Tools to Help You Stay on Track
So, you’re ready to make changes to the way you eat, move, sleep, and manage stress. Wonderful!
You may notice benefits of your new way of eating early on, such as less hunger between meals, better energy levels, and looser fitting clothing. These are all signs that things are moving in the right direction.
Here are some other potential ways to help you stay on track and monitor your progress.
Tracking Your Blood Glucose Levels
Although your healthcare provider will order blood tests to check your blood sugar periodically, you can benefit by checking it yourself on a more frequent basis. Doing so can give you immediate feedback about how certain foods impact your blood sugar, which can help keep you motivated and on track.
Blood Glucose Meter
A blood glucose meter is easy to use, portable, inexpensive, and provides you with an instant reading of your current blood glucose level. Both the meter and glucose test strips are available for purchase from your pharmacist. If you have an extended benefit plan from your employer, the cost of the meter and testing strips may be covered, especially if prescribed by your family doctor.
Although you should read the directions that come with your blood glucose meter, here are the basic steps for testing your blood sugar:
1
Wash and dry your hands.
2
Place a glucose test strip in the meter.
3
Prick the side of your ring finger or pinkie with the lancet provided.
4
Place the tip of the test strip on the drop of blood.
5
After a few seconds, the blood glucose meter will give you a reading.
Your meter will keep track of your blood sugar readings for several days or weeks. However, you may want to also keep a record of your readings in a notebook, on a spreadsheet or in an app to monitor your progress.
You can test your blood sugar first thing in the morning, before eating or drinking anything, to see your “fasting” blood glucose level. Or, to see how your blood sugar responds to a meal, test your blood sugar 1 to 2 hours after eating.
Continuous Glucose Monitor
A device called a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, is now available from your pharmacist without a prescription. While it is more expensive than a blood glucose meter, a CGM gives blood sugar readings 24/7 without pricking your finger.
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A special disc is worn on the back of your arm that links to an app on your smartphone. Wearing a CGM can give you insight into how your blood sugar is impacted by different foods, sleep, and stress. Research suggests that making changes to your diet based on CGM data can help improve blood sugar control if you have prediabetes. Of course, this can also work if you check your blood sugar with a meter on a regular basis.
Tracking Your Steps
Remember the benefits of walking we discussed in the “Movement” section? As noted there, a 15 to 30 minute walk right after a meal can be particularly helpful to lower blood glucose.
For best results, try to walk as much as you’re able to every day. It can be motivating to set a step goal – say, 6,000 steps per day – and see how often you can achieve it. Once you’ve mastered that goal, you can adjust it upward. Using a pedometer or a simple app on your smartphone is all you need to chart your progress.
FitBit, StepsApp, and Pacer are just a few of the many step tracking apps available. Some watches, such as the Apple watch, also allow you to track daily steps.
Tracking Your Food
Tracking or logging the food you eat can be helpful in some cases.
The benefits of tracking your food include:
Seeing your daily intake of carbs, sugar, fiber, and protein at meals and over the course of a day (sometimes the numbers can be surprising!).
Helping you find possible food-related reasons for higher blood sugar readings providing you with a record of your food intake over time.
Keeping yourself accountable to the goals you may have set for your food consumption.
On the other hand, logging your food takes time and commitment. Some people may find it burdensome or overwhelming, while others may find that it interferes with their ability to enjoy the eating experience.
If you decide to track your food, Cronometer, KetoDietApp, or CarbManager are a few options that you can access online or on a smartphone app. Keep in mind that the nutrition information for some of the foods listed may not be entirely accurate.
If you give food tracking a try and decide it’s not for you, that’s fine! You can have a successful prediabetes journey without tracking what you eat.
How Much Sugar Is In The Food You Eat?
Did you know that a serving of white basmati rice contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar? Or that a bowl of cornflakes cereal contains 7.3 teaspoons? How about fruit like a banana? In the United Kingdom, Dr. David Unwin, a GP in the Liverpool region, realized he could help his patients understand the dietary changes they needed to make to improve their blood sugar, or put their type 2 diabetes into remission, by showing them simple graphs of the equivalent number of teaspoons of sugar in common food items