Working from home can easily blur the line between your personal and professional lives. And if you are a type 2 diabetic, it can take a nasty toll on your health.
For diabetics, it is no less than a challenge to keep their blood sugar on a happy level, especially when the distance between their office and kitchen is just a few steps!
To add fuel to the fire are those back-to-back zoom meetings, pressure of deadlines, and the chaos that everything put together creates. This makes you want to munch on forever.
Cups of coffee become endless and the cake, oh… where is the cake? It was here just a minute ago on the plate!
Sounds like you are headed to doom?
Well, no.
Let’s reverse the picture.
Work from home gives you the golden opportunity to set a beautiful timetable for yourself wherein you have meals at peace and on time, cook at home, work out without hurry, and lead a more productive life.
No commuting = more time.
The only thing required is: better organization of your day.
So, to put it in one sentence:
Work from home can be a boon for type 2 diabetics provided they follow a simple plan and, most important, stick to it.
Here are 5 ways you can manage type 2 diabetes while working from home:
1. Meals Planning
Chart out a menu for the whole week. This makes it easier to eat healthy meals even when you are at your busiest. It also avoids last-minute rush when you are too tired to cook a wholesome meal and, as a result, grab processed foods. According to dieticians, your plate must be divided into 3 parts:
- Half-plate leafy greens, beans, and other vegetables
- One-quarter lean protein such as beans, lentils, cottage cheese, chicken, or turkey
- Another quarter of starchy foods like whole grains and, at times, brown rice
Related Article:
10 Surprising Foods Diabetics Should Avoid, Says New Study
2. Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the commonest reported problems during the pandemic. What will happen now? This question has been haunting people since lockdowns began. Prolonged anxious thoughts can lead to depression, hypertension, panic attacks, and mental disorders. It can affect your work and family life.
Physical activity is one of the best ways to fight anxiety. The more you move, the more your body secretes happy hormones. This helps to keep you in a positive mindset and relaxes you. Also, anxious people are more likely to crave for carbohydrate-rich, sugary foods.
It’s important to keep your sanity while the virus wreaks havoc around the world. Does this sentence increase your anxiety? It should not!
3. Timings of Meals
What you eat is important. When you do not eat is equally important. Keep a schedule of meal time and snack time. This keeps your blood sugar stable. Constant munching is not good; neither is going hungry for hours together. Both can be dangerous for type 2 diabetics. It can lead to severe highs and lows of blood sugar levels. Eat every 3 hours to keep your blood sugar steady.
4. Monitoring Your Blood Sugar
A benefit of keeping a tab on your blood sugar levels is that you can figure out how your body is responding to your choice of foods and your meal schedule. You will also know when your blood sugar goes haywire and when it is stable. In both the situations, scrutinize what you ate that day, what your stress level was, and what activities you did. This will give you an idea of what works and what does not. It will tell you your improvement areas in terms of diet, exercise, and stress levels.
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10 Surprising Foods Diabetics Should Avoid, Says New Study
Diabetes is a serious health condition that you should not take lightly. If you are living with diabetes, your diet is one of the most important factors to keep in check.
5. Moving Your Body
One of the disadvantages of working from home can be the lack of physical activity.
When you commute to office, you perform a certain level of physical activity. Say, you have to walk to your car, walk from the parking lot towards the office, climb a few stairs, and so on.
When you are at home, these activities vanish from your life.
Now, you are simply cooped up in your home with nowhere to go. You even forget to move around the house due to the workload.
Doctors are of the view that regular exercise helps to decrease a patient’s dependence on glucose-monitoring insulin and medication. Regular exercise and body movements can help in preventing diabetes-related complications like cardiovascular disease.
Doctors recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise – from moderate to intense – per week for type 2 diabetics. Your workout should be a combination of strength training and cardiovascular exercise.
Now, 150 minutes per week amounts to 30 minutes per day for 5 days.
For super busy people who cannot spare 30 minutes at a stretch, they can break it into 15-minute workout schedule 2 times a day. Exercise for 15 minutes in the morning, then again for 15 minutes in the evening.
You can start your day with 5-10 minutes of brisk walk, a few pushups and crunches, or a couple of yoga postures. In the evening, again, spend 5-10 minutes in walking or cycling or swimming accompanied with some strength training, squats, or climbing up and down the stairs.
You can also indulge in any other physical activity. It all adds up. Whatever moves your body counts!
Last But Not the Least…
Draw a line between your home life and work life. Shut down your laptop when your work time is over. Do not make it a habit of working till late and not giving time to yourself and your family.
When you have demarcated work and family times, you get time to cook healthy meals, work out, and relax. This, automatically, makes your body fall into a rhythm, which is important for healthy functioning of the organs.
Don’t Forget To Sleep!
Lack of sleep contributes to increased blood sugar levels. Irregular sleep pattern is also the culprit behind raised blood sugar. Go to bed and get out of the bed at the same time daily. This lets your body work in rhythm and function well. Working late on your laptop is one of the worst things you can do while working from home. Treat work-from-home similar to how you work from office. Have a separate work station with no distractions. Have a fixed timetable.
Attune with Nature and See The Wonders
The universe works on a timetable.
Does the sun ever think of rising late or keeping up in the sky till late?
Having a timetable attunes you with nature. This is the basic and the most important step towards health, especially for people with chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes.
Stay safe, stay healthy.