Diabetic Weight Loss Plan
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When you are diagnosed with diabetes, it may seem like the end of an enjoyable life, but that doesn't need to be the truth at all. With the right diabetic weight loss plan, you can lose the weight to regain your health in as little as a few weeks time.
Were I to cover all the particulars of an effective diabetic diet, this page would definitely turn into a lengthy pamphlet, if not a book, so instead, I'll devote a page to deal with that topic in the near future and link to it from here. But let me cover the high points briefly here to give you some ideal of how to get started.
Diabetic Weight Loss Plan
Step One - Change to Healthy Eating Habits
Since you need a good diabetic weight loss plan to reverse or control your diabetes, you need to change the way you eat. There are many changes that may need to be made, but the following principles will help you get started.- Use only natural, low glycemic index sweeteners. Two that I know of are Stevia, and Xylitol. I believe Agave nectar also falls in this category, although I've never used it personally.
- Avoid sugar, corn syrup, and especially high fructose corn syrup. Avoid aspartame in all forms as well.
The first three provide empty calories with no nutritional value.
Aspartame, although pushed as diet food by the food industry, is actually a drug developed to treat ulcers. It is habit forming, makes you crave sweets, and poisons nerve cells throughout your body.
Don't take my word for it, read Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
, by Russell Blaylock, MD, a doctor who has extensively studied the effect aspartame has on our systems.
If you don't want to invest in the book, you can probably get it through your public library. I noticed it is available for Kindle as well.
- Eat a low glycemic load diet. If you don't understand what this means, there are several good books that explain the concept. One is The South Beach Diet - The Delicious, Doctor-designed, Foolproof Plan For Fast And Healthy Weight Loss
.
Another is PACE: Rediscover Your Native Fitness
.
Both of these books are programs created by Heart Specialists to help their patients lose weight. Both also emphasize a low glycemic load diet. If you don't understand what that is, either of these books will explain it in detail.
- Add nutritional supplements to your diet if this healthy eating plan doesn't result in enough weight loss.
Diabetic Weight Loss Plan
Step Two - Exercise Efficiently
There are many types of exercise that will help with your diabetes. However, there are two that will probably help far more than any others.
The first is the program I mentioned earlier. In just 12 minutes, about three times a week, Dr. Sears has proved that you can improve your lung capacity, your cardiovascular health, your blood sugar control, and lose weight.
If you've always hated exercise, you owe it to yourself to at least check this book out.
On the other hand, if you're just way too busy to spend hours doing exercises, this book provides the perfect solution as well.
You can get a DVD demonstrating stretches called the 15 Minute Stretching Workout + DVD
If you don't want to invest in either of these resources, they would probably be available through the public library.
But if you want to make stretching a part of your lifestyle, either the DVD or book would probably be valuable to own as a reference.
Diabetic Weight Loss Plan -
Step Three - Add Helpful Nutritional Supplements
As with diet, supplements for diabetes deserves a page of its own, since there are many supplements that will enable you to reverse, and overcome, blood sugar control problems. However, a few target weight control specifically, so I'll deal with those briefly here. They are:
- Chromium Picolinate -This trace mineral helps your body use sugar more efficiently thereby helping you lose weight. Up to 1000mcg. per day are recommended to bring blood sugar under control.
But if you are on diabetes medicines be sure you let your doctor know you are adding Chromium to you diet so he can monitor your blood sugar and be sure it doesn't drop too low.
Using Chromium can help you avoid sugar cravings that leading to high carbohydrate snacking.
Studies have shown that taking 200 to 400 mcg. of Chromium can help people lose weight and gain muscle according to Dr. Mark Stengler in The Natural Physician's Healing Therapies.
- Cinnamon extract -Substances in cinnamon will lower sugar circulating in the blood stream, so it is an excellent supplement to take with high carbohydrate meals.
- Fiber - I recommend Salba or Gluccommanon since both will provide feelings of fullness, thereby helping you lose weight, while at the same time helping lower blood sugar spikes by slowing the absorption of carbohydrates in your intestines.
If you can take your fiber about a half hour before you eat, it will best help you control your appetite, but if you can't remember, it is better to take it with your meal than not at all.
- Gymnema Sylvestre -This herb has been found effective in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. It actually helps the pancreas make more insulin producing cells according to animal studies. It also increases enzyme activity that helps your body absorb and use sugar. More importantly perhaps for weight loss, it seems to block the taste of sweetness so you quit craving sweets. This herb is best taken about a half hour before meals. Dr. Stengler says an effective supplement should have 24 to 25% gymnemic acids, and he recommends 400 to 600 milligrams daily in capsule form. Take it a half hour before eating for best results.
There are no side effects, but its effects haven't been proven absolutely safe during pregnancy, so avoid it if you're pregnant. If you are on diabetes medicines you'll need to work with your doctor when adding gymnema to be sure your blood sugar levels don't drop too low.
- Irvingia Gabonensis - For all the details about this powerful weight loss supplement click on the preceding link, but to make a long story short, it helps you lose weight four different ways without any changes to your diet or activity level. With changes it should be even more effective.
Most of these supplements can be ordered from the Life Extension Foundation by clicking on the link below. Although their supplements aren't cheap, they are high quality.
However, if you don't feel you can afford them from LEF, you can get many more economically from Vitacost, or you can Shop Vitamin World for weight management products to help you stay on the right track!
Either of these options are more economical than Life Extension, but the supplement quality is probably lower as well.
Some, such as the Irvingia, to my knowledge aren't available from other places except Life Extension.
Diabetic Weight Loss Plan
A diabetic weight loss plan doesn't have to be complicated or drudgery, but to be effective it will probably need to involve changes in the areas mentioned above.
ConclusionsIf you only have a few pounds to lose, you may be able to lose them simply by avoiding most, if not all sugar in your diet.
But if you need to lose 25 pounds or more, you will probably need to make changes in all the areas mentioned above to get the needed results.
The more effective your diabetic weight loss plan, the more quickly you can lower your blood sugar naturally and recover from diabetes with all of its threatening health complications.Although conventional medicine acts as though this isn't a possibility, doctors who are open to natural therapies consistently insist a cure for type 2 diabetes is completely possible.
This isn't a health challenge we've yet had to deal with, but I believe we've avoided it by implementing many of these steps when my husband was diagnosed with hypoglycemia several years back.
Had we not been willing to make changes I'm quite sure he would be diabetic by now, as most of his brothers are. I'm thankful this is one health challenge he isn't currently facing.
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