How can I prevent diabetes?

Healthy Eating

To eat healthily, your meals need to be:

• Reduced in fat, particularly saturated fat. Saturated fat is fat that is solid at room temperature eg: butter, lard, copha, animal fat
• Contain little added sugar.
• High fibre, carbohydrate foods such as wholegrain breads and cereals, beans, lentils, vegetables and fruits.
• Regular and ideally spread evenly throughout the day.
• Fewer take-away food, chocolates, lollies, cakes, pies and cordials or fizzy drinks.

Learn to be a “label reader” to make sure you are getting what you are paying for – nutritious food.

For more detailed information and to work out a meal plan that’s right for you, talk to a dietitian or call Diabetes Australia or your nearest Diabetes Centre.

Regular Physical Activity

Regular exercise is important for everyone, but particularly for people with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

This is because exercise helps to manage diabetes risk factors. Those risk factors include your blood glucose, blood pressure and blood fats (cholesterol and triglycerides).

International research has shown that doing regular exercise, eating a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight can prevent or delay the onset of diabetes in someone who has pre-diabetes.

For those people already diagnosed with diabetes research shows that regular exercise coupled with a healthy diet can help manage body weight.

A healthy body weight can assist insulin in working better and lower blood glucose levels. It assists in reducing blood fats and blood pressure and improves circulation. It improves your physical fitness and makes you feel better.

Any physical activity that uses the large muscles of your body (legs, arms and buttocks) helps those muscles accept your insulin and use the glucose in your blood stream.

If you have not been physically active for a while, discuss with your General Practitioner how best for you to start to become physically active, ease into a routine very gently, say for 5 minutes every day, but work up until you can do 30 or so minutes every day.

While it is not important to join a gym or have special equipment and clothes, some things are important. If you are going to walk, make sure you have comfortable socks and shoes that support your foot, wear clothing that is suitable for the weather and take sunscreen and water if the weather is warm. The level of activity should allow you to hold a conversation while exercising. If you are unable to regulate your breathing or feel chest pain, it is important to stop and seek assistance.

Some ideas for increasing activity include:

• Walking, by yourself, with a friend or loved one, with your dog (or become an RSPCA dog-walker and help another creature who needs exercise)
• Bush walking with a group
• Swimming or aquarobics (you don’t need to be able to swim to do this)
• Bike riding, or even exercise bike riding
• Yoga
• Resistance training/gradual muscle building (this help improve balance as well as helping lower blood glucose levels)
• Visit your local YMCA and ask about their activity sessions
• Play with your children or grandchildren on the beach or in the park. Walk to and from school with them.
• Join a sports group like bowls, cricket, tennis, badminton
• Join a gym
• Grow a vegetable garden (and eat the results of your activities)
• Become a volunteer for Meals on Wheels, maintain the garden of a National Trust house or mow lawns for your less fit neighbours
• Walk around a different park or beach every day
• Routinely park the car further away from where you are going and walk 
• Use public transport
• Use the stairs instead of a lift/elevator
  

The activity you chose should not exhaust you, but it should interest you because you will need to do it regularly for the rest of your life.

Regular physical activity also helps you to feel fit and healthy, so be creative in finding as many ways as you can to be active.

Remember: Before starting any new type of physical activity, talk to your doctor to be sure it’s okay for you and your health.