Losing weight becomes a priority if you are diagnosed with diabetes. Since Diabetes is a hormonal disease therefore, the insulin deficiency in the body leads to increased weight. This weight increment has several negative impacts on the health of the diabetic person and so the doctors and nurses suggest for regular exercising and diet control to maintain the body weight. But maintaining weight isn’t such an easy task!
The sudden huge change in your lifestyle due to diabetes may cause troubles to you to achieve your health goals. Therefore, you need to make sure that your goals are realistic and attainable. If your goals are not suitable for your health, it may cause negative effects on your body and mind. So, through this article, we have explained the points you need to keep in mind before setting your goals!
Note:According to the American Diabetes Association, before establishing fitness goals for diabetic, people should be assessed by their doctor for health problems, such as heart disease or neuropathy that might increase the risk of exercise-related injuries. In such cases, you are advised to limit your daily training.
Why setting goals is helpful?
You cannot be perfectly fit and healthy overnight through rigorous training and starving. Many people do the mistake of working way too hard on their first day and giving up on the second day. But in that way it will be impossible to reach your fitness goals for diabetic. So, you need to set goals for each day and make baby step attempts to accomplish your targets.
Setting goals will help you in the following ways:
- It will help you to move forward and focus on your objective to complete your target.
- Proper goals will make ‘huge tiring targets’ like losing pounds of weight, very easy.
- It will help you fuel your ambition.
- Goals will help you understand what you really want.
- It will help you realize your failure and give you motivation to work harder.
How will you set your fitness goals?
- If you have made your mind that you will follow a schedule to reach your fitness and diet goals then you should have a discussion with your doctor about it. Your doctor or diabetes educator will brief you up about the limits you need to follow while following your workout regime and diet.
- After having a good chat about the limitations you must follow, you may contact a ‘certified diabetes healthcare professional’ and a ‘dietitian’ to prepare your workout schedule and diet plan.
- These healthcare professionals will not only guide you throughout the training but also monitor your progress on daily basis and will help you understand your health.
- Explain them about your limitations.If necessary set up an appointment between them and your doctor for better results.
- Request them to set goals per day for you, according to your daily schedule.
- Do all the workout session under the guidance of your healthcare professional.
- Never try making fitness goals for diabetic (yourself) if you don’t have proper knowledge.
What are things you need to keep in mind while making fitness goals for diabetic?
1. Be more specific about the activities you will follow
Generally, people make a lot of plans to increase their physical activities. They plan to go on long walks; practice hours of swimming and yoga and more on the same day. But that is not quite possible!
Therefore, it’s suggested to focus on a ‘specific’ activity per day for a better result. If you feel like swimming on a specific day, then ask your ‘trainer’ to set goals for you for that day and get going or if you are in the mood of doing some yoga practice then ask your yoga trainer to set goals for you for that day and start practicing. In this way, you will get a lot done than attempting a number of physical activities in a day.
Moreover, it would be lot better if you start with easy, small activities like walking around the house while you are talking on the phone or talking to someone, practicing on a balance-ball, doing sit-ups and side-steps during the commercials of a long TV program, washing your car with hand, cleaning your house or trying out new dance routines.
Since it may be difficult to start with an aggressive workout regime on the first day itself, therefore, if you train your body by doing small and easy physical activities, then, at the time of your workout, you won’t feel much pain.
2. Make ‘measurable’ goals
There is no use of tiring training, if you aren’t reaching your specific goals. You should ask you trainer to set ‘measurable’ goals for you for each day e.g. ‘10 push-ups’ a day or ‘2 hours walk’ per day. Goals like this will help you accomplish your target more easily. If you have a good idea about the finish line, the whole training session will seem easier. Otherwise you can also invest in the devices which track your steps, hours you sleep, the calorie intake and more to keep check on your health.
3. Make goals which are attainable.
You cannot train for 15 hours a day in the first attempt. Not only it will tire you and may injure you but also break down your confidence and motivation. Therefore, it’s suggested that in the beginning you set ‘mini-goals’ which are attainable. The smaller the goals are, the more easily you will reach them. Making mini goals will help you boost your confidence which will increase your motivation to reach your next goals. So, you need to start easy and slow and slowly move towards the difficult ones.
4. Your goals must be realistic!
Instead of setting unrealistic goals like losing more than 100 pounds in a week, you should set more realistic goals on a short term basis. According to study, a modest weight loss of 5 to 7 percent can reduce the chance of progressing from insulin resistance to Type 2 diabetes by 58 percent.
If you already have high sugar then losing such small percentage of weight will help to reduce the risk of high blood pressure and also lower blood sugar level to some extent. To make things more clear, if you are of 250 pounds then, losing 18 pounds is a huge difference to your overall health!
The smaller the goals are, the easier it will be to reach and so it will boost your motivation to reach other goals too!
5. Decide how often you will do your exercise
If you have made plans to walk for your exercise then you must figure out how much distance you will walk and how many days of the week are you going to walk. Your goals must be timely and you must know how often and how long you are going to remain engaged in a physical activity. This will help you reach your goals quickly.
Conclusion
Setting fitness goals for diabetic increases your motivation to move forward and accomplish all your targets. Before starting with your workout regime, you should consult with your doctor because if you are suffering from heart disease and nerve problems, exercising might cause injury. While you exercise, you must always have someone to guide you and monitor your exercise. If you successfully reach your goals per day, then you will be able to lose a huge amount of weight in a very short period of time. So, get started on your workout and complete your targets one by one!