Weight loss is a big deal and a big business. Turn on the television, cruise the internet, open a magazine and you’re bound to find something about how you can lose weight, and enrich someone else along the way.
Not only is weight loss big business, it’s a critical health intervention in a nation plagued by obesity and the associated health consequences. Those consequences are of particular importance to the 37 million diabetics in the U.S., 97 percent of whom are type 2 diabetics whose disease is connected to being overweight. But losing weight in a healthy, sustainable manner is always the problem.
There is evidence that certain medications can help. Two classes of drugs for type 2 diabetics have been used to not only control blood sugar but also promote weight loss. One group is “glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1)” agonists. These are drugs like Trulicity, Ozempic and others (names you’ve doubtless heard on direct-to-consumer commercials on television). The other group is called “glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT-2)” inhibitors, among which you may recognize names like Jardiance and Invokana.
These drugs stimulate the pancreas to make insulin (so they work in type 2 diabetics, not type 1 diabetics). Along the way, they seem to promote weight loss. This may be because they make users feel full earlier, or because they decrease appetite.
Most are injections, and like every drug there are side effects such as intestinal upset. In addition, drugs like these can be very expensive, and in some instances can cost thousands of dollars per month. But they show promise!
- https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/expert-answers/byetta/faq-20057955
There are also surgical options for weight loss. Gastric bypass, gastric sleeve and gastric banding can all be helpful in diabetic patients who reach a certain threshold of BMI, or body mass index. Descriptions of these procedures are beyond my space here, but I have included a link below:
- https://asmbs.org/patients/bariatric-surgery-procedures
While medications and procedures can make a huge difference, lifestyle changes are critically important. The fact is, Americans have non-stop access to cheap, often unhealthy, food in large quantities. Furthermore, we can now live our lives with minimal effort, sitting down for entertainment, often sitting for work, and can order food delivered to our location with the click of a phone application.
The hard reality of weight loss is that, medications and surgeries aside, the best way to start is by consulting with your physician about healthy diet and exercise — and by deciding to slowly, purposefully eat less and move more. Expectations of sudden, dramatic weight loss rarely are realized, and often are unhealthy and unsustainable.
Limiting food to meal times, and limiting daily calories, are great places to start. Cutting out snacks, or replacing them with healthier ones, can also make a difference. Although not diabetic, when I switched from Southern sweet tea to half-sweet/half-unsweet, I lost about 10 pounds in about six weeks. Reducing sugar was a huge thing for me.
Furthermore, you needn’t start running 5K races, or lifting your body weight, to make a difference. Walk more, sit less, and slowly introduce purposeful exercise — and you may start to make slow losses, which can build into larger ones.
Ultimately, losses are themselves motivating, as it’s easier to move, easier (and more fun) to buy smaller clothes, and simply encouraging to know that you were able to lose even a little weight at a time.
And for diabetics, it’s clearly the path to a longer, healthier life.
- https://diabetes.org/healthy-living/weight-loss