Carrying extra pounds and having a high body mass index number may be indications of other health problems, among them are a higher than normal blood sugar level and a condition known as prediabetes. Prediabetes is exactly what it says; a condition that will lead to full blown diabetes if not reversed. The time to make changes to reverse things is at the prediabetes stage and not after developing full diabetes.
Risk factors for prediabetes are inactive lifestyle which leads to obesity and out of range BMI numbers, high blood pressure, and less than five and a half hours sleep each night. Unfortunately some of these are typical of older people, with older meaning over 45. As you can see most of them are lifestyle choices or ruts we have fallen into. Now it’s time to climb back out and make better choices.
Inactivity, obesity, high blood pressure, and even poor sleep habits are probably related to each other and part of the solution to all of them is to replace inactivity with activity. Starting out that probably means just walking more, whether that means making time for a walk every day or just changing habits and walking more and driving less. Getting started on losing weight will increase your ability to add other activities to your exercise plan simply because if you weigh less they won’t be so hard to do.
Increased activity will also tire you out and should help with the sleep issues. Hard physical effort can be relaxing after the fact. Changing eating habits and including more fruits and vegetables as part of your daily diet should make you feel better. Eating breakfast, dinner and then a small supper can help reverse poor sleep patterns and help you drop pounds.
Make those changes whiles you are still in a prediabetes state and don’t put them off until later when the changes will need to be more drastic and harder to make.
Tags: Body Mass Index, High blood pressure, normal blood sugar, obesity, prediabetes