Right diet, exercise, and managing weight are the key to live healthy with diabetes. These goals are also recommended in every treatment plan of type 2 diabetes. It is enough for some people.
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Can Diabetes Cause Weight Gain?
Insulin therapy is a treatment option which is helpful for patients and weight gain is one of the common side effects. For patients whose aim is to control both weight and diabetes, it becomes a never-ending cycle.
When you feel that treatment is causing another problem, it’s quite annoying. However, you need to control your blood sugar first with diabetes. The cost of insulin may vary but lower cost is associated with more risk of weight gain.
How to Manage Weight with Diabetes?
If you are gaining weight, it means insulin is working and your body is utilizing fat, sugar, and protein very well. But your body is also able to store them in case your food intake is not just adjusted and most of such calories become fat.
Well, insulin is not the only culprit behind weight gain.
When it comes to manage diabetes, your body is more likely to rehydrate which may also lead to weight gain. Dehydration also leads to higher risk for diabetics, in the form of frequent thirst and urination. These are the common symptoms of condition.
Weight gain is also the side effect of drugs taken for other conditions. Here are the three steps you can take if you are gaining weight due to insulin.
Manage your Diet and Exercise Plan
The key here is to adjust your workout and diet plan. You need to ask your doctor and a nutritionist regarding your diet plan which takes into account with insulin effect. You need to exercise every day and work some more activities.
Don’t adjust the timing or dosage of insulin yourself to eat more calories. You may end up with more serious problems instead just losing a few pounds if you prefer that route. But it is better if you adjust insulin yourself in order to fine tune the dosage. Obviously, you may want to tell your doctor and keep working on good exercise and diet plan.
Look Closely at Your Medications
If you cannot break the cycle of gaining weight by cutting on calories and adding more exercise, be sure to look at the type of insulin you are injecting. Modified human insulin or insulin analogs are the recent type of insulin and have less risk of weight gain.
In combination with insulin or in replacement of it, you can take other medications. For example, an oral diabetes medication Metformin can be used as an alternative to insulin or along with it to control weight.
On the other side, the reverse is true. If you are going to take other medications for diabetes with insulin, figure out if you are gaining weight due to these medications as well. Ask your doctors for any other alternative to try.
Ask Your Doctor
The best thing you can do as a patient is to work out the details to your doctor. Be sure to know all the reasons behind gaining weight, medications that you think have side effect and any other alternatives you can use.
Also figure out the cost of each specific medicine. Some are expensive and you have to find out whether you can afford these in the long term. Managing diabetes is not that simple. You should ask your doctor and other healthcare providers and make changes until your plan works.
If you can make the right choices of lifestyle, you may, at least, mitigate the needs for medication. It leads to fewer side effects, less cost, and overall well-being.