A diabetes diagnosis can be a jarring thing to take in. It’s understandable if your head is spinning and you’re trying to figure out what to do next. Aside from getting the necessary supplies to check your blood sugar and maintenance medications, there are likely certain lifestyle changes that need to be made. I created Step By Step Wellness and Weight Loss to serve you with diabetes coaching in Virginia to help you get on the right track. Keep reading for four things that you can do to get started healthily managing your diabetes.

Look to the future

It’s easy to want to look back on what got us here. What could I have done differently? Did I see this coming? There’s no sense in looking back on the past because you can’t it. Furthermore, you shouldn’t look at a diabetes diagnosis as a personal failure. There are a variety of factors that lead to the development of type 2 diabetes and not all of them are in your control. It’s important to understand that not everyone who gets type 2 diabetes is overweight and not everyone who is overweight gets type 2 diabetes. The relationship between your lifestyle and diabetes is incredibly complex and should be treated as such.

It’s said that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward. It’s time to move forward and look at what you can do to improve your overall health and make it easier to manage type 2 diabetes.

Understand the progression of diabetes

While type 2 diabetes can start mildly and is easily managed with diet and exercise, it can progress into a much more severe condition that leads to type 1 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or other conditions. While the potential for progression of diabetes shouldn’t be your only motivation to properly manage your condition, it can definitely help.

Start exercising

If all the benefits of exercise could be put into a single pill, it would be the most prescribed medication in the world. This includes the benefits of managing diabetes. Unfortunately, this cannot be done so we have to put in the effort ourselves.

You might be curious how exercise can help diabetes. Aside from burning off sugars that are already in your blood, exercise makes the insulin in your body more efficient. If you’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, it doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t make insulin anymore, it just means your cells aren’t properly using the insulin. Exercising makes it so that your cells will take in the insulin and makes it easier for your body to lower your blood sugar without help from medication.

Evaluate you’re eating habits

Keep in mind, you didn’t solely eat your way to diabetes with cookies, candy, and cupcakes. There are many factors that led to developing this condition. However, it’s important to eat a well-balanced diet that includes complex carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables, brown rice, whole wheat, and other foods like them. Avoidance of simple carbohydrates from pasta, white bread, and sugary foods can go a long way to helping you keep your blood sugar at a healthy level and preventing the progression of diabetes. Diabetes coaching can help you to establish a diet that is healthy and ideal for managing diabetes.

Need help? Get a wellness coach!

When it comes to diabetes coaching in Virginia, the programs I’ve created with Step By Step Wellness and Weight Loss are designed to help you reach your wellness and lifestyle goals. Schedule a free consultation with me today by filling out my online contact form. I’ll reach out using the contact information you’ve provided at the scheduled day and time that works best for you.