Here’s another thing that bugs me. When people are giving advice on how to improve your diabetes, one of the items is, “Lose weight.” That makes about as much sense to me as some thoughtless person telling a mom to “make your kids behave”! As a mother, I learned early on there is no way on God’s green earth that you can “make” your kids do anything that they do not do willingly, on their own accord. That is, unless you physically strap them down, tie them to a stationary object, or imprison them in a container. As a young mother, I was greatly disturbed by any “Sister White” quotes that said, “You must not allow your children to [you fill in the blanks].” How does she expect parents to “not allow” children to make a lot of noise, run in church, refuse to eat, etc. without physically restraining them? And then it’s only for that moment. Until someone pointed out to me that what she meant was “you cannot give your children permission to…” whatever. And that made complete sense! If the child does “whatever” he/she is doing it without your permission, and then you deal with it.
But I digress.
Frequently, you’ll see the advice, “exercise and lose weight,” as being the answer to improving diabetes. Yes, I understand exercise, but “losing weight” is a result of doing something, not something you do. Unless you “lose weight” by having bariatric surgery. It would make more sense to say, “exercise, cut calories, and do whatever works for you to lose weight.” You can’t just lose weight by wishing it to be gone!
The same holds true for the advice to “decrease insulin resistance” (or “increase insulin sensitivity”). You can’t just turn it down like turning the heat down on the stove. But when you try to find out how to decrease insulin resistance, there are as many ideas out there as there are people who write articles about it.
That being said, I will concede that the most frequent advice on how to decrease insulin resistance is exercise. And within that advice to “exercise” there’s a wide spectrum, ranging from a leisure 30-minute walk 3 times a week to aggressive aerobic exercise, strength training, and muscle building on a daily basis. Until I have proof to the contrary, I will still maintain that the ideal goal—and mandatory for a diabetic—is the conventional 10,000 steps/day (aka 5 miles of walking).
The next piece of advice on how to decrease insulin resistance is—wait for it—to “lose weight.” So we’ve come full circle to giving nebulous advice as the way to reach a nebulous goal.
The bottom line is that every person who wants to lose weight has to figure out what works for them and their body. When I was a young woman, all I had to do was go on a diet of Sego or Slim-fast for a couple weeks and I’d lose 5 or 10 lbs. easily. Needless to say, that doesn’t work for me any more! But it worked then on the same principle as what has always worked for me, and that is calorie-reduction. Only now it’s calorie-reduction in combination with LCHF (low-carb high-fat). Less carb = fewer calories.
In short, my fantasy goal is to achieve an acceptable A1C level (which is for another post). My objectives for doing that are to (a) decrease insulin resistance and (b) lose weight (both nebulous without action steps). The action steps are to (a) walk daily toward a fantasy goal of 5 miles a day and (b) stick religiously to a 1200-calorie diet which is low in carbs and high in fat (well, as high as you can be under 1200 calories!).
And it’s not just a diet but a way of life—a lifestyle. In other words, I don’t stop walking 5 miles a day and eating 1200 calories or less when I reach my weight loss goal and A1C goal. The lifestyle will continue as long as I’m alive. That is, if I want to stay alive!
And that’s my pea-brain thoughts for today.
