAlc (glycated hemoglobin, a measure of long-term glucose control) levels. On average, men in the three groups were taking similar doses of diabetes drugs. In this study, at least, weight cycling had no bad effects on diabetes.
The Value of Exercis in Keeping Weight Off
By · CommentsAn interesting study of the value of exercise in keeping weight off appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1989. It focused on Boston policemen. All 184 men (no policewomen were included) were overweight and between 26 and 52 years old. All went to weekly sessions to learn about food choices and exercise. And all went on a reduced-calorie diet. Four diets were used, ranging from 420 to 1,000 calories a day. In addition, half the men were put in a supervised exercise program. These men had to exercise for 90 minutes three times a week. This amount of exercise burned an estimated extra 1,500 calories a week.
After the study was over (after 12 weeks in the pilot program and after 8 weeks in the main study), men in nonexercising groups had lost various amounts of weight, depending on which of the four diets they were on. But the men who exercised tended to lose more weight – about 32 pounds in the 12-week pilot program and roughly 27 pounds in the 8-week main study. The amount of weight lost did not depend on which diet the exercisers were assigned to.
The researchers followed the men for 3 years. By then, policemen who’d been in the nonexercising groups and continued not to exercise weighed almost as much as they had to start. But men in the exercise groups who continued to exercise kept all their weight off. Nonexercisers who had begun exercising kept off more weight, and exercisers who stopped gained back weight.
This study shows that exercising allowed men on moderate reduced-calorie diets to lose as much weight as men on very strict diets. Being policemen, the subjects may have had more self-discipline than average, and they probably benefited on the job from being lighter on their feet. So they may have had extra motivation to keep exercising. Whatever the reason, many of them did keep exercising, and these men were able to keep off all their lost weight.
Risky Situations for Sticking with a Diabetes Meal Plan
By · CommentsIn a study in the Journal of The American Dietetic Association in 1994, researchers interviewed 12 adults with type 1 diabetes and 14 adults with type 2 diabetes and found that there were 12 kinds of situations in which they had a hard time sticking to a meal plan:
- Negative emotions. You get passed over for a promotion. Or your car breaks down, and you can’t afford to get it fixed.
- Resisting temptation. You go to play cards with your friends, and the host puts out bowls of chips, dips, nuts, and pork rinds. Or you have a craving for french fries that won’t go away.
- Eating out. You go to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Or you go to a classic French restaurant where rich sauces adorn the specialties.
- Feeling deprived. You look at the people waiting in line at a bakery and feel left out. Or it’s your birthday, and having only one piece of cake just doesn’t feel like a celebration.
- Time pressure. Keeping your job depends on working double shifts at some times of the year. Or taking care of your house and four kids devours so much time that you get only 4 hours of sleep a night.
- Tempted to relapse. You’re tired of measuring portions and feel like giving up. Or you’re bored with the 10 healthy recipes you know how to make.
- Planning. You often have to work late without warning. Or your children’s soccer practices, trumpet lessons, and dance classes play havoc with your dinner schedule.
- Competing priorities. Caring for an aging mother with Alzheimer’s may consume your every waking minute. Or you’re head of the synagogue’s committee on building an addition, and you need to meet with the zoning board, interview architects and contractors, and fill out piles of paperwork.
- Social events. Your family has a Christmas Eve tradition of sharing fancy desserts. Or for years, your circle of friends has met once a month at a barbecue place.
- Family support. Your husband doesn’t want you to lose weight because he’s afraid another man will then steal you away. Or your children refuse to eat anything green unless it got that way with the help of FD & C Green Dye No. 3.
- Food refusal. A friend whose feelings are easily hurt offers you a huge piece of her special fruitcake. Or you go to a winter party, and the host makes each guest a fancy hot chocolate topped with fluffy mounds of whipped cream.
- Friends’ support. Your best friend has her own ideas about what people with diabetes should eat, and she criticizes every food choice you make. Or a friend who weighs more than you constantly tells you your weight is fine.
Although these risky situations are specifically for sticking with a food plan, many apply to sticking with an exercise plan as well.
Losing Weight for Diabetes – Lose Weight for Yourself
By · CommentsWhy and for whom are you trying to lose weight? Some people embark on a self-improvement program to please other people. Maybe they’re tired of a husband’s or wife’s nagging. Or maybe their doctor told them to lose weight.
