How to be a Health Nut

     Over the years, diabetes has been synonymous with sugar. That’s why people think their primary goal is to avoid sugary foods at all cost. However, simply avoiding sugar should not be your top priority if you want to avoid diabetes.

      I’ve found that the central goal you should be focusing on to reduce your chances of being prescribed with prediabetes is to reverse insulin resistance. What exactly does this mean? Well, insulin resistance means that the body is unable to use the insulin it produces. However, insulin is vital because it helps with the breakdown of fat in adipose tissue and allows glucose to enter. Being insulin resistant is a major problem because it doesn’t allow the body to properly regulate blood glucose levels.

      One piece of advice to counter insulin resistance is to eat healthy (which may be difficult for some of us haha), while losing weight and learning to keep it off once you lose it. A tip to help do that is to learn to make your own food. This may be hard for those of us who never cooked before, but learning how to cook has its benefits. One is that  you can pick and choose exactly what ingredients go in it. Some fatty things to  limit are butter, oil, margarine, cream cheese, sour cream, and salad dressing. In other words, it is always best to try to avoid highly processed foods!

      We should also be cautious of our carbohydrates intake. Although, people tend to believe the problem with carbs is that we eat too much of it, that’s not it. The bigger problem is that the carb containing foods we eat usually have poor nutrition quality. Many have too much added sugar. They also tend to be made out of refined grain and therefore be low in fiber. Instead, we should be eating more low-fat dairy foods, whole grains, and fruits & vegetables because these carbs are packed with fiber and nutrients.

      I had the chance to try out these tips myself and realized how much foods I usually ate that were high in fats and bad carbs. However, I’m learning how to replace these foods with healthier options. For example, I switched out my regular white bread for whole grain bread when making toast for breakfast in the mornings. I’ve also made sure to drink low-fat milk along with it.

 

Why We Should be Worried

Hi guys! For the last two weeks, I’ve been researching and getting myself more familiar with the topic of diabetes. Did you know that as many as 28% of adults with full-blown diabetes don’t even know they have it? Heart disease, stroke, kidney damage, nerve damage, eye disease, foot damage, and hearing loss are all linked to diabetes. That’s why diabetes is the #1 cause of blindness, kidney failures, and amputations. Experts even predict that by 2050, one in three adults will have diabetes.

However, because complications take around 20 years to become apparent, identifying people at risk of diabetes early and taking corrective action can thankfully delay the disease and its consequences perhaps for the rest of their lives. Some major factors of diabetes would include family history of the disease (for me, that would be my dad’s side of the family), obesity, gestational diabetes, physical inactivity and older age. While not everyone will progress to full blown diabetes, overtime, prediabetes can cause much of the same underlying damage to tissues and organs.

One tip to avoid diabetes would be to exercise more. Moderate exercise 30 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is recommended. Honestly, this is kind of a challenge for me (being the embarrassingly unathletic person I am), but I do enjoy team based games, so maybe I’ll try to organize a few ultimate frisbee games with some friends. Another thing is that as Americans, in general, we all should consider ourselves at risk. Especially with so many fast food chains like McDonald’s, we tend to eat too much from these places. That’s why, my goals next are to find out what foods we should and shouldn’t eat to avoid diabetes, try (or avoid) them myself, and then share my thoughts/opinions on them. :)

Just a School Project (not really)

     Hi! This blog is dedicated to finding and sharing tips on how to get out of the prediabetic stage. My end goal will be to provide a plan that helps with this and will include foods to eat (and avoid), exercise recommendations, and everyday healthy habits. In addition, I will include some videos in which I share my experiences and reflections after I try out these tips myself.
     To be honest, I was inspired (and required) to make this blog because of a class project. The idea sounds really cool though. It's called 20% Time and it's basically when the students get to choose whatever topic they want to research in depth. Letting the students be in charge may be risky, but it's actually not a bad idea. Passion is the key to motivation so allowing the students to research something they're interested in makes them self-motivated to be successful in their projects. Do you know that Gmail came from Google allowing their employees a 20% Time? Honestly, the best (and lucrative in that case) ideas come from allowing people to be creative in what they want to pursue (with a little guidance of course).
     I decided to focus on prediabetes because my dad has it (and I probably will if I continue to consume so many sweets). Personally knowing some loved ones who have diabetes/prediabetes makes me passionate toward this project and interested in finding ways to treat it. That's why my question right know is "How can people get out of the prediabetic stage?" Throughout my blog, I will be working toward coming up with an answer to this in the form of the plan I mentioned earlier. Since I want my readers to know more about this topic and the ways to treat it, I will measure my progress/achievement by how much useful and applicable tips I provide that people can incorporate in their daily lifestyles. Thanks for reading and hopefully I convinced you to read the rest of my posts! :)