You Have Diabetes. Now What?
By Donna V. Scaglione
So you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes. You probably have been given a lot of information in a very short time and your mind is likely racing. Blood glucose testing, regular exercise, risk of blindness — the terms you’re hearing from your healthcare provider and the changes you’re being told to make can feel overwhelming. How do you count carbs? When are you going to find time to exercise every day? How did this happen?
With Type-2 diabetes, there are very specific steps to take to make sure your blood-sugar levels remain stable and complications from the disease don’t occur. But if you haven’t paid much attention to your health until now, your newly prescribed lifestyle can seem quite daunting. Consider these ways of making it more manageable.
1. Understand change
For some people, the most difficult part of living with diabetes is making the lifestyle changes necessary to remain healthy. That can be especially hard when you’re older and perhaps more set in your ways. In her Living with Diabetes blog, registered nurse Nancy Klobassa Davidson writes that change and human behavior is a three-part process, according to change theorists Kurt Lewin and Edgar Schein. Motivation, like a push from a loved one, comes first, followed by a decision that a change needs to happen, such as a plan to join a support group. Making the change stick is the last and toughest part.
“This final stage is when the change becomes habitual and includes developing a new self-concept,” she writes at MayoClinic.com. “You become a person identifying and living for wellness.”
