Diabetes Care

Exercise and staying physically active will have a synergistic effect on your weight loss plan. After all, as already mentioned, diet only makes up one part of your diabetes management. For the most effective method, you need both diet and exercise to control your weight, which in turn leads to better diabetes management.

However, for the diabetic person, too much exercise may prove to be too strenuous. So how do you know when enough is enough?

The good news is that the federal government regularly puts out the Dietary Guidelines for Americans where they publish suggestions on how much activity Americans should aim for.

Dietary Guidelines
According to the Guidelines, people with pre-diabetes (those who suffer most of the risk factors of diabetes but do not have the condition), diabetes, and the adult public in general should set a goal of 30 minutes minimum on most days for doing any of the following physical activities:

1) Walking
2) Gardening
3) Doing yard work
4) Swimming
5) Cleaning the house
6) Or anything that increases your heart rate and causes you to break a sweat
7) Children or teenagers, on the other hand, are advised to aim for 60 minutes every day.

And now for the Steps
a) First, get your doctor’s OK: This is important since most people with diabetes or pre-diabetes have heart or other diabetes-related problems. Consult your doctor for his opinion on some safe exercises that you can perform.

b) Get Started: The best way to do a successful exercise plan is to find an activity that you enjoy doing. Believe it or not, your enthusiasm for an activity can be a huge factor to ensure that your exercise plan is successful.

But when you choose your activity, you should also consider another factor – that is, whether it fits with your schedule or not. A suggestion would be to choose two activities – one that you can do outside when the weather permits and one that you can do indoors in case of bad weather.

And really, that is all to exercising, because getting started is the only difficult part of the whole deal. Once you are through the first step, then you are on your way to enjoying a healthy, full life even with diabetes.