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My family history with diabetes started with my Mother. She was diagnosed back in 1980.
I was aware of it more in the nineties. And just learning the hardship of what she’s
gone through, I wanted to prevent it for myself and family.
Being my mom’s caregiver was an eye-opener. Just coming in and taking care of her, talking
with her, taking her back and forth to the doctor’s appointments, making sure she took
her medication on time, eating right. That was a personal wake up call for me to want
to take better care of myself.
I realized that I needed to lose weight after going to my physician. Speaking with my doctor
and him letting me know that my weight was high and I was also experiencing high blood
pressure.
In the beginning, me trying to take the approach of losing weight—it was not easy. I did
fall. I did struggle. My first step was just to get up, get out, and walk. Those were one
of my first things.
I knew that I would eventually have to take the approach on food, but my first thing was
getting active and just getting motivated to get out.
Physically and mentally I did notice a change. I noticed a change just for the simple fact
of getting out and moving. I started to drop weight.
As far as physical activity, the things that I do now that I did not used to do: I went
and bought an exercise ball, I get out to bike ride more, when I’m coming home, if
we have a little bit of extra time, I try to get out and play football with my husband
and my children, and when I’m in the area, maybe taking a walk with my mom.
My eating habits and portion control has been a great impact in maintaining my weight loss.
We try to eat out of smaller plates. Then also just staying motivated with moving, having
fun, and exercising.
Some of the things I do to reward myself, I don’t keep myself from everything. One
of my favorite things to do to reward myself is, I still keep in portion control, but when
we go out to eat, I like to have sushi.
I stay focused to stay on track and meet my goals being a busy mom just by the simple
fact of educating my girls and my husband. The more educated they became, it made it
a whole lot easier for me to maintain the good health.
I feel wonderful now. Before, in the past, my mood was down, I had a lot of weight that
I was carrying. And that was just extremely a horrible feeling. But now I feel more motivated,
I feel good about myself to not just stay at this weight, but to continuously lose weight
My advice to a person who’s trying to prevent diabetes, would be to first, get with your
doctor, find out what your numbers are, where your numbers should be.
Reach out and get support from those maybe in your church, your family. Just get highly
educated about diabetes. And if you fall, don’t stay down, get back up again.
To find more tools on preventing type 2 diabetes and managing your weight, visit YourDiabetesInfo.org.
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I’m Latecia Turner. I’m preventing diabetes by losing weight and keeping it off. It’s
not easy, but it’s worth it!