How To Control Your Weight When You Have Diabetes
1. Clean Up Your Diet
Weight loss can only happen if you create a calorie deficit, which means you’re burning more than you’re taking in. A deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day will result in a 1- to 2-pound loss per week, according to the OAC.
Wondering how to calculate your calories for weight loss? to do the job and help you track your intake, so you can stay focused and achieve your goals!
People with type 2 diabetes should limit or avoid simple carbs like white bread and pasta, cereal, sugary drinks and desserts because they tend to raise blood sugar levels, which will then in turn produce more insulin and may lead to increased resistance and weight gain.
Foods rich in soluble fiber are recommended, though, as they may improve glycemic control and decrease hyperinsulinemia. Fiber also keeps you full longer .
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2. Add More Exercise
Regular exercise will help with weight loss since you’re burning extra calories, plus it improves insulin sensitivity and lowers blood sugar levels, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Set a weekly goal to get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity , as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And on two or more days per week, aim to include strength-training activities that work all your major muscle groups.
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4. Consider Bariatric Surgery
What Causes Weight Loss In Diabetes
If you experience unexplained weight loss, you should see a doctor. It is possible you may have what is termed prediabetes. This means that your pancreas and insulin production are already becoming compromised resulting in increased fat-burning because your glucose is not being properly metabolized to give your body the energy it needs to function. This increased burning of fat causes weight loss which needs to be evaluated by a doctor to determine the cause.
According to the CDC, 88 million US adults or more than 1 in 3 have prediabetes. More than 84% do not know they have it. With prediabetes, blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough yet to be diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes raises your risk for Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. The good news is if you are diagnosed early enough, you may avoid full-blown diabetes and its long-term effects on other systems in your body.
Several studies have proven that, although there is no cure for Type 2 diabetes, early diagnosis can actually reverse it for some people. Through diet changes and weight loss, you may be able to reach and maintain normal blood sugar levels without medication.
A persons likelihood of remission from diabetes is greatest in the first five years after being diagnosed. Unfortunately, many people dont attempt to lose weight and many doctors dont know this either so they dont give patients the proper guidance and encouragement.
Dr. Lean reported
Up The Ante On Diet + Exercise
The most basic answers are adjusting your diet and exercise. Talk to your doctor and to a nutrition specialist about a food plan that takes the insulin effects into account. Work a bit more activity or exercise into each day. Sometimes, your insulin dosage should be adjusted when exercising.
Dont self-adjust the dosage or timing of your insulin to accommodate eating more calories. You can end up gaining more weight. However, its good to self-adjust insulin for the purpose of fine tuning the dosage. Of course, you want to keep your doctor informed and continually work on good diet and exercise habits.
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How Can I Help My Child
Your emotional support is an important part of helping your child get to a healthy weight. Overweight kids can have low self-esteem or feel guilty. Try to stay positive and talk about being “healthy” rather than use terms like “fat” or “thin.” Help your child understand that all healthy people need to actively manage their weight even you.
And remember that kids pick up on parental attitudes and actions about weight and eating after all, you buy the food and cook the meals. By buying healthy foods and cooking nutritious meals, you provide the tools your child needs to get to a healthy weight.
Symptoms In Children And Teens
Type 2 diabetes is more likely to appear after the age of 45 years, but it can affect children and teens who:
- have excess weight
- slow healing of cuts or wounds
- numbness or tingling in hands and feet
- itchy skin
If caregivers notice these symptoms, they should take the child to see a doctor. These are also symptoms of type 1 diabetes. Type 1 is less common but more likely to affect children and teenagers than adults. However, type 2 diabetes is becoming more common in young people than it was in the past.
Learn more here about how diabetes affects children and teens and how to spot the symptoms early.
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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.
Symptoms In Older Adults
At least 25.2 percent of people aged 65 and above have type 2 diabetes in the United States. They may have some or all the classic symptoms of type 2 diabetes.
They may also experience one or more of the following:
- flu-like fatigue, which includes feeling lethargic and chronically weak
- urinary frequency
- blurred vision
A person may have mild or subtle symptoms for many years, but these can become in time. Further health problems can develop.
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Is Weight Gain Or Weight Loss A More Common Side Effect Of Diabetes Medication
Neither weight gain nor weight loss are more common with diabetes medications. There are several different types of diabetes medications available. They work in different ways to help lower blood sugar. The risk of weight gain or weight loss depends on the medication.
