Three Easy Things to Improve Diabetes Management

Managing diabetes can seem overwhelming and being overwhelmed is the first step toward discouragement and surrender. Don’t surrender. It would be just great if you didn’t have to change anything at all – that diabetes would just take care of itself. Unfortunately, change is necessary. But instead of overwhelming yourself try keeping it simple instead. I like calling it baby steps to a healthier you.

3 ways to improve type 2 diabetes management

Here are three simple baby steps to better health.

1. Eat more plants, especially nonstarchy vegetables

That is as simple as always having canned or frozen green beans, carrots, broccoli, yellow or zucchini squash, tomatoes, spinach, kale, asparagus, beets, cucumber, eggplant, cabbage, peppers, or keeping some salad greens in the crisper. Get low sodium cans and skip the added stuff like cheese sauce. Nonstarchy vegetables are a low carbohydrate, nutritious, filling, and help slow the digestion of any carbohydrate foods you eat along with them.

2. Eat at home more often

One of my YouTube projects is reviewing restaurant menus and choosing diabetes-friendly meal recommendations so I can tell you with some authority that it is very difficult to have an all-around healthy meal at virtually any restaurant. That doesn’t mean never eat out. It may mean that if you’re eating out at a restaurant (including lunch) 5 or 7 or 10 times a week a new plan may be wiser. By the way, unless you’re actually looking at restaurant nutrition information you cannot make healthy selections by instinct. In my ongoing project, I find that salad choices often do not make the cut.

3. Get some exercise

Make the time for exercise. And while the goal is 150 minutes per week you should know that any exercise of any level is better than none. Exercise not only works to improve glucose control directly but also indirectly. Directly means exercise stimulates your muscles to take in glucose, clearing it from your blood – ta da…better blood sugar levels. Indirectly means reducing stress and improving sleep with hormonal changes that help blood glucose control and lots of other things like high blood pressure.

That’s pretty simple stuff. If you can’t do all three, start with just one. The point is, if you keep doing what you’ve always done you’ll keep getting what you always got. Change is hard, but change is essential.