This is one in a series of book reviews. You may find these books beneficial if you: manage prediabetes or diabetes, follow a diabetes meal plan and/or try to eat healthy to live well. These book reviews also appear on amazon.com and the books can be found in my amazon a-store. Please check them out and consider a purchase. 

Note: This book is geared to healthcare providers who help people make behavior changes. I’ve recently reviewed a similar book for healthcare providers Behavioral Approaches to Treating Obesity: Helping Your Patients Make Changes That Last. 

Changing behaviors is a difficult process, period! When it comes to changing behaviors to impact health outcomes, frustrations can multiply for the person managing the condition and the healthcare providers (HCPs) encouraging the person to make changes.

Inspiring and Supporting Behavior Change: A Food and Nutrition Professional’s Counseling Guide, written by Ann Constance and Cecilia Sauter, both dietitians and Certified Diabetes Educators with years of expertise counseling people with diabetes, is a handbook designed to help HCPs learn to more successfully and effectively inspire people to make critically important behavior changes. 

The diabetes stats are downright staggering! Nearly 19 million people are diagnosed with diabetes in the U.S. and another 6 million are estimated to have diabetes but don’t yet know it. Add to this number, another 79 million people with prediabetes yet barely 10 percent of these throngs of people know they have it. 

Unfortunately people continue to think of type 2 diabetes as a ho-hum disease and tend not treat it early and aggressively. Yet we know early and aggressive care of type 2 is exactly what keeps people healthier longer. And we know early awareness and action with prediabetes can prevent/delay the progression to type 2 diabetes.

So, to honor American Diabetes Month, I’ve grabbed every opportunity which has come my way to raise awareness, educate and promote action. Check out links to these guest blogs, videos, and interviews:

Is there ‘a diabetic diet’? NO!

According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and this has been true since 1994 – nearly 20 years, there is no one diabetic diet that represents THE prescription for THE way ALL people with diabetes should eat.  

Are there ‘diabetic foods’ which people with diabetes should buy? NO!

Foods labeled ‘diabetic’ or ‘diabetic-friendly’ carry a halo of being better-for-you than unprocessed, unadulterated and unlabeled foods. But, it’s just not so. 

So, then what’s the eating plan for people with diabetes today?

The nutrition recommendations from the American Diabetes Association, last updated in 2008, echo the healthy eating recommendations of the United States Dietary Guidelines for Americans last revised in 2010.

These recommendations reflect the growing body of evidence that a plant-based eating plan can help people achieve and maintain a healthy body weight and prevent and manage chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

Have you heard that the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) randomized controlled trial conducted through National Institutes of Health (NIH) was ended two years ahead of schedule? This news crossed my eyes first on 10/20/2012 via twitter. Got to love twitter!

The press information from the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), announced on 10/19/2012 that the trial had been stopped about a month earlier – in September. Why? Because in this long and lengthy trial, in which people had been enrolled for up to 11 years, the people in the intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) group did not experience a decrease in cardiovascular events (CV) (heart attacks, strokes, etc.) compared with the people in the control group. 

The Key Look AHEAD Question…and Answer
Can an intensive lifestyle intervention program (ILI) which achieves and maintains weight loss help prevent/delay the heart and circulatory problems which are the most common complications of type 2?