When you live with diabetes you are not just coping with a chronic condition, you are navigating an illness that comes with the burden of stigma related to weight. One of the first things you may hear from your healthcare team is “Lose weight.” You may also feel monitored by your loved ones regarding what you eat, and feel stuck in a cycle of dieting and falling off track. Living with diabetes is a unique challenge in that you are not just managing your physical health, you are also navigating how you feel about your body and others’ perception of it.
Managing your weight can be a part of living with diabetes for many. However, this must be done in a supportive, kind way that doesn’t impose shame and negative evaluations of your weight and body. For your loved ones who don’t know diabetes as well as you do, they may minimize diabetes management to preconceived notions about weight and body size; in reality, many factors beyond these are involved in diabetes. As a result, you may receive many harmful messages about weight from the ones you love. Unfortunately, it is well documented that stigma around weight has many negative consequences in the realm of diabetes management. Not only can you feel shameful about your body, you may also engage in dangerous behaviours to cope, such as binge eating or poor diabetes management, which only results in feeling worse.
If you have decided that weight management is a tool that you want to use to manage diabetes, having the ones you love work with you on this goal, in a supportive way, is important. Let’s review 3 tips that can help you do this:
1. Communication
The ones you love tend to want to help you with health management goals. Unfortunately, the ones you love may also say or do things that can negatively impact you. If your family and friends are part of your weight management journey, it’s important to be open with them about how to support you. Are there comments being made that are having a negative impact on you? Are there things that your loved ones do, related to weight, that make you feel shamed? Are your food choices being scrutinized? Talking about how other people’s comments may be stigmatizing can be difficult but it is important to address. The use of “I” statements can help you navigate these challenging conversations with the ones you love.
I statements are a way to express how someone’s actions have impacted you, and what you would like them to do differently. I statements can be particularly helpful when having a difficult conversation by helping keep communication flowing and prevent it from shutting down. Let’s say your partner made a negative comment about what you are eating that hurt you. An I statement to address this may look like:
“I felt hurt by the comment about what I had for dinner tonight. I have been having challenges with my body confidence and when comments like that are made, it really makes me feel poorly about myself. I know you want to help me with my goals, but I need you to understand there will be times I would like to treat myself along this journey. Moving forward, I ask that you please respect my food choices.”
Communicating in an assertive and understanding way how someone’s actions are impacting you is important, as is clearly communicating how you need to be supported you in a gentle, compassionate way.
2. Positive reinforcement
It’s not just what your loved ones say, but what they do, that is important in diabetes management. If others are not supporting you with weight management, you need to consider what their actions can be. Let’s take exercise as an example. Research shows that working out with others not only improves your physical health, but your emotional health as well. When you feel better about an activity such as exercise, you are more likely to stick with that goal. Another example would be to re-evaluate mealtimes. Do you often eat alone (possibly stewing in negative thoughts about yourself)? Do you notice a difference when you eat with someone you care about? Sharing meals often has a positive experience on us in many ways and can support you on your journey to managing weight.
3. Navigating your relationship with weight
Our own internal stigma related to weight can be paralyzing, and you may feel an internal tug of war over self-compassion versus scrutiny. While difficult, part of any weight management journey needs to be addressing these thoughts within ourselves. Developing mindful, self-compassion about weight and body size helps reduce the mental turmoil related to stigma. Self-compassion entails many aspects such as changing negative self-talk about ourselves, setting realistic and appropriate goals related to weight management, mindfulness to help remain in the moment and how you engage with others. Research shows that self-compassion related to weight is positively correlated with improved well-being and diabetes management.
Living with diabetes involves many factors you may not consider when first receiving a diagnosis. For many, navigating weight management and the stigma associated with it is one of the most challenging avenues of the journey. Changing negative perception both within ourselves and others about weight and body size needs to be at the forefront when it comes to this aspect of diabetes. Weight and body size is only one piece of the diabetes management journey, but engaging with weight in a supportive, gentle way is often one of the strongest factors in your success.
