Q&A: As a diabetic . . . is everything a no-no ? | Health and Fitness ...

Question by janaji63: As a diabetic . . . is everything a no-no ?
I?m a diabetic in very sad shape. I?m going downhill I know it. I have very poor eating habits & barely any self control. I am disabled due to a back injury. I am over weight by at least 100 lbs. I have cardiac artery disease & am awaiting a triple bypass surgery. The doctors want me to lose another 50 lbs before they do the surgery so my survival rate will be better when they have to put me on the heart lung machine for surgery. I have high blood pressure, low thyroid, asthmatic, quit smoking 7 months ago, on oxygen 24 hours a day at home & cannot exercise. My oxygen saturation drops just getting up to walk to the next room. One of the side effects of my asthma medication is weight gain. One of the side effects of my diabetic medication is weight gain. My low thyroid makes me battle with weight gain. I am not able to get up & prepare healthy meals for myself on a daily basis. I can only stand for about 5 minutes at a time. Like I said, I am in bad shape. I was drinking Coke Zero but my parents had a fit because Coke Zero is sweetened with aspartame & is known to cause brain cancer in lab rats. So I went back to regular coke. I thought I would try some Gatorade. Now I find out that stuff is no better for me than the colas. So I am SUPER discouraged. What the devil can diabetics drink besides water ??? I can?t cook or eat 3 square meals a day so I have a lot of frozen foods which is also bad. Seems everything I touch is bad & I?m about to give up entirely. What can I eat & drink ?
I have already had 2 heart attacks. I am under strict instructions NOT to exercise, yet they want me to lose weight. I can?t walk into the next room without having my oxygen drop & be near another attack, sometimes having to use a nitro. I?m not wining because I?m in this shape. I?m wining because everything I try to do to get out of this shape is the wrong thing or not good for me or it?s something I can?t do. I have not been on insulin since being diagnosed except when I go into the hospital. But I am fixing to have to ask my doctor to put me on it & then fight to try to get help to pay for it because I have no insurance & get my medical care from the state. This is what poverty is like. I can?t afford the type of foods from the grocery that I should be eating because low sugar foods are twice as expensive. I can barely afford the bad stuff. I am quite discouraged.

Best answer:

Answer by Gary B
Understand that your parents are very scientifically misinformed. Aspartame DOES cause cancer in lab rats. BUT for it to affect YOU, your would have to eat like 40 pounds of Aspartame EVERY DAY.

A Coke Zero or Diet Coke a day, even three or four, is NOT going to harm you. What IS going to harm you is all that sugar in regular Coke, Gatorade, ALL ?power Drinks?, and things like that.

you MUST cut out ALL SUGARS in your diet. and it IS OK to substitute aspartame and Splenda (and ANY artificial sweetener) to ge the sweet taste.

You must ALSO reduce your Carbohydrate intake. Get a Diabetic Cookbook, and USE IT. It is extremely important that you know the sources of carbohydrates, AND know just how many ?carbs? you can have at each meal.

You have multiple problems causing weight gain. Therefore you MUST reduce yo r caloric intake. ?Normal? people requires about 2000 calories a day. But due to your medication your only have two choices:
Cut your calories down to 1600 a day
2) Get LOTS more exercise.

The more exercise you get, the more you can eat! Walk, swim, ride a bike. Play volleyball or jog if you are able.

YOU are the answer to your problems. You need to stop whining about what you CAN?T do, and start doing everything you CAN do.

Control of diabetes is ALL up to you. YOU will determine whether or not you live or die. LITERALLY. if you continue to make bad choices in your lifestyle (eating a poor diet, failing to get exercise, not taking your medicines properly) then you will die young and in a great deal of pain, You will probably also be limited to a nursing home at a young age, unable to function outside because of amputations, heart attacks , or strokes.

But if you develop the self-discipline to take control of your life, exercise, diet, and medicine RIGHT NOW, then you can live as long as anyone else, and participate in school sports, music, a career, and even get married and have children of your own.

EDUCATE YOURSELF! Your parents are a POOR source of information. Ask your doctor to refer you to a Diabetic Educator who can teach you the CORRECT things to eat, and stop listening to your parents. concerning your diet.

What do you think? Answer below!

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Tags: diabetic, everything, nono

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at 6:12 am and is filed under Exercise Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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