• Introduction to diabetes
• Treatment & your health
• Eating well
• Keeping active
• Smoking
• Managing your weight
• Am I overweight?
• Getting started
• Losing weight and managing your diabetes
• More help to lose weight
• Treatments
• Structured Education
• Monitoring your health
• Living with diabetes
• What care to expect
• Complications
• Food and recipes
• Educational events
• Your stories
• My life

Getting started

Ask yourself the following questions to really think about why you are wanting to lose weight and increase activity levels. Unless this really is something you want to do, it will be difficult to stick with.

STEP ONE: Looking at motivation

1. Why do you want to lose weight? Reasons might be to look better,
to increase your energy levels, to better control your diabetes.

2. How motivated are you?  Rate where you are on the scale below.

           1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10
not at all                                                                 what am I waiting for?

If your score is below 7, you might be better to wait until you can focus your thoughts on losing weight. Discuss any concerns about changes to your weight with your healthcare team.

3. Do you want to lose weight now?

If ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ move on, if ‘no’ think about what it is that is getting in the way of making these changes and maybe think about coming back to review this when you feel more ready, as trying to lose weight now may be counter-productive.

STEP TWO: Being realistic

How much weight do you want to lose and by when?
Make sure your goal is realistic.  Talk to your healthcare team if you are not sure.

STEP THREE: Learning from the past

If you have tried to lose weight in the past, think about what did and didn’t work for you. What worked could be things like you went to a slimming group, which you found very supportive. What didn’t work could be things like you set an unrealistic target of going to the gym every day and found it difficult to find the time to do this. It might have been better to have aimed to walk home from work on alternate days, which is a more realistic and achievable target.

One lapse of a diet or one missed exercise class needn’t undo all your good work. But do look at what made it happen and think about how you might deal with it differently and how you would cope if it happened again.

STEP FOUR: Looking at the present

To lose weight, changing your habits is essential. Food and activity diaries can help you see what your habits are like now and help you recognise what you want to change. Your healthcare team can help you work through this. Keep track of everything you eat and drink and all the activities you do. It often helps to also record your mood or the circumstances at the time.