Diabetes Support : Dr Chan Shares 3 Things That Actually Help

One of the things I hear most often from my patients with diabetes is this: they could do with some support to manage their diabetes, especially in terms of making the lifestyle and eating habits changes needed to beat diabetes.

Some diabetics, a minority, have wonderful family support. But many tell me that the people around them do not really understand what they are going through. Their family are concerned but not always helpful. Their friends care but do not know how to support them beyond just words of concern. Because caring and actually helping are two very different things. 

If you are living with diabetes this post is for you. And if someone you love has diabetes and you genuinely want to support them, this post is for you too.

Watch the short video below, or read on for the full answer.

What Real Diabetes Support Looks Like

Let me tell you about a typical patient I often see. Let's call him Raymond. *Not a real patient, but a composite drawn from my years of coaching people with diabetes.

Raymond was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago. His wife was worried. His children were concerned. Everyone wanted to help. His wife stopped buying white rice and started forcing him to give up white rice because she heard that it is not good for people with diabetes. His daughter, who loves to bake, stopped offering him the cakes and breads that she baked. She continued baking them many times a week, but simply just stopped offering them to him. His son with whom he used to enjoy a beer or two with, also simply stopped inviting him to join him for one. 

Raymond felt the concern but did not feel helped. Same same but very different.

Can you see what was happening there? Good intentions are not the same as good support. And for people with diabetes, getting the right support is often what's needed to help them succeed in making the necessary lifestyle and eating habits changes to combat diabetes.

So what does the right kind of support look like? After more than 10 years of coaching patients with diabetes to make targeted lifestyle and eating habits changes to manage diabetes, I have 3 suggestions for anyone who wants to support a person with diabetes.

Number One: Learn Together

The first thing you can do is learn together.

I am always heartened whenever I see a spouse or a child joins a diabetes related workshop or training that I conduct, alongside the person with diabetes. I cannot help but smile and think quietly, "Now, that is what real support looks like."

Lifestyle habits that are helpful for beating diabetes are also habits that are good for everybody, not just people with diabetes. So when a friend or family make the effort to join the learning journeys of people with diabetes, they are not just supporting, they are personally benefitting. Bless and getting blessed in return. Win win.

Number Two: Do It Together

The second thing is to do it together.

Managing diabetes requires real lifestyle change. Changes to eating habits. Changes to physical activity. Changes to how you manage stress and sleep. These are not small adjustments. They require sustained effort over time.

The biggest obstacle to making lifestyle and eating habits change for people with diabetes is that they often end out being the odd one out. Everybody's lifestyle carry on as usual, while they have to change. Having to order a separate sugar free dessert whilst everyone else is sharing a sweet dessert, seeing mom making the effort to prepare a small portion of brown rice whilst the rest of family scoop from the communal pot of white rice. Change is hard enough, standing out like a sore thumb while doing it makes it ten times harder. 

So, to me, one of the most powerful thing a friend or family member can do to support a person with diabetes is therefore - to do it together, make the same changes together. 

If your loved one needs to reduce their sugar intake, reduce yours too. If they are working on eating more vegetables, make that a shared goal at the dinner table. If they are building a habit of walking every evening, walk with them.

Of course it will not be easy but it definitely will be extremely helpful.

Number Three: Explore Together

The third thing is to explore together.

"Doctor, I don't like vegetables. I simply don't enjoy them." is something I hear often during coaching sessions with people with diabetes. 

"So go explore new ways to enjoy them, you can learn to love foods that will love you back." would often be my response in a nutshell. Seemingly unreasonable, but totally achievable.

Because after years of coaching people with diabetes to make lifestyle and eating habits change. I know that the ones who succeed, and more importantly, the ones who can sustain the changes are always the ones who found enjoyment in the process and in the end.

Because willpower is finite. Enjoyment is not.

When change feels like deprivation, it is unlikely to succeed, and most certainly will not last. Real sustainable change must be powered by enjoyment and that requires exploration.

So if you want to support someone with diabetes, make the effort to explore new things together. Go hunting for interesting walking routes neither of you has tried. Discover new eating places together that happen to offer menu options that work well for managing blood sugar. Try cooking a new recipe together that is both delicious and genuinely good for diabetes management.

The keywords here are explore, and together. You are not merely using words to encourage them to eat or live healthy. You go on a journey to explore that together with them, to discover a new appreciation for previously unfamiliar lifestyle or foods that are good for diabetes. That is how habits become medicine. 

What About When They Won't Listen?

What do you do when the person with diabetes simply will not cooperate? When they resist every suggestion, dismiss every piece of advice, and seem determined to carry on with the very habits that are making things worse?

This is real. And it is painful, especially when you love the person and you can see what their choices are costing them.

Let me offer you my perspectives, based on my experience coaching people with diabetes.

Pressure rarely works. When people feel pushed, they push back. When they feel managed, they resist. This is human nature. And people with diabetes are no different.

