Obesity can cause your body to become resistant to insulin and this will affect both diabetics and non diabetics. If you are a diabetic, you will need to take more insulin to get sugar into your cells. And if you don't have diabetes, the prolonged effects of the insulin resistance can eventually cause you to develop the disease.
Dietician Heidi Lobel believes that diet is intricately linked to health and disease, and is continually being recognised as a very powerful medicine. "We know that type 2 diabetes is directly linked to obesity but what researchers are now just finding out is that even a modest weight loss of 5-10% of your starting weight, can significantly help the health of diabetic sufferers. Weight loss shows huge benefits including better blood sugar control, improvements in cardiovascular risk factors, blood pressure, decreased need for diabetic medication, and decreased risk of other diabetic complications such as kidney damage, blindness, fungal infections and lower limb problems."
Weigh-Less offers members support and guidance on their journey to weight loss, and in line with this has introduced a Diabetes Intervention Card as part of The Steps to Success Programme. The Diabetes Intervention Card is an informational leaflet that provides background information on the medical conditions associated to diabetes. The card also provides helpful eating tips for members with diabetes since their nutritional needs are different. Some of the tips are to eat dry beans, peas, lentils and soya, to limit salt intake, be active and to eat small regular meals.
There are many more guidelines provided which are clear and concise, and address the nutritional concerns diabetic members have regarding weight loss. The Diabetes Intervention Card aims at supporting members through their journey and dispels the myth that diabetics can't lose weight and control their sugar levels the healthy way.
