29 Jun Preventing Type 2 Diabetes
280 Australians develop diabetes every day, which is an astronomically high amount for such a serious disease. Diabetes has wide spread complications, such as blindness, amputations, heart disease and kidney disease.
Type 2 Diabetes, which is largely preventable, accounts for 85% of all cases in Australia. There are lots of behaviour changes you can make to reduce your risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.
Making healthy food choices
This is a key change you can make to improve your health, especially because there are many ways you could put this into practice.
Studies have found that those with a higher fruit or vegetable intake had a reduced risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes! The nation-wide recommendation is 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit each day. If you’re not quite reaching these yet, start by increasing by just 1 serve/day. A small change is better than none!
Another way you can start making healthier food choices is to swap to higher fibre carbohydrate options, such as multigrain/wholemeal bread, wraps and pasta or better quality cereal products, such as Weet-Bix or muesli. This will increase the fibre content of your dishes, which will slow the release of glucose into your blood stream, which is key for diabetes prevention.
Regular Physical Activity
If you’re not regularly active now don’t fear, it is never too late to start! Lots of research has shown the benefit of physical activity on preventing risk of diabetes. It also appears that all types will be beneficial!
A great place to begin is by increasing your incidental exercise, such as parking your car further away or using the stairs. You can also put some tweaks in to your work day to help get your steps up, such as walking while taking phone calls, standing up regularly or encouraging walking meetings. While they sound small, they can certainly add up.
If you’re already active, consider increasing your frequency, variety or intensity to continue making progress and reducing your risk of developing diabetes.
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Generally the first two recommendations can play a part in reducing or maintaining your weight. Starting to keep track of this key health marker can help. To account for daily fluctuations it can be useful to weigh yourself at the same time every day (such as when first waking up, after using the bathroom) and averaging the weight out over the week.
Joining the Life! Program
Diabetes Victoria have created a free program to assist with making and maintaining behaviour changes to reduce your risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. If you’d like to read more about the program you can do so here: https://www.sportsfitphysioandhealth.com.au/life_program/
For more personalised advice, you can book a time with our Dietitian Alex for Monday mornings or Tuesday afternoons both in-person or online.
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