Obesity kills three times more people than malnutrition

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 16: Debbie Jones is currently a vice president of the International Diabetes Federation and a diabetes nurse educator at the Bermuda Hospitals Board’s Diabetes Education Centre. She writes a monthly diabetes column for the Bermuda Sun to help educate people about one of the island’s biggest killers.

Christmas is over and a new year has begun.

What better time to dust off those New Year resolutions to control your diabetes or prevent getting diabetes, especially if you are at risk.

If you do not have diabetes ask yourself if any of the following pertain to you.

• Are you related to someone with diabetes?
• Do you consider yourself overweight?
• If you are a man is your waist greater than 40” and if you are a woman is your waist greater than 35”?
• Have you ever been told you have higher than normal blood sugar levels?
• Do you have high blood pressure?
• If you are a woman have you ever had a baby that weighed more than 9lbs at birth?
• Are you over 40?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions you are at risk of developing diabetes.

You should make sure you ask to be tested at your next doctor’s visit.

However in the meantime you can make some simple changes which are not hard to do and will help control your blood sugars if you have diabetes, and help prevent diabetes if you don’t.

• Walk or do something similar like cycle riding or swimming for 30-40 minutes every day.

That’s right every day for seven days a week. Diabetes doesn’t take a holiday and neither should exercise.

Its important that this is done every day, 30 minutes a day for seven days a week adds up to two and a half hours a week. How much television do you watch an evening or how much time do you sit in front of the computer?

• Cut out the sweet sugary drinks and drink water instead. Remember four grams of sugar is one teaspoon.

If your drink contains 48 grams of sugar you are in fact consuming 12 teaspoons of sugar.

• Limit the amount of alcohol consumed

• Eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. Its not hard. One serving of fruit or juice at breakfast, a piece of fruit and carrot sticks with lunch, a piece of fruit and two or three servings of vegetables with dinner. I don’t know about you but I counted six servings of fruit and vegetables!

• Cut out high fat fast foods.

Just before Christmas alarming results from a study were published. Obesity is killing three times the number of people that die from malnutrition. No longer is it death from lack of food but death from overeating and gluttony. What has happened to us? I recently went to the cinema for the first time in five years. My husband and I were practically the only two people in the theatre without a huge drink and a tub of popcorn.

I could remember the days when a family bought a tub to share but today it seems that everyone had a tub to themselves. Airports are another reminder of how we have changed. Why can’t people sit still anymore and read a book. Most people are tucking into an oversized burger, cinnamon bun or pizza, washing it down with a sugary supersized drink and glued to their BlackBerry smartphone, i-touch or the like. It doesn’t have to be like this and we have the power to do something about it. So get out those resolutions and start exercising today. Cut out the sweet sugary drinks and drink water instead.

Try and eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. You will feel better and if you have diabetes you will be able to control it and if you don’t you can prevent it. What a gift for 2013.