Manage Weight for Diabetes

The amount of body weight you carry around does, in fact, affect your chances of getting diabetes. Excess weight makes the cells in the body resistant to insulin. Your body still makes insulin, but added weight prevents your body from using it the way it should. For this reason, body weight has a definite connection to whether you'll get diabetes. If you're heavy you're more likely to get diabetes. If you're at a healthy weight—and stay there—you're less likely to get this disease.

So managing your weight is a given. If you think you're currently overweight, you can help prevent diabetes by shedding some pounds. Lowering body weight by as little as 5 to 10 percent (10 to 20 pounds if you weigh 200 pounds) can improve your odds against getting diabetes. If you consider yourself to be at a healthy weight right now, remember that the average person gains 20 pounds between the ages of 25 and 55, so you're not necessarily off the hook. Your goal is to maintain your current healthy weight.

The good news is that up to half of all cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented if people achieved and maintained healthy body weights. And because diabetes isn't curable, prevention is key for living into the golden years without serious health problems

Computer games. Video games. Remote controls. Self- propelled lawn mowers. Clothes washers and dryers. Elevators. Garage door openers. We don't think twice about using these devices to make our lives easier. But, unfortunately, their use isn't doing anything to benefit our health. Our bodies were not designed for inactivity, yet we get less and less activity in our daily lives thanks to all these technological advances. In fact, 24 percent of us lead completely inactive lives, and only one out of five gets the recommended level of exercise. Limited daily activity combined with only occasional bouts of structured exercise translates into burning fewer calories, which can in turn lead to weight gain. And being overweight is the one factor most likely to increase our chances of getting type 2 diabetes.

Although lack of activity does contribute to being overweight, it is not the only factor. What we eat is equally important. Half of the average food budget is spent on food prepared and/or eaten outside the home—in restaurants, at work cafeterias, in cars after cruising through the drive-through of the local fast-food establishment, and after a quick call to the nearest pizza delivery house. These places don't always offer the healthiest food choices, or if they do, we don't order them. Although the amount of fat we eat has dropped in the past decade, the average person now weighs more. How did this happen? Probably because we get more calories than we did 10 years ago, even though fewer of them come from fat.

The third factor that helps decide whether we'll be overweight is our genetic blueprint. Are your grandparents overweight? Your parents? Your brothers and sisters? If so, you're more likely to be overweight. Much of the research on the genetic component of obesity was clone on twins who were separated at birth. Even though they were raised in different environments, most sets of twins will have similar body weights as adults—both being thin, both being average weight, or both being overweight. Today, researchers are trying to identify the gene or the group of genes that lends a hand in causing obesity, and one day there may be an answer.