5 Weight Control Tips to Fight Type 2 Diabetes

1. Understand Your Relationship with Food

Eat Less When You Eat
Understand what makes you eat. Do you eat due to stress? Do you eat more when you are hungry? Do you eat large portions of food when you are celebrating an important event?

To understand your relationship with food, it may be wise to keep a food journal. Write down everything that you eat as well as the mood that you were in when you ate it. This method will not only help you track your food intake, but it may also help you to understand patterns about your eating behavior.

2. Plan Your Meals
One of the basic rules of weight control is to plan your meals. Avoid going shopping – or even eating – when you are hungry, as you will tend to eat more than you might otherwise eat.

At the beginning of each week, write down a basic outline of the meals that you will have, including breakfast. Make sure that you have all of the ingredients that you will need a day in advance so that you are always prepared.

In addition to planning your meals, plan snacks. Keep carrots, grapes, nuts, and other healthy items readily available so that when you are hungry, you will not be tempted to go for easy-to-find, but unhealthy, foods. Also, eating every two hours may help you to stay fuller from meal to meal, or snack to snack.

3. 30 Minutes a Day
The American Heart Association is just one of many national organizations that suggest exercising for 30 minutes or more each day. Exercise, ideally, should involve getting the heart rate up, such as a brisk walk, bike ride, jog, or even intensive cleaning.

However, in order to burn more calories, you should also lift weights in order to build muscles. Muscles help to burn calories even when you are sleeping.

4. Give Yourself Rewards
One excellent way to motivate yourself to drop pounds is to give yourself rewards for each pound that you lose or for fitting into a new clothing size. For example, promise yourself that when you drop a dress size, you will buy several new pairs of pants (you will need them, after all).

5. Drink Water
Drink a glass of water about an hour before each meal in order to fill your stomach so that you eat less at meal time. Along the same lines, drinking water throughout the day will help to keep you satiated longer. Keep in mind that drinking water adds no calories to your daily intake. However, soda and juices do add calories and should be avoided.

Make a goal to work out five days a week for four weeks.
Once you complete that first month, reward yourself with a day off,
then start the month-long routine again. You will be amazed at how
quickly four weeks will fly by – and at how good you will look feel at the
end of it!

Check Your Heart Rate During Exercise