Session 8 on Taking Charge of What's Around

A week has passed since we last got together. Are you eating more sensibly now? Have you increased your activity level to 120 minutes this week? Are you recording this daily including your fat gram intake? If you're doing all these, you can't help but lose some weight. If not, don't despair for there's help on how to take charge of what's around you.

What are the things that make us want to eat and move less? Is it watching TV or reading? The next one does me in; it's my Waterloo. I swear that just the smell of food makes me gain weight. So what do we do to take charge of all of these?

For one thing, let's keep the food items that are high in fat and calories out of our environment whether it is at home or at work. Instead buy healthy foods like apples, oranges; the list is endless. Check this out if you like and then when you're done there, just hit the back browser arrow to come back here. Diabetes Food List.

Let's limit our eating in one place, shall we? And here's another thing. Let's not combine eating with another activity. To keep unhealthy foods out of our environment, let's make a shopping list before going to the supermarket. And for goodness sake, let's not go there when we're hungry.

Let's keep watching TV at a minimum and let's watch TV only if we're doing something like you know what. Exercise, that's what. Just walking or jogging in place will add to the number of minutes of exercise we have to do a week. Also, we can put things we need for exercise in plain sight like sneakers and workout clothes.

Now you have the ways to take charge of the things around you. Let's show diabetes who is the boss here. Remember that diabetes does not control us; on the contrary, we control diabetes. This type of positive thinking will take us on our way to beating diabetes.

For homework, identify what makes you want to eat and get rid of one. Then add a cue to make you more active. Increase your physical activity to 150 minutes this week. And please keep a record of your weight, food and drink consumption, fat gram intake and the number of minutes of the physical activity. Next week we'll deal with session 9 out of 14.