‘Tis The Season: Tips for Eating Healthy at the Holidays

Coping With Diabetes Begins With You

By Bev Bromfield

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions that are broken or forgotten, resolve to change your perspective and take small steps to help stay in control of your diabetes.

Resolve not to let diabetes rule your life.
Diabetes is a detail within your life; it isn’t your life. Blood sugar values are details. They are not meant to initiate feelings of failure or be the focus of your life. Obsessing about the need to test to obtain perfect control is unrealistic. It’s a set-up for failure. Expect and accept fluctuations in blood sugar values. Seek to understand isolated low or high blood sugar values, or, if consistent, talk with a health care provider to identify trends that may lead to medication adjustment. As long as most values are within prescribed goals and the three month average (or hemoglobin A1c) levels are between 6.0 to 6.5, that’s what matters most. Look to the big picture and live your life.

Challenge the food battle.
Whether you have diabetes or not, everyone experiences temptation, guilt over splurging, depression over weight gain, or surrender to fast food because it’s convenient. Overcoming the food battle can be difficult but not unattainable. Steps to overcome the food battle include:

Identify issues that influence choices. Is it time, family, friends, need for comfort, or overeating the problem? Once a trigger is identified, think of a small attainable step to successfully move past the identified trigger.
Gradually modify the food environment. Slowly replace high fat choices with low fat options. Make substitutions in family recipes. Use low fat sour cream or serve lean meat such as flank steak instead of prime rib. If time is an issue, buy vegetables that are pre-sliced and washed. Look for frozen meals or snack foods lower in fat, sugar, and salt.
If portion size is an issue, pre-measure meals and freeze for heating later. With diabetes, eating too much food impacts blood sugar. Appropriate portion size is key to avoiding high blood sugar.
Identify alternative choices for typical comfort foods or resolve to eat smaller portions of food eaten in times of stress, sadness, anger, or loneliness. If eating due to boredom, identify alternative choices to eating such as walking, a hobby, or calling a friend.
If fast food is the issue, find alternative routes away from the usual convenient stops or bring your lunch to work.
Keep food in proper perspective. Don’t feel guilty for giving into temptation or frustrated for gaining weight. Such feelings make it harder to shift to better food habits. Recognize what caused the action and find ways to counter or balance the choices made: Eat smaller portions, be active after eating, skip another part of the meal (carbohydrate choices such as bread or potato), or eat more slowly thus eating less.
Need help? Talk with family and friends about what is helpful. Consider meeting with a dietitian. Think of questions ahead of time and keep food records to identify habits and typical choices. Work together to develop a reasonable meal plan and steps for change.

Choose to actively manage stress:
Physical or emotional stress can cause blood sugar to rise and can impact overall health by increasing blood pressure or stress-related hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine.

For some, stress can also impact the ability to manage diabetes, causing a decrease in activity levels, monitoring of blood sugar, and overeating. If stress is impacting your life, choose to take steps to actively manage stress before it manages you. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche once said “all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” There are many physical benefits to walking: It helps manage weight and lower blood sugar and stress levels, while increasing energy levels and maintaining a healthy heart.

Start slowly. Identify attainable goals and work towards reaching 30 minutes of daily activity. Other ways to de-stress your life include relaxation (i.e. yoga, massage, or deep breathing), dancing, chatting with friends, or joining a support group or online chat group. ClubPed, an online resource through the American Diabetes Association, provides an opportunity to set attainable walking goals, earn incentives, and chat with others who need support. ClubPed can be found at www.diabetes.org.

Focus on making new habits, not maintaining the old. Taking even one step forward is the best resolution you can choose to make.

Bev Bromfield is the program manager for the American Diabetes Association. Her office serves residents in Oregon and Southwest Washington. She can be reached at bbromfield@diabetes.org or 503-736-2770, ext. 7294.