Weight gain can discourage people from continuing their medications. And when people stop taking their diabetes medications, their risks of diabetes complications go up. Make sure to let your healthcare provider know if you notice any big changes to your weight. They may recommend changes to your medications to better manage this side effect.
Metformin For Non Diabetics
You must know that it is never advisable to lose weight by giving birth to other health issues and severe diseases. Weight loss is not a one-day thing. It takes time and patience, both as a whole.
A doctor never prescribes any oral medication for such a long time. With time, the body gets habitual to these drugs, and such an addiction is harmful to our well-being.
It is not a good option to keep our health at stake for anything we have other options. Instead, physical exercises and healthy diet plans can help you with weight loss without causing any side effects.
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How Can I Reduce The Risks Of Weight Loss
One factor that we are unable to change is our age. Elderly people often dont eat enough and lose weight due to loss of taste and smell, medications or being a shut-in who is socially isolated.
Though there is no way to control how we age over time, there are ways to reduce the risk of losing weight in the elderly. Providing more social activities, being delivered Meals on Wheels and attending senior centers are just some of the ways that seniors can decrease their risk for weight loss.
For people with diabetes, anytime your blood sugar is too high, you are at risk for weight loss as your body must get energy from somewhere, so it will pull from muscle and fat stores.
To decrease the risk of weight loss with diabetes, keep your blood sugars in your target range and your A1C below 7 percent. Eat a healthy diet, count your carbohydrates and exercise most days of the week.
Message For The Clinic
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For patients with T2DM, the major causes of morbidity and mortality are cardiometabolic complications, which are in themselves associated with excess body weight.
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Although weight loss improves cardiovascular risk factors, it has not been unequivocally demonstrated to reduce cardiovascular event rates.
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While definitive evidence is awaited, physicians should encourage weight loss in all overweight patients with T2DM, especially in light of other benefits of weight loss, such as improvements in mobility.
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How Diabetes Causes Muscle Loss
- Date:
- Kobe University
- Summary:
- Diabetes is associated with various health problems including decline in skeletal muscle mass. A research group revealed that elevation of blood sugar levels leads to muscle atrophy and that two proteins play key roles in this phenomenon.
Diabetes mellitus is associated with various health problems including decline in skeletal muscle mass. A research group led by Professor Wataru Ogawa at the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine revealed that elevation of blood sugar levels leads to muscle atrophy and that two proteins, WWP1 and KLF15, play key roles in this phenomenon. These findings were published on February 21 in the online edition of JCI Insight.
Muscle mass decline associated with ageing impairs our physical activity, making us susceptible to a variety of health problems and thus leading to shortened lifespans. Age-dependent muscle mass decline and the consequent impairment of physical activity is known as “sarcopenia,” a serious health burden in aging societies.
The team investigated the mechanism for how the abundance of KLF15 is increased in skeletal muscle of diabetic mice. They found that elevation of blood sugar levels slows down the degradation of KLF15 protein, which leads to an increased amount of this protein. Professor Ogawa’s team also discovered that a protein called WWP1 plays a key role in regulating the degradation of KLF15 protein.
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Benefits Of Weight Loss In The Prevention Of T2dm
The potential to prevent or delay the onset of T2DM in high-risk individuals through lifestyle interventions such as diet modification, weight reduction and increased physical activity has been established in several clinical trials. Furthermore, follow-up studies show that shorter term interventions can have a long-lasting effect on risk factors and diabetes incidence the so-called legacy effect years after the lifestyle interventions have finished .
Three studies demonstrate this effect clearly. In a trial conducted in 577 adults with impaired glucose tolerance from 33 clinics in Da Qing, China, individuals were randomised to lifestyle intervention for 6 years , or to a control group . All interventions were associated with a significantly reduced risk of developing diabetes compared with the control group . In 2006, a long-term follow-up of the Da Qing group identified a legacy effect, with continued benefits beyond the end of the trial. Compared with the control group, the three intervention groups combined had a 51% reduced incidence of diabetes , and a 47% reduction in the incidence of severe, vision-threatening retinopathy over the 20-year interval ,.
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Why Type 2 Diabetes Can Cause Weight Loss
One of the early signs of type 2 diabetes is unplanned weight loss and not just a pound or two. Unexplained weight loss of 10 pounds or more in a short period of time is cause for concern, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The culprit? Insulin resistance.
