Effective Weight Management
The same things used to control your diabetes—a healthy diet and regular exercise—are the keys to weight control. Glucocil helps meet the greatest challenge of healthy weight loss—HUNGER—by (1) decreasing carbohydrate (calorie) intake; (2) reducing appetite; and (3) maintaining a feeling of fullness.
Your doctor may suggest you work with a registered dietitian (preferably a certified diabetes educator) to help develop a diet plan tailored to your individual likes and needs.
Dangers of being Overweight
Although there are several other types of diabetes, Type II diabetes (previously called adult-onset diabetes or non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus) accounts for approximately 90–95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. And eight of ten people with newly diagnosed cases of Type II diabetes are overweight.
Excess weight is a great concern because it is both a major risk factor for developing diabetes, and it promotes insulin resistance—the main mechanism behind Type II diabetes. Although people with Type II diabetes may have sufficient amounts of insulin in their systems, too much body fat makes it harder for the body to use the hormone effectively; i.e., unable to convert the extra blood glucose into energy. And since excess blood sugar is stored by the body as fat, uncontrolled diabetes can make weight problems worse. The good news is that loss of weight is one of the major ways of treating and curing Type II diabetes.
Although conventional lifestyle changes are often enough to reduce weight to a healthy level, some cases of obesity may require medical/surgical treatments (e.g., prescription weight-loss drugs; gastric bypass, etc.) Your doctor can inform you of the risks and benefits of these procedures.
Who is Overweight?
The most common (if not perfect) way of determining if you are overweight is the Body-Mass (BMI) index, a single-figure expression of weight in relation to height. Excluding extremely muscular people (among others), the BMI categories for adults are:
Normal: 24.9 or lower
- Overweight: 25–29.9
- Obese: 30–39.9
- Extreme (morbid) Obesity: 40 or higher
The location of the excess pounds is important. Although women tend to accumulate fat in the hips, buttocks, and thighs (“pear-shaped” obesity), some women and many men collect fat around the abdomen or waist. This “apple-shaped” obesity puts one at higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, as well as coronary heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, and other serious ailments.
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