Five tips to cope with type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic disorder and its common symptoms include increased hunger and thirst, frequent urination, weight loss and feeling tired.

Exercise is generally highly recommended along diet and medication for type 2 diabetic patients. Regular workout can lower blood sugar and lose weight.

These five tips from Health.com will help you in exercise albeit you are not used to it.

 

30 minutes workouts

Make up your mind to do exercise for 30 minutes a day. Even several brief workouts are fine to total up 30 minutes, if you are not comfortable to accomplish the task in one go.

“We need people with diabetes up and moving,” says Dr George Griffing Managing Director, Professor of Endocrinology, at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. “If you can do your exercise in one 30 minute stretch, fine. But if not, break it up into increments you can manage that add up to at least 30 minutes each day.”

 

Work out with friends

Working out in company of friends can be motivational and enjoying.

According to Vicki Conn, PhD, the associate dean for research at the University of Missouri in Columbia, “Having a friend call or setting up an exercise with a buddy may help. One of the things we found with our meta-analysis is that behavioral strategies work better; that means setting up some sort of stimulus in the environment where you exercise.”

 

Set small, attainable goals

Start with attainable goals like 10 minutes of walking every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

“Setting up very specific goals like that helps people a lot more than telling people, ‘Gee, you’ve got to exercise more,’” says Conn.

 

Reward Yourself

Reward yourself with anything (not necessarily with your favorite food) for accomplishing minor targets and then bigger ones.

You may say “OK, if I exercise 10 minutes, three times a week for the next three weeks, I’ll call my sister-in-law who lives in Australia,” says Conn.

 

Get an exercise ‘prescription’

A fitness instructor or physiologist can gauge how fit you are to do an exercise of what intensity and how to progress to the next level.

“It’s based on that individual’s fitness stake,” says Conn. “For a person that is very unfit, and has not been exercising, the exercise prescription will be at a low moderate intensity and then move to a slightly higher intensity and longer duration.”