“If the body is not able to sensitize insulin, meaning it’s not taking glucose from the blood and into the cells to be used as energy, the body will need to find an alternative energy source. It may then turn to utilizing fat and/or muscle as its energy source,” explains Maya Feller, RD, CDN, a dietitian who specializes in nutrition for chronic disease prevention. “The net effect is unintentional weight loss.”
Feller notes, though, that this is more common when someone has type 1 diabetes.
Benefits Of Losing Extra Weight
There are so many benefits to losing extra weight both physically and emotionally.
Extra weight around your waist means fat can build up around your organs, like your liver and pancreas. This can cause something called insulin resistance. So losing this weight could help the insulin you produce or the insulin you inject work properly.
And as you start to lose weight and get more active, you and your healthcare team may need to look at your medication, especially if you treat your diabetes with insulin or sulphonylurea. This might mean reducing the dose or making other adjustments, but talk to your healthcare team about it. For some people, needing fewer diabetes medications is a great motivation for losing weight.
Although getting type 1 diabetes has nothing to do with weight, losing any extra weight will help you reduce your risk of complications and could mean injecting less insulin.
And if you have type 2 diabetes, losing around 5% of your body weight can have real benefits for your health. If you have obesity, you are more likely to put your diabetes into remission if you lose a larger amount of weight,15kg , as quickly and safely as possible following your diagnosis. This could mean coming off your diabetes medication completely a life-changing possibility. This is even more likely if you lose the weight nearer to your diagnosis and quickly. It’s a myth that losing weight slowly is better for you.
Douglas Twenefour, our Deputy Head of Care and dietitian
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How Is It A Symptom Of Diabetes
It can be of concern if body cells dont get enough glucose, or blood sugar, because our body cells need energy to function and carry out all the cellular processes that keep our body functioning.
If body cells dont receive enough energy, they must get it from somewhere. Generally, they will pull energy from fat and muscle, causing weight loss.
The combined affect of the three polys, polyuria, polydipsia and polyphagia, increase the chances of weight loss. Blood sugar is not getting to the cells, so the person experiencing these symptoms often feels hungry all the time .
The person who is developing diabetes will also have frequent urination, or polyuria. Sugar is lost through the urine more often, so calories are lost. With polydipsia, or frequent thirst, the body becomes dehydrated from loss of urine and thats when the thirst sets in.
All these affects combined set the recipe for rapid weight loss, especially when referring to Type 1 Diabetes. When Type 1 Diabetes first sets in, the person will experience very high blood sugars, often greater than 1,000 mg/dL.
The person is essentially in Diabetic Ketoacidosis, and the body has started to shut down insulin production. This produces ketones, which are essentially acids in the blood. When theres no insulin or insulin levels are very low, muscle and fat is used as fuel for the body causing weight loss.
Diabetes Hair Loss: Why It Happens And What You Can Do
Diabetes hair loss is not a new concept. Diabetes can have many adverse affects on the body, including hair loss or thinning hair. The majority of the time the hair loss grows back, though in some instances it may be permanent.
This can be scary and extremely distressing, both for men and women. We value our hair, as it is closely tied to our identity and our personal style. You cant deny that feeling of awesomeness when you first walk out of the salon or barber shop after a fresh new cut.
Luckily, diabetes hair loss can be controlled and treated with the right methods. Lets take a deeper look into the root causes and what you can do about it.
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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.
The Dilemma Of Weight Loss In Diabetes
Marion J. Franz The Dilemma of Weight Loss in Diabetes. Diabetes Spectr 1 July 2007 20 : 133136.
People with diabetes receive mixed messages about weight loss from magazines, newspapers, friends, family, and, yes, even health professionals. Few subjects have accumulated as much misleading and potentially dangerous folklore as the subject of obesity. A common message is that losing weight is just a matter of willpower, and if you have been losing weight and reach a plateau, it’s because you’ve lost your willpower and are no longer following your diet. Furthermore, for people with type 2 diabetes, the message often is that weight loss is the answer to improving glucose control: If you just lose 20 lb, you won’t need insulin. What does research tell us about these issues, and what should our messages as health professionals be to people with diabetes?
Obesity is a serious worldwide problem and is associated with the risk of developing diabetes. Today, more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and 312 million of them are obese. In the past 20 years, the rates of obesity have tripled in developing countries that have adopted a Western lifestyle, with the Middle East, Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, India, and China facing the greatest increase. Consequently, the number of people with diabetes in these countries is expected to increase from 84 million in 2000 to 228 million by 2030.
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