Other people start a weight-loss program because it’s what they want to do. They want to improve their health or have more stamina for daily life.
Not surprisingly, people who set their own course in life instead of letting other people pressure them into things tend to be more creative in finding solutions for their problems and happier with the results.
Your reason for wanting to lose weight may affect your chances of success. Some psychologists believe that people are more likely to stick to behavioral changes when they themselves want the change.
When The Baby Came
Many people find the strength to do for their families what they can’t do for themselves. Juanita Diaz, too, found it easier to stick to her diabetes treatment plan when she was pregnant. “During 1990,1 lost 35 pounds, and I got pregnant,” she says. “I did really well. The doctors thought that I wasn’t going to have to take insulin, I was doing so well.” She walked every day, and she watched everything she ate. She managed to avoid having to take insulin until she was in her eighth month of pregnancy.
Diaz lost her motivation as soon as her son was born. “After I delivered, that evening, I wanted chili dogs,” she says. “My husband went after them for me.” She has been on insulin since.
She still struggles with trying to watch her weight as well as she did when she was pregnant. “I could do it then because I had a purpose, my child,” she says. “But I’m thinking, why can’t I do it again?”
In more brutal times, there were two ways to motivate a donkey to move: You could entice it with a carrot or beat it with a stick. Today, for animals and humans alike, the carrot approach is considered best.
Carrots. There are many ways to reward yourself for sticking to good habits:
- Choose activities and foods that you enjoy.
- Praise yourself each time you make a healthful food choice or work some extra activity into your life.
- When you meet a big goal (for example, 2 months without gaining back any weight), give yourself a present.
- Remind yourself often of the great progress you’ve made and how much better you feel. A pair of pants from before you lost weight can be a visible reminder of how much weight you’ve lost.
Carrots and Sticks Together. Psychologists believe that mild punishment can work if combined with a reward. For example:
- Set aside a bit of money at the beginning of each week. If you meet your goals, then you get to have the money back. If not, then you must give it to a charity.
- Have a contest with someone else. For example, keep track of how many minutes each of you exercise. The loser each month has to pay the winner some money or do some chores for them.
- Make a chart or keep a diary. Each day, write in what you’ve done toward your goal. Squares with a lot of writing will make you feel good, and blank squares on the chart will make you feel bad, spurring you to have as few blank spots as possible.
How Do I Get In 30 Minutes of Exercise a Day?
By · CommentsThe Surgeon General’s guidelines say that it’s okay to get your 30 minutes of exercise in bits and pieces. If you can squeeze in 8 minutes here and 10 minutes there, you can add them together.
If you have a busy life, finding even 5 spare minutes may seem hard. Here are some times you may be able to fit in a few minutes of walking or stair climbing:
- During television commercials
- During coffee breaks
- During lunch breaks
- While talking on a cellular phone
- While waiting for a subway train, a bus, or an airplane
- During intermission at a concert or half-time at a ball game
Also, there’s always the option of doing two things at once. For example, if you usually read the paper in the morning before work, think about reading it while cycling on a stationary bicycle. After you park the car or get off the subway and are walking to your office, take a more roundabout route. If you’re meeting a friend, walk around the park or a shopping mall instead of sitting in a cafe eating croissants.
Some people find it useful to schedule their exercise for a certain time each day. Then it becomes as much a part of the normal routine as eating, brushing teeth, watching the news, or washing dishes.
Exercising For Health – The Least You Can Do
By · CommentsTo reduce your chances of diseases, your exercise program should have three components.
- It should contain endurance activities of “moderate intensity.”
- You should follow it 5 to 7 days a week.
- It should total about 30 minutes per day.
In addition, most exercise guidelines suggest that people also do resistance exercises at least twice a week. These exercises should stress strengthening the largest muscles of the body.
The exercise you choose is up to you. It can be something you do special, outside your ordinary activities. Or it can be chores you’d be doing anyway. Or it can be something fun.
More Personalized Measures of Moderate Exercise
Common sense says that moderate exercise means different things to a 20-year-old and to her 80-year-old grandmother or to an Olympic athlete and to someone whose 10-hour workday is spent at a desk. The activities listed above don’t take differences in age, fitness, or health into account. You may find it more sensible to choose moderate exercise based on what is moderate for you.
One definition of moderate exercise is an exercise that gets your heart beating at about 50% to 70% of its maximum beating rate. To estimate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220.
