Diets That Work: Style, Ability, Need & Cooking

      Have you tried a few diets just to be disappointed? Do you see friends lose weight on a diet and a little voice inside your head says: "this is the hardest (strangest, craziest...) diet I ever seen?" Do you have dozens of diet books, cook books, videos and recipe cards that have been sitting around for a few years? (and you don't know what to do with them? or are hoping that one day they will be useful?) You are not alone and most diet experts will tell you that each diet only works for a few percentage of people, sometimes only one or two percent! That gives you a statistical chance of failing 25 to 99 times out of 100. These numbers are hard to take. Nobody wants to start dieting knowing of their chance of failing is so high. Yet we keep on buying these books, even a meal plans, and for most it still doesn't work. Who keeps on writing and publishing more diet and cook books? They are written for diabetes, heart disease and overweight conditions, cholesterol, you name it. Is this a hopeless effort being fueled by false hope and pipe dreams with no reality check?

Motivation: Exercise for Your Life (Like an Athlete)

What will motivate you to exercise, eat more healthy and take your medicine? This should not be a difficult question to answer. You don't need to make a public declaration or tell your doctor you will lose 50 lbs. by next Christmas. Your doctor cares, but he probably hears lots of declarations. If it's just "feeling better and not going through the sugar roller coaster every afternoon at work" or "I want to see my grandchildren graduate college not in a wheel chair", you need some motivation. The book "Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life" by Michael Lardon is a popular book that tells the story of making your own dreams come true. Lardon starts out with dreams, which is not exactly what most people think of when they want to get into shape or eat a better diet.

Exercise Without Equipment: A Healthy Diabetic View

One of many books with a view of exercising
without expensive equipment or slick gym memberships

You can get into shape without expensive gym membership, a personal trainer and the latest fashion in sportswear. You also don't need to spend thousands of dollars on exercise equipment or a bicycle most popular on the last Tour de France. This idea is not new and actually, there are excellent resources to show you how. That is what Men's Health magazine, free weights proponents and Pilates trainers would tell you. There are many reasons to exercise without expensive equipment. The same goes for exercises that do not require specialized equipment you see in most gyms. Besides saving money, you can save time, you can exercise anywhere and even have a great experience jumping rope in a park or biking along the beach.

Buying A New Sports Watch - A Personal (Messy) Experience

"G" found a great review of this Garmin watch on a
bicyclists blog. Good information is everywhere
we just need to get it organized [please support our
work by going to Amazon through the links here]

A few days ago, "G" was telling me about his experience in searching for a sports watch. "G" is a recovering pre-diabetic casual athelete. He was diagnosed with pre-diabetes (much like O'Connell in "Sugar Nation" book) over two years ago. Like many, "G" let the diagnosis "slide" for a year. Until on a second visit to his doctor, it was clear that diabetes is knocking at the door and he better take things seriously. So, "G" did what most techno-geeks do these days: get information on the internet! Wow, what a mess can you get into with a few hours with Google and ten blogs. I say "mess" not to be condescending or negative. Exactly the opposite! My perspective, much like "G"s is that there is just too much information out there and most of it is not useful. Not useful because it is out of context, has a biased perspective or simply inaccurate or dated. When I first started to work on this blog with "G" our thinking was to give our view of how to make sense out of all the information out there. Like everyone else, we have our own experience. One of the most elusive fact is how to live healthy with type 2 diabetes. The idea is not strange, but the reality of it is pretty much hidden. Not hidden by design, just hidden with all the facts and figures that are thrown in from every imaginable direction. 

Sugar Nation: A cautionary Tale...

Sugar Nation, a cautionary tale with
real personal story: click on image to
go to Amazon book page

Cautionary tales sit somewhere between "how interesting" and "a conspiracy theory". Yet we always like a good cautionary tale. With sugar and commercial food, how it relates to our health, the story is as interesting as other modern industrialization and globalization of our lives. Why did America fall into this trap of lacing prepared foods with so much sugar? How can we avoid sugars in our own everyday eating? How did American become carbohydrate junkies? Why do government and health institutions give the "wrong" guidelines? and finally, how do we really make better choices with our food and health? OK, if you read this list of questions as a prelude to conspiracy theory book, you are not alone. But you area also not exactly on the mark. To Jeff O'Connell, who just learned of his father's leg amputation due to type 2 diabetes, and his sudden diagnosis of the same condition, these were not general questions. It does not seem that he was looking for a conspiracy theory either. These were life critical questions and O'Connell did not find easily answers. His personal story is a wonderful peek into the life of commercial food, government health programs and personal behavior of someone who thought was fit and healthy.

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Sugar nation is one of many great books on health and diabetes. Some cover more on diet and eating habits, while others are more revealing in the health and medication area. Sugar nation is a good way to start if you want to know about type 2 diabetes. Even if you are not one that has it, you may have a friend or a family member with the condition. You may suspect that your diet and exercise habits are not what they could be. You may want to know how someone like O'Connell, a Men's Health writer, who was supposedly in shape and not in the typical high risk group, suddenly found out of his father's dire condition of not attending to his type 2 diabetes. Worst than that, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as well.

Poll: how many books have your read (the best one is…)

We are looking for the best (or most useful) diabetes books in your library. We are starting with a short survey on how many diabetes books have you read the last six months. If you are not a book reader, no worries, we will survey blogs, newspapers, magazines, portals and other useful media sources soon. If you have been at this for a while, let us know (in the comments) what is your favorite introduction book. If you are experienced in fitness or diet, share with us your “good book” selection for fitness and diet. The nice feature of the web, is all the open resources out there. The challenge is to find what is really useful. Searching an online shop like Amazon for “top selling diabetes book” may not give you the results you are expecting (try it, there are more cooking and diet books there than health or medicine). Here is the survey:

OK, now that you told us how much you read, we can get going on more specific questions. We are going to look for blogs and official internet resources you like. Do you have a good government publication or site? (FDA, CDC?) If your health care group offer any tools to track your test results or report glucose levels to your doctor, is this a useful service? Do you keep track of diet and glucose reading on your Android or iPhone? (see “diabetes” search on Android market) We also would like to hear about the latest social media groups, pages and lists useful in tracking diabetes news. Are you active on Facebook, Twitter or Linked-In? Are the social networks useful in exchanging ideas and getting help? Can you ask a serious question and get a good answer? What are the commercial companies doing in the social medial world? OK, OK, enough! All good questions and all useful when it comes to keeping informed, moving forward and sharing the experience. This is a new blog, so we are unproven, give us a second and third look and we will keep you connected and motivated — THANKS !