I recently met someone with diabetes who had been in severe denial about her disease for the past 8 years. She didn’t deal with it. She hadn’t taught herself anything about the disease. She said, quite simple, “I know I’ll be blind and probably have kidney disease when I’m older because of my diabetes,” but she wasn’t saying it was because she’d neglected herself for so long; she said it as though this was her doom. Inevitable. No matter what, she’d told herself, she was going to be ridden with various conditions and diseases throughout her body because, poor girl, she had diabetes.

I have a different plan, and it doesn’t involve kidney disease and blindness.

When I’m 70 years old I plan to be teaching yoga classes, sipping freshly squeezed grapefruit juice on my lake-house porch with my husband and our dogs, and writing articles about Living With Diabetes As A Senior Citizen in my free time.

And that IS possible. My body is not doomed. Just like any of my friends without diabetes, I have choices every day that impact my future health and happiness, and I’m going to have to start taking action now.

There really are no excuses. Just because I’m in my twenties doesn’t mean I can do whatever I want to my body. Right now makes a difference. Every day I choose a lunch of chicken and broccoli over pizza and ice cream is going to impact my health in the future. The little things all add up, both the good and the bad.
    
That means: Exercising daily, eating healthfully, taking my vitamins, testing my blood sugar often and maintaining a positive attitude towards this disease that will be a huge part of my life for a long time.

It doesn’t mean I have to be perfect. Just because I’m told I have diabetes doesn’t mean I suddenly, magically, don’t like chocolate or pizza anymore. It doesn’t mean I’d always rather go for a run than watch Seinfeld reruns. It just means I need to make a strong effort to make mostly healthy choices and remember what my priorities are.
    
If I acknowledge my diabetes and take care of it step by step, I can achieve my other goals in life. If I act as though diabetes isn’t part of my reality, it’s going to hinder my ability to do everything else. It’s hard to function and do the daily things I want to do if I’m seizing on the floor or comatose. Taking care of my blood sugar comes first, so the rest can be possible.

I am going to live a really long time. Healthfully and happily. I am not doomed. You aren’t either.  We really just have a unique set of challenges to deal with every day—everyone has their own challenges. Taking responsibility for how you handle those challenges is what sets apart those who live well and those allow life's circumstance to determine a future they actually do have control over.

In the words of Aristotle, a favorite of mine: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."