Tips for Your Reversal Journey

Preparing Your Mind for Success

Do you want to get a successful start at changing how you eat or adding exercise to help reverse your prediabetes? Or, are you having trouble making positive behavioral changes in your life? Do you find you start out with good intentions, but then have trouble staying on track?

Changing your diet and adopting other healthy lifestyle habits can sometimes be tough. To get off to the right start and then stay motivated on your journey to reversing prediabetes, it helps to establish the right mindset to adopt behavior change.

Mindset simply means how you think about the actions you are intending to take.

Your thought processes can:

establish and reinforce your motivations

increase your confidence and strengthen commitment

set your actions and goals

help you adopt healthier habits

reduce and manage the stress and challenges of change

Fortunately, you have the power to change your thoughts and behaviors in ways that will set you up for success.

Here are five tips for increasing your motivation and forming healthy habits that you’ll stick with long term.

Make SMART Goals

To make habits that last, it’s important to set goals that are within your control to reach.

While aiming to keep blood sugar in the normal range at all times is admirable, this isn’t entirely under your control, even if you do everything “right.”

Instead, make SMART goals. These are small, individual steps that you can commit to for a specific time period and that are completely under your control.

SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based.

An example of a SMART goal is:

Specific: I will cut out all sugary drinks this week and drink no-sugar options such as sparkling water, plain water, tea or coffee instead.

Measurable: I will count the number of times I did this, and note the times of day that I did this.

Achievable: I will buy a week’s supply of flavored sparkling water and bring at least two to work each day and stock my fridge at home.

Relevant: This will prevent me from drinking soft drinks at work, and in the evening, which is when I usually drink them.

Time-bound: I will try it this week and assess how it went at the end of the week.

Make one SMART goal at first. Don’t try to do too many at once.
Start slowly to build your confidence and experience. Then, evaluate how it worked for you. Add another goal when you’ve mastered the first ones.

Find Your 'Why'

Start by asking yourself some specific questions:

What difference will reversing your prediabetes make to your life, your happiness, or your health?

What are the risks or negatives of not changing your diet and adopting other healthy lifestyle habits?

What consequences might you face from not making a change?

Keeping your purpose for reversing your prediabetes top of mind can help you stay motivated and committed. Some people post their “why” on their fridge, mirror, cupboard, or another prominent place so they will see it daily. Motivations can change over time, so revisit your why or update it from time to time to keep your motivation relevant and inspiring to you.

Reframe 'Failures' as Learning Opportunities

Expect to have times when you slip up. Yes, even with the best intentions, you will have times when you go back to old eating habits, or lose your commitment to make lifestyle changes to reverse your prediabetes. This is especially true if your previous health and weight was not causing you many uncomfortable symptoms, which is common in prediabetes.

If it happens, don’t label yourself as a failure. Rather, mentally investigate what happened. What can you learn for next time? How can you get back on track?

Learning from any unsuccessful attempts to change is fundamental in the psychology of successful change.

Whenever you find yourself “cheating” or slipping on your eating approach or intentions to exercise, use it as a chance to learn what happened and then start again.

Rate Your Confidence and Focus on Your Strengths

How confident are you that you can make the changes you need to reverse your prediabetes? Do you believe you have what it takes to recover from setbacks and get back on track?

This type of confidence is called “self-efficacy” and it means you believe in your abilities to do the task you’ve set out to do.

Research suggests that the more we believe in our abilities to do something, the more likely we are to do it.

Rate your confidence to make a change on a scale of one to 10. Then, look for ways to increase that rating by focusing on your known strengths and abilities.

For example, ask yourself, How confident am I that I can stick with the SMART goals I set for myself?

The higher you rate your confidence, the more you are likely to succeed. However, almost no one rates themselves at one or zero. And even if you give yourself a low score, that number can be increased by reframing your mindset or remembering times when you have succeeded.

For example, if you give yourself a confidence rating of just two or three, examine how you might move that ranking up a few numbers.

Focus on your strengths and skills that can be applied to the situation.
Some skills that can set you up for prediabetes reversal success are:

Being able to cook, or being willing to learn

Having good problem-solving skills

Having good coping skills or ways to deal with stress that do not include food

Having self-monitoring skills, such as noticing what you are feeling and experiencing, keeping a food journal, and being mindful of the food you are eating

Feelings of confidence can be increased incrementally by breaking down goals into small achievable actions, as described in tip #2.

Taking small steps that increase your confidence may make a big difference overall.

Embrace a 'Growth' Mindset

Do you get uncomfortable with change? Or do you welcome it? If you have a willingness to seek out new information, try a different approach, and adapt or adjust as things change, then you have a growth mindset. And that’s great for improving your health.

Stanford Psychologist Carol Dweck created and popularized the concept of growth mindset through her research, best-selling books, and TED Talk. She defines it as being flexible and responsive to the inevitable changes that happen in life.

When you cultivate a growth mindset, you are willing to explore, experiment, and even reinvent yourself to achieve recurring cycles of success.

A growth mindset can foster a resilient personality that is curious and adaptable to unexpected situations, seeing them as a chance to learn, grow, and evolve.

It’s likely that a growth mindset has led you to explore the possibility of reversing prediabetes and the mental skills it takes to succeed — which has led you to this website.

Keep cultivating that mental curiosity as you embark on and continue your journey to reversing prediabetes.