Charting Weight Loss

In addition to glucose monitoring, weight control is important for those with type 2 diabetes. Charting your weight loss in your health diary can prove to be very rewarding. And this may be an interesting analysis of how exercise and diet can help you realize the positive changes described in this book. For instance, when comparing your weight against your average glucose over a three-month period, you are likely to see that your weight will decrease along with your average glucose level. You can compare your weight or glucose level to your heart rate, blood pressure, or laboratory values such as the hemoglobin A1C as well. You can create charts similar to those in tables 7.1 and 7.2 to compare values.

The amount of weight you lose depends on your energy balance, as described in chapter 5. You and your health care team will develop a diet and exercise plan that you can incorporate into your lifestyle that will most likely allow you to lose an average of .5 to 2 pounds a week. As with most situations regarding your health, this will depend on your current activity level, physical abilities, and any other medical conditions. Furthermore, you are more likely to maintain long-term weight loss if you lose weight in smaller amounts over a longer time as opposed to losing large amounts of weight over a short time. It is widely known that a dramatic weight loss in a short duration is largely due to body fluid loss and not to fat loss.

The key to weight loss is energy balance: The number of calories you burn must exceed the number of calories you take in.

A good time to weigh yourself is in the morning, before you eat. Measuring your weight in this manner will give you more consistent results and less appearance of fluctuation in your weight over time. You should measure your weight a maximum of twice per week.