(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

We're constantly bombarded with stuff about food, fat, and dieting; I'm wary about adding to the babble here. Because I've got Type 2 Diabetes, though, it's an issue I can't completely avoid. I spit on body fascism, the dodgy diet industry, and the casual, commonplace bigotry against fat people. I rip down ads for snake oil diets when I see them in the street, and I daily remind my soft, sexy curves how much I love them. What I want is unbiased info about health: what is the relationship between my podge and my diabetes? What can I realistically do about it? I don't feel comfortable trusting either the general panic about how we're all going to swell up like balloons and explode; nor am I completely comfortable with fat activists' dismissal of links between podge and health. What I want is SCIENCE dammit SCIENCE. Will post some here when I find it - always behind a cut, because the radio TV newspaper politicians and quacks are filling you with enough crap as it is.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/doctor_k_/]

And Dave's sister-in-law has worked as a diabetes nurse educator....

Our good friend baby_elvis has Type 2 diabetes as well, and by virtue of modifying her eating alone (no exercise) has managed to both lose 24kg, keep her sugars down without medication, and get her Hba1c down to well into the non-diabetic range.
Weight loss is commonly a part of managing the spectrum of conditions that include T2DM, polycystic ovary disease, and Syndrome X. It goes a long way to reduce or halt the progress of insulin resistance, and can improve fertility for subfertile women with PCOS.

Obesity is not a major risk factor for a whole host of things like heart disease, but it does seem to be a risk factor for some cancers eg breast cancer.
Activity levels and fitness IMHO are far more important for life expectancy, independence in your later years etc than size. Active obese people are less likely to have falls, to wind up in nursing homes than inactive thin people.
Keeping cholesterol and blood lipids within a certain range have been shown to be associated with lowering risk for heart and blood vessel disease, so that's a good motive to modify your fat intake.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Ta for this. I had suspected that exercise and eating right was the issue, rather than the physical presence of podge, but my doctor explained that artificially fattened guinea pigs developed diabetes. I want to track down that research.

A difficulty for me personally is that my diet is already very good - it's been low fat, low GI for years. I can always tighten it up a little, as I did recently when my insulin resistance increased and my blood glucose readings started to climb - but there's not a whole lot I can improve in that department, and in any case it now has little effect. What I need is a lot more exercise, and not just for the sake of weight loss or blood glucose.