Anne E. Daly, MS, RD, CDE, president-elect of health care and education for the ADA, says the New Zealand study shows that transforming your lifestyle can have a major impact on your health. To make nutrition an effective deterrent for diabetes, you'll need to make multiple visits to a dietitian, not just a single trip, says Daly, who is a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator at the Springfield, Ill. Diabetes and Endocrine Center. Your blood glucose should be checked every year if you have risk factors for diabetes, such as obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or a family history of diabetes. A reading of 126 milligrams per deciliter or above means you have diabetes and need to strictly control your blood glucose. As hard as it can be to control what you put in your mouth, food alone is usually not the answer to glucose control.
Exercise is also a key.
People have to rethink what they do with themselves and their time. Exercise is a distracter from food because the more minutes you are involved in physical activity, usually the less time you spend eating. How much fat should a person with diabetes have in his or her daily diet, compared to a non-diabetic, depends on the individual's health. It is usually recommended that no more than 30 percent of your daily calories come from fat, and of that amount, no more than 10 percent should be saturated fat, Daly says. Not necessarily, according to an eight-month study of 48 type 2 diabetics by researchers at McGill University in Montreal.