3 Reasons Weight Management is Challenging for Women with Type 2 Diabetes

What are these challenges?

The first problem is constant dieting. If you're a woman in this American society, you've been told through images, words and all kinds of media that you're just not thin enough, even if you are the right size for you. We take that inside, to heart, and we diet. The definition of diet is what we normally eat. The second definition is about restricting yourself to lose weight or perhaps for a medical reason. We fast, or we eat 500 calories a day or whatever it is. It's not difficult to lose weight. The issue is always keeping it off.

The problem for women with type 2 diabetes is that there is too much insulin in the body already. Carbohydrates raise blood sugar. Depending on the type of carbohydrate, blood sugar and consequently insulin levels will spike. High levels of insulin in your body effectively shuts down your body’s ability to burn your stored fat. The big problem with dieting is you are losing muscle mass. We need our muscle mass to be stable or increase through exercise and eating protein. Our muscles use the blood sugar in our system for fuel. When you lose muscle mass, you are less able to use the excess blood sugar in your bloodstream so it gets stored as abdominal fat.

When you restrict the amount of food you eat or drink, your body goes into ‘metabolic adaptation’ mode. What is that? When you go on a strict diet, your body perceives this as a threat to your survival. In response to this, your body dials down your metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories), which makes it more difficult to lose weight or keep it off.

When dieting, hormones shift. We have two main hormones that oversee our appetite. One is ghrelin, which tells us we're hungry and we need to eat. The second one is leptin, which tells us we're full and we can stop eating.

Because insulin is out of balance, it throws the appetite hormones out of balance. Ghrelin hormone goes up and we're hungry a lot. Leptin hormone goes down, which means we're not satisfied. We're not full. We need to eat more. This happens even when we have recently eaten.

The second problem is environmental factors that affect the level of fat in our bodies. There are a lot of pesticides in our food and hormones given to the animals we eat and more. This creates a problem for our bodies because these toxins have to be handled somehow. Because too much is toxic, if your body can’t get rid of these substances, it will store it in our fat to get it out of circulation. The other issue is plastics. A lot of the food or drinks we buy come in plastic containers and those are not only a problem for us, but also the environment. If you start losing weight too fast, these toxins will again be put into circulation and your body will work to store it in fat.

The third challenge is feeling like a failure. When you lose a lot of weight, you like it, you look good, you get a lot of positive feedback. Then it's really hard to keep it off. Remember you are fighting your own physiology to get your weight back to where it was. What happens? You start to gain weight back, and then you feel terrible about yourself. You feel like a complete failure.

So what can you do? The first thing is to stop dieting. This is an opportunity for you to say, okay, that's it. I'm going to learn how to eat, how to exercise, how to sleep, how to do things in my life that support me in my health, no matter what my weight.

1. Make small changes and do them consistently. It is possible to lose weight, the right kind of weight which is fat. But not through dieting.
2. Decrease the negative environmental issues by eating organic food - as much as you can. Organic food is expensive. You don’t have to eat everything organic but consider foods that have the most pesticides on them and buy these organic. You can find that out with the Environmental Working Group. Try to use glass containers or Pyrex containers or metal containers for food storage and water. Try to eliminate, as best you can, the plastics in your life.
3. Start to shift your mindset about your weight, your body and about who you are. Weight shifts all the time, but because of metabolic adaptation you are very likely to gain any lost weight back and perhaps more. You need a good support group and an accountability group to help with shifting your mindset about you.

Strict dieting is not the answer for anyone, especially if you have diabetes. The consequences of weight loss and weight gain can make your type 2 diabetes worse, leading to life limiting complications. This is not a temporary fix, it’s a long term solution.

You can learn more at my next free webinar – How to get your A1c to 5.7% and lower naturally and keep it that way. Click here for details.

Dr. Elaine

PS: Here is the LINK to part 3 of the Enneagram with Linda Frazee and me. And here is the LINK to sign up for a free Enneagram interview.

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the medical advice of your doctor or healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider for advice about a specific medical condition.

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