Planning Your Lifestyle

You may already have a plan that allows you to live with diabetes. But it's likely that you've reading this book to find a better way to improve and enjoy your health. It is no secret that planning ahead for any endeavor is crucial for success.

Lifestyle is a personal matter. It represents who you are, what you believe in, and what stage of life you are in. So why should you make plans for a new lifestyle? You already know why glucose control should be your goal. You also know that exercise needs to be a part of the process in obtaining the goal. So why don't you just go on a diet, start an exercise program, lose weight, and control your glucose? I'm sure you already know the answer: It's easier said than done! To do all of these things, you must make your own plans in your life that will lead to accomplishing your goal.

Understanding the process of what you need to do to accomplish a goal is paramount. For example, say you are the lead planner on a project for a spaceship company. This project's main goal is to send humans and several tons of cargo to Mars and safely return the people to Earth. Before you actually start to write anything down on paper, you would first think about what you were asked to do. You may consider your qualifications in taking on such an endeavor. You'd concern yourself with whether you had the right resources to take on such a project. This initial process will happen in your mind in a matter of seconds after receiving this task. You will then move on to the second process of organizing a team to help you gather the information to make this endeavor a success. Once you've completed the research and gathered the information, you will create a rough draft of a plan to get from Earth to Mars and back. From here, the process of refining the plan occurs, taking thousands of hours, millions of calculations, and hundreds of changes to the plan until the final process of putting the plan into action occurs.

Obviously, creating a lifestyle plan to thrive with diabetes is not nearly as complicated as the plan I just described. I used this example to illustrate the point that planning takes many steps to complete. As in the example, your initial process when you discovered you have diabetes took only seconds. When your doctor told you that your glucose was elevated and that you needed to control it, your immediate thoughts probably were How can I do that? or Can you help me? Your second process of organizing resources and gathering information started when you inquired about what you can do about your diabetes. Your "team" includes you, your health care providers, and your family and friends (see table 3.1). The information-gathering and research process is currently under way-you're reading this book.

In this chapter I give you the information you need to create a rough plan, a guide to assist you in making personal changes to create a lifestyle conducive to attaining your goals for glucose control through healthy living. The following chapters show you how to refine it until it works for you.

But even before we can create a plan for your new lifestyle, you need to consider the type of lifestyle you have now. Do you have an active lifestyle? What kind of exercise do you do? Can you control your eating habits? Do you feel like food controls you? Is your current lifestyle meeting your life's goals? Only you can answer these questions. You may already be active with healthy eating habits, but you'd like to know what you can do to optimize your action plan. But if you recognize that you do not have the lifestyle you would like or need, this chapter will help you most.

Table 3.1 Health Care Team

Your Current Lifestyle

Recognizing Necessary Changes

Defining Your Lifestyle

Setting Goals

Changing Your Perspective