For example, if you are 50 years old, your maximum heart rate is probably about 170 (that is, 220 minus 50). To exercise moderately, you would want to get your heart beating between 85 and 119 beats per minute (50% to 70% of 170).
To tell how fast your heart is beating, take your pulse. You should be able to find your pulse at your wrist or where your jaw meets your neck. As you watch the second hand of a watch go around for 1 minute, count how many times your heart beats. Or count the beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4. If you have trouble, your doctor or nurse can show you how to take your pulse.
Some people can’t reliably estimate their maximum heart rate by subtracting their age from 220. For example, some blood pressure drugs lower a person’s maximum heart rate. Diabetic nerve disease can sometimes change the heart rate as well. Such people need to use a different rule.
If you don’t want to use your heart rate, try the conversation rule: If you are too out of breath to carry on a conversation, you’re working too hard.
Exercise for People with Diabetes – What to Consider?
By · CommentsEven though an exercising-for-health program is not very strenuous, you still should not start upon your own. People with diabetes should always check with their doctors before starting to exercise. So should people with heart or blood vessel diseases, nerve disease, loss of feeling, or another chronic health problem. Your doctor can make sure you have chosen a program that won’t overstress your heart or worsen your diabetes or complications.
In addition, people who are not used to exercise should start slowly and work up to 30 minutes a day. Remember, you’re trying to learn healthful habits for the rest of your life. Overdoing it in the first week will just give you sore muscles and a reason to quit.
Exercise In Weight-Loss Maintenance
By · CommentsExercise and a reduced-calorie diet have interlocking roles in weight loss. Cutting calories is the best way to take weight off. But for various reasons, weight tends to creep back up. Exercise, on the other hand, is not so good for helping people lose weight. It just doesn’t burn enough calories. But exercise helps people keep from gaining (or regaining) weight. It also seems to slow or prevent weight gain as people get older.
Tips For Sticking With An Exercise Program
Clearly, starting and staying with an exercise program can make a big difference in how much weight you keep off. But how do you keep exercising week after week and month after month?
Experts believe sticking with an exercise program is easier if you:
- Vary your activities so that you won’t get bored or overstress yourself.
- Choose activities that are unlikely to injure you.
- Exercise with a group.
- Choose activities that are fun.
- Choose activities that mesh with your life – that you can do with small children in tow, for example, or in a climate with 6 months of winter.
- Set specific goals and have a plan for reaching them.
- Be alert to exercise’s good effects on you – how many stairs you can climb, for example, or how long you can dig in your garden without taking a break.
- Ask your friends and family members for encouragement and support.
- Keep a record, such as a chart or notebook, of your exercise so that you can see how you’re doing.
- Play music while you exercise.
- Find a role model – someone who has similar constraints on his or her life but is able to stick with an exercise program.
- Schedule a time in your day for exercise just as you plan time to eat, sleep, and read the paper.
- Don’t overdo it.
It’s also important to keep in mind that people vary in how quickly they build muscle and improve fitness. It may take 2 to 3 months before you notice any changes. Sometimes, people exercise for a few weeks and then quit because they don’t think it’s working. In fact, they just didn’t wait quite long enough.
Diabetes Creates An Extra Load
By · Comments“Diabetes made me tired. I didn’t want to exercise. I didn’t want to do anything, really,” says Isaiah Carpenter. He blames his mM insulin dose in part for weight he gained after his diagnosis. He explains what his doctor told him about insulin: “It increases your hunger, and it also chemically reduces the possibility of the body letting the fat go during metabolism. So the more insulin you take, the more weight you gain.”
Diabetes had another effect on his weight as well. “With diabetes, my hands get cold fast. My feet are cold all the time, and the only time that they warm up is when I’m going to sleep,” Carpenter says. Because he felt cold so often, and because he had to work outside in below-zero temperatures in the winter, he ate more food to help him stay warm.
When he weighed more than 400 pounds, he was taking 190 units of insulin a day. But when Carpenter joined a weight-loss clinic, they changed his medication so that he would no longer have to fight the effects of the insulin. He started on two diabetes pills, metformin and acarbose. These helped him control his diabetes better and let him cut way back on his insulin. The weight-loss clinic also started him walking every day and put him on weight-loss drugs. A year later, he had lost 65 pounds and was continuing to lose weight.