Losing Weight with Diabetes - Interview with Andrew Berry

Losing weight with diabetes really involves the same approach as anyone without diabetes, but for us there are other challenges presented because we have to balance our blood sugars so closely. Over the past year, I’ve lost about fifteen pounds of body fat and gained about fifteen pounds of muscle (that’s right, I weigh exactly the same but I’m several pant-sizes smaller) through training with Andrew and following his knowledge on losing weight and blood sugar control. 

While there are many approaches towards losing weight, many are NOT healthy and will not help you maintain whatever weight you lost. What the emphasis should really be on is that you are losing weight as a result of making HEALTHIER choices for yourself and for your diabetes management. Healthier choices will inevitably lead to weight loss if that’s what your body needs, but this is not a quick-fix approach. These are habits you’re going to focus on applying to your day-to-day life for the rest of your life.

(And check out the weight-loss quiz here!)


Ginger: Okedoke, Andrew, let’s start with the basics: why is losing weight as a person with diabetes more challenging? What are the challenges we should all be very aware of?

ANDREW
Well, the biggest challenge is that you constantly have to manipulate and adjust your insulin dosages. Insulin is a storage hormone, and that means it stores carbohydrates mostly as fat. When insulin is present in the body in larger doses than your basal amount, it is essentially impossible for the body to also burn fat at the same time.

Directly related to insulin challenge, another challenge is learning about how or when to eat carbohydrates to fuel your exercise but also keep your blood sugar from dropping. Different types of carbs have different effects on your blood sugar. Learning about when to eat carbs during the day can have a huge impact on your ability to lose body fat.

And of course, you have to monitor your blood sugar throughout all your exercise: checking your blood sugar an hour before you workout, right before you workout, possibly during and definitely shortly after you finish working out.

Ginger: Yeah! And of course, exercise will have an impact on our blood sugars several hours after we finish exercising, too, so it’s tricky to plan that far ahead sometimes. I’ve learned that my body needs about half the amount of insulin for about four hours after my weight training workouts.

ANDREW
Exactly. I remember one time when you trained later in the day than usual and had a pretty bad low blood sugar that night because you were still within the hours of recovering from training.

Ginger: Yeah, that was one of my worst lows ever! I won’t make that mistake again. Okay, so could explain a few of the first steps towards starting a healthy nutrition and exercise plan?

ANDREW
Here goes:

Step 1:  Eating “cleaner” foods, four to five small meals a day. By eating smaller meals more often, you keep your metabolism steady. When you go too long without eating, you risk not only low blood sugar, but also your metabolism will slow down.