Diabetes and Your Lifestyle Plan

Is it Possible for You to Control Your Diabetes? Is it Possible for You to Avoid Diabetes Complications and Even Early Death Because of Diabetes?  

Living 24/7 with Diabetes

 Fact: Diabetes is a lifelong illness. Don’t think you can take your medicine, eat right, exercise regularly, and it will go away. It will not. Good blood sugar levels do not mean it has gone away. Your diabetes is just under good control at that time. Even if you don’t have to take any medications and can gain control with diet and activities that doesn’t mean you have a total and forever cure. Once you have diabetes you will forever live with the chance that it will get out of control again.

 It is up to you to give 110% of your efforts to keeping it under control. The quality of the rest of your life from this moment on depends on how willing you are to care for yourself. Stop. I must say this again. The quality of the rest of your life from this moment on depends on how willing you are to care for yourself. This one fact cannot be emphasized enough. All the teaching, all the training, and every ounce of help people are willing to give you is worth nothing unless you are willing to make the necessary efforts yourself. Many people are willing to assist and advise you, but that is all they can do—assist and advise you.

 Your efforts and level of commitment to those efforts will dictate to a high degree the quality of your life and the peace of mind you will have living with diabetes.  In order to make the necessary level of commitment with consistency you must have the mindset to do so. 

 Unfortunately, a good majority of diabetics don’t ever cross the hurdle of achieving the mindset to control and conquer diabetes.  Yet during times of trouble with complications every diabetic I’ve ever talked with and there has been many have all said, The wish they had taken better care of themselves. 

Even physicians and endocrinologists agree, if those with diabetes follow the guidelines of care and do it consistently, the results would be much better.  The high statistics of diabetes and problems would go way down.  Just to refresh your memory, here are a few statistics quoted earlier relating to the consequences of poor diabetes control. Each day:

• 4000 new cases of diabetes will be diagnosed.
• 600 people will die from diabetes complications.
• 200 people will undergo an amputation due to diabetes.
• 100 cases of kidney failure will occur due to diabetes

With such grim statistics, you have to ponder the questions, “Why don’t people with diabetes take better care of themselves? Why don’t they try to control their diabetes?

The answer is simple.  The process of controlling diabetes day in and day out is hard…especially if a person’s mindset is such that they are not motivated to make the lifestyle changes required.  It is too easy to push the possibility of devastating complications out of their mind…until the complications begin to strike.   It seems many people almost deny the fact of potential problems if you don’t gain and maintain control of your diabetes.  

Is it Possible for You to Control Your Diabetes? Is it Possible for You to Avoid Diabetes Complications and Even Early Death Because of Diabetes?  

The answer is yes…as long as you are willing to do so.  Learning to control your diabetes and learning to do it each day with good, positive feelings cam seem like an insurmountable task for many.  That’s why I wrote this book, to help point out some ways to help you help yourself.  

As I said, earlier, changing your lifestyle and revising your mindset is hard.  It is not like taking a pill each day and going on about your business.  However, in order to continue to be able to “go about your business” changing your mindset and your lifestyle is exactly what you must do if you have diabetes.

You cannot just say, “OK, I’m going to control my diabetes,” and have everything instantly fall into place.  Gaining and maintaining control does take time.  Remember, as long as you do put the effort into doing so you WILL get good results.

Diabetes and Life

The Circle of Life

The circle shown above includes every aspect of a human life. Some call it the wheel of life. As long as the wheel is in motion, everything is fine and equally distributed, and your life is in balance. Whenever more time is spent in one area of the wheel, that area’s time gets bigger, just like the swelling in a tire. Whenever swelling happens the tire does not roll smoothly and a blowout will eventually occur. The same principle holds true with life. If all areas aren’t given their proper attention and time portion, there will be a blowout in your life.

 A prime example of this is prevalent in our society today. There are many who constantly have conflict between two areas shown above: Career and Financial and Home and Family. Divorce, children and adults with substance abuse, and other family problems can often be traced back to the struggle of balancing time and attention between these two areas. Life is such that if you put too much effort into one area, other areas will begin to suffer, and life does not roll on so smoothly.

Each area of life’s circle will suffer if not given enough attention. The evidence of that suffering may not be immediately visible, but it will show up and can even cause troubles to appear in other areas of your life’s circle. 

The Diabetic Circle of Life

Look closely at each of the areas in this wheel. If any of these areas become unbalanced, your circle of life will also become unbalanced. Every area of this diabetic circle has a direct impact on the quality of a diabetic’s life. The best way for a diabetic not to be “labeled” by his or her disease is to maintain good balance on both the diabetic circle and the circle of life. I’ve seen events inaccurately blamed on diabetes that had other causes and vice versa. It is crucial to your peace of mind that you try to maintain good balance between both of these circles.  Gaining control of your diabetic circle of life will give you more power and energy to maintain control of your primary wheel of life.

 Labeling can occur in many areas of our lives: careers, social functions, even from friends and family. Many times I’ve heard people say about me, “Well, she’s a diabetic,” thus creating an immediate distinction or difference about me even at times when there was no logical reason to mention it. Most of the time when I’ve heard these comments I’ve thought, “So? My diabetes has nothing to do with this conversation.” Don’t think I take the attitude of trying to hide my diabetes. I’ve always been open and straightforward about it, but if there’s no logical reason to discuss it, why do it?

Is It Worth It?

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Is it worth it?” The real question at these times is, “Are you willing to risk letting the other areas of your life suffer for this one event or action that you may be contemplating? Or will this action help you in other areas of your wheel of life?” Often times, the answer you decide upon will affect the rest of your life.

 All too often individuals don’t take the time to consider the impact one action may have on the other areas of their life. This is especially true in the area of daily management of diabetes. The big piece of chocolate cake, the lack of exercise, and no blood sugar checks are all prime examples of high impact events on our health that we choose to ignore.  Is it worth it to ignore these things?

 Granted there may be no evidence the day it happens, but over time, the devastating impact of your choices shows up. Often these types of bad choices results in one or more of the horrible complications of diabetes. Complications that cannot be reversed. 

  Keep in mind that there are a lot of facts and concepts to master in order to keep diabetes under good control and in order to maintain a healthy life. Without sincere desire and determination to get good control of your diabetic life, and without an overall plan and step-by-step guide in each area, the process can often become overwhelming, and at best only moderately successful. But with good desire and determination as well as good planning and guidelines, the result can be very rewarding. Your diabetes can become something with which you simply live happily rather than being a huge controlling factor in your daily life. Everyone has challenges; diabetes just happens to be one of yours.

 Get the e-book Beat Diabetes Daily

 Check out these related articles on diabetes and lifestyle...

Want More Help with Diabetes? Click Here