Diabetes - Adopting A Healthy Lifestyle Can Help
Diabetes means a group of diseases that affect your body’s ability to use blood glucose appropriately. Glucose is vital to our health because it's the main source of energy for our muscles, tissues and most importantly our brain. Having diabetes means having higher than normal glucose level in our blood. This can lead to serious consequences, as it is a chronic and progressive disease.
Here are some tips for adopting a healthy lifestyle:
1. Follow a regular and fixed diet. Your doctor/dietician will help you deciding what and how much you eat. With little planning, you can include your favourite foods. Some important tips for diet control-
- Don’t delay or skip meals
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Take a fixed amount of food at fixed time everyday
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Avoid overeating
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Include variety including vegetables, whole grains, fruits, non-fat dairy foods. Don’t eat too much of one type of food.
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Space your meals equally throughout the day.
2. Be physically active, means you start exercising.
A. You should be involved in a moderate activity for at least 30 minutes a day for at least 5 days a week.
B. Examples of exercise-
- Aerobic activity like walking, biking, swimming
- Flexibility exercises like yoga and stretching may be done.
- Strength training like lifting weight should be done twice a week.
- Being active throughout the day like parking your car as far as possible, taking stairs instead of elevator, taking your dog for a walk etc
C. You can increase the time for exercise gradually.
D. If you are overweight or obese, you need to lose weight (at least 5-10% of your initial weight).
E. Don’t go for exercise on an empty stomach.
3. Regular blood sugar monitoring is very important.
In case you have a concern or query you can always consult an expert & get answers to your questions!