Managing your weight
A healthy lifestyle is something everyone is recommended to follow but sometimes seems difficult to achieve. Being overweight can seriously affect your health but often people have their own reasons for losing weight. Making realistic long term changes to your lifestyle can bring huge rewards. Whether you want to be able to fit in to last summer’s clothes, play in the park with your grandchildren or to run for the bus without feeling out of puff, losing weight and keeping it off is well worth the effort.
But why is losing weight important?
One of the reasons for the increase in diabetes over the years is the increase in the number of people who are overweight. In fact more than four out of five people diagnosed with diabetes are overweight. We can’t ignore this fact that people who are overweight are at greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
For people with diabetes there are major health benefits from losing weight. Being overweight makes diabetes control more difficult as excess weight makes it hard for the body to use insulin properly (insulin resistance), whether the insulin is being injected or being made by the body. Insulin resistance is especially associated with excess fat around the waist and people from South Asian communities have a greater health risk associated with being overweight.
If you are overweight, losing weight will help to control
- blood glucose levels
- blood fats – cholesterol and triglycerides
- blood pressure.
Losing weight will also:
- reduce your risk of heart disease,
- improve your mobility
- reduce joint damage
- reduce tiredness
- help relieve stress
- help improve your self-esteem.