Maury M. Breecher, PhD, MPH
(The Diabetes Coach)
© 2009 ManageType2Diabetes.com
Do you want to learn how you can take control over DIABETES instead of letting diabetes control you?
Are you willing to exert the effort and develop the discipline to practice the skills you will learn about in these Life Lessons to become a fitter, healthier person, even though you have diabetes?
If you answered “yes” to all three questions, the Life Lesson Program is certainly for you and you are ready to jump right in.
If you answered “no” to even one of the questions, I am going to ask you to suspend your disbelief and pretend that you answered “Yes.”
Henry James, a turn-of-the-20th Century writer and scholar is credited with the saying, “Act as if….if you want to become.” The maxim is one that has been backed up by modern psychological research.
It makes sense. If you don’t believe you can change and become a healthier person, you have already struck out. But, since you are reading this, deep in your heart you know that you don’t want to give up. However, you are an honest person so have to acknowledge to yourself — that’s who matters isn’t it — that you have doubts. That’s natural.
What I want you to do is to PRETEND that you said “Yes” to all three questions. Resolve to put aside your doubts about eventual (and inevitable) success so you can pay attention and incorporate the knowledge and the deep learning that you will receive in these Lessons.
If you do this, I guarantee that in just a few weeks you will find that you actually are making changes in your life that result in measurable, positive changes. In other words, in a few weeks you will surprised the “self” you are today when you start waking up with more normal blood sugar levels. Beneficial side effects you will enjoy include weighing less, increased energy, a more positive mental attitude, and a clearer, more focused mind.
Your Second Assignment
Since you live in a mass media society you almost surely already know that excess weight contributes to your diabetic condition and to the other related health and emotional issues that trouble to you. So, I bet that you have tried diet after diet and actually lost weight, but always regained even more pounds.
Am I correct? If so, that undoubtedly has contributed to your out-of-control, overwhelmed feeling.
Don’t despair. By reading this far you have shown that you desire positive change in your life. So, here’s the essence of this lesson: Accept and act on something that you might have heard previously — diets don’t work.
I wrote a masters thesis detailing all the research that explains why this is so, but I won’t bore you with all that detail. Suffice it to say that when one is on a diet, one feels deprived.
In a book I wrote with a great weight-control expert, Robert Johnson, M.D., of Charleston, S.C., I quoted him as saying, “Take the “t” out of the word “diet” and you are left with the word, “die” and that’s how people feel when on a diet.”
So diets are not the answer; they are part of the problem. You already have, or soon will have as soon as you order it, part of the solution: The Permanent Weight-Control Solution, the book I wrote with Dr. Johnson. It is a gift that you receive from me when you sign up for the daily What Life Lessons Diabetes Teaches Us program. The Permanent Weight-Control Solution contains all you need to know to lose excess weight and permanently keep it off.
Encouragement to use what you learn from that book is just part of what you will be receiving in the daily Life Lessons Diabetes Teaches Us program. As your second assignment, I want you to agree to read that book and thus take what I consider to be the first step toward successful weight-control. In addition, I would like you to take the advice spelled out in detail in that book to NOT use your bathroom scale for the next month.
Put it out of sight, at least in the beginning weeks of this program. Break your dependence on the scale. It’s a crutch which, instead of supporting you, can actually sabotage your weight-reduction efforts. It is my belief that if you are trying to lose weight, you are courting failure every time you get on the scale.
Here’s why: Scales only measure pounds. But pounds of what? Fat? Water? Muscle?
In later Life Lessons, I will actually encourage you to “muscle up” because an increase in muscle weight is good. Muscle tissue burns up more glucose than other types of body tissue.
Also, the scale does not take into account that a person’s body composition and weight varies naturally from one time to another. For instance, your weight can fluctuate from two to six pounds on any day because of normal body water retention.
When you gauge your weight reduction success by checking to see how many pounds you have lost, you are setting yourself up for failure. In your mind, the scale becomes the final authority with the authority to make you feel good or bad. It becomes your master and you its slave. Tiny changes in its reading have the power to make you happy or depressed. Depressed feelings can lead to overeating, or eating the wrong types of foods, foods that rapidly increase blood sugar.
Even a scale reading that shows a drop in weight can backfire on you. We are only human and if we succeed we often feel that we should reward ourselves. Too often that reward is food. Too often we use a small drop in weight as shown by the scale to justify that extra portion or that sweet treat. (“After all,” says a little voice inside you, “you’ve been doing so well you deserve that sweet treat, even a heaping extra portion!”
Reasonable amounts of sweet foods are allowed in your Life Lesson program not as unscheduled rewards, but as scheduled portions of planned meals).
In a couple weeks, if you incorporate what you will learn in these Life Lessons you won’t need the scale to tell you if you are gaining or losing weight. You’ll check your clothes. At that time, you’ll ask yourself, “Do they feel looser?”
You will answer, “Good, my Life Lessons are working.”
Later, when you arrive at a healthier weight that you want to maintain, you’ll be able to use your scale as a friendly tool. To smooth out the inevitable daily ups and downs of water retention, I recommend you will use it once a week. That way the scale can act as a relatively early warning signal if you begin regaining too many unwanted pounds.
I’m not talking about four or five, or even eight or nine pounds of bounce-back weight after you have trimmed off a great deal of weight. After such a weight loss, it is a natural thing for your body to want to spring back and regain a bit of what was lost. As part of your diabetes control program, you have to control your weight, but you shouldn’t panic about this natural re-adjustment of several pounds.
The actual amount and number of pounds that you will lose and the amount you will regain varies in each person depending on height and body build. How much you decide to lose and how much you decide to allow yourself to regain are not decisions you need to make at this moment.
Don’t worry about those issues right now. You will set a weight-loss goal in a future Life Lesson. As for the amount you decide to regain, if you continue this program you will find yourself totally in control and knowledgeable about making that decision.
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From Life Lessons Diabetes Teaches Us at ManageType2Diabetes.com.
© 2009 by the Diabetes Coach, Maury M. Breecher, PhD, MPH