What might work better would be to simply offer to do it together - Learn together. Do it together. Explore together. 

Sounds simple, extremely difficult to do, but clearly powerful.

Share this

If you have diabetes, and the people around you want to help but do not quite know how, perhaps share this post with them. Not as a correction. Not as a complaint. Simply as food for thought. I am confident it would be helpful, if nothing else, at least as a catalyst to have an open conversation about the kind of support you would appreciate and the way you would like it. 

Blessings
Dr Chan

Learning About Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes may be potentially reversible if lifestyle and eating habits changes are made early enough, appropriately, adequately and sustainably. And If you have Type 2 diabetes and are not as equipped with the essential foundational knowledge about reversing Type 2 diabetes as you should be, I have a structured online learning programme that you might find very useful. You can find out more through the link below.

Find out more about the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: Essential Basics - Structured Online Learning Programme Here

Related Posts

• Can Type 2 Diabetes Be Reversed? Dr Chan Answers
• Eating Habits and Diabetes: Why Family Is the Key
• Stress, Sleep and Strength: Lifestyle Habits Beyond Diet
• Case Studies: Diabetes Reversal Through Lifestyle and Diet

About Dr Chan Tat Hon

Dr Chan graduated from the National University of Singapore medical school in 1992. For the last ten years, his work has focused on lifestyle medicine. He works with healthcare and corporate organisations to design and deliver lifestyle behaviour change programmes, train health coaches and build communities engaged in cultivating healthy behaviours to combat diseases.

He also provides training and coaching to individuals with diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, cardiovascular diseases and other lifestyle-related chronic diseases through 1-1 personalised coaching, live webinars, and online courses.

• 1-1 Personalised Coaching with Dr Chan
• Online Courses and Programmes by Dr Chan
• Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: Essential Basics Online Programme

About This Video

In this short video, I share three things that family members and friends can do to genuinely support someone with diabetes. The focus is on companionship over advice, and on shared lifestyle change rather than external pressure. I also explain why enjoyment is the key to sustainability, and why doing things together matters far more than monitoring from the outside.

Full Video Transcript

The following is the full transcript of the video above.

3 Things you can do to help someone with diabetes. If you have family members or friends with diabetes and you want to learn how to help them improve their lifestyle habits to better control and combat diabetes. This video is for you. Welcome to The Habits Pharmacy, where Habits become Medicine. In all my years of coaching people with diabetes, be it my patients at my clinic or participants at my Habits as Medicine workshops, I've come across many relatives and friends of people with diabetes who are very keen to, and put in a lot of time and effort to, learn how to better help and support their loved ones with diabetes to modify and improved their lifestyle habits to better control and combat diabetes. This is what inspired me to do this video – 3 things you can do to help someone with diabetes.

Number ONE - Learn Together. Encourage the person with diabetes to participate in educational workshops or coaching programs that focus on teaching lifestyle habits that are essential for people in diabetes so as to optimally control and compact diabetes. You can usually find such programs offered by your local hospital or community groups. Even though you do not have diabetes, learning more about the healthy lifestyle habits to combat diabetes it's still going to be very useful and relevant to you. So the first thing you can do for people in diabetes is to offer to participate in diabetes-related coaching or educational programs together with them. So, if you want to help someone to improve their lifestyle habits to combat to diabetes, Learn Together with them.

Number TWO - Do It Together. People with diabetes have many aspects of their lifestyle that they need to change or improve, be it their diet, exercise, stress management or sleep habits. If you really want to help them in this process, offer to do it together with them, be their change buddy in their journeys to change and improve their lifestyle habits. Whatever they need to change or improve, you do it together. If they need to cut down on their sugar intake, you also offer to learn to cut down your sugar intake too, if they need to increase their vegetables intake, you could also offer to practice increasing your vegetable intake together with them, if they need to learn to develop a habit of going for daily walks, then you make the effort to do the same too. Whatever they need to change or improve, you offer to do the same. Even though you do not have diabetes, lifestyle habits that are good for combating diabetes would also be good for you. So, why not bless them and be blessed in return as you walk alongside your loved ones with diabetes to improve their lifestyle habits.

Number THREE = Explore Together. The key to sustainability of a new lifestyle habits is enjoyment. So if you want to help your loved ones with diabetes develop new lifestyle habits to combat diabetes, make the effort to explore together with them, new foods, new activities that are clearly good for combating diabetes. For example, exploring new and interesting walking trails with them or going with them to hunt for and explore new eating places that offer interesting menu options that are in line with the new healthier eating habits that they need to learn to inculcate. In doing so, not only would they be able to successfully make the necessary lifestyle habits changes, they would also, over time, learn to enjoy them and therefore be able to sustain this new lifestyle habits that are critical in their fight against diabetes.

So, these are the three things that you can do to help people with diabetes to improve their lifestyle habits to better combat diabetes. Number ONE - Learn Together. Number TWO - Do It Together. Number THREE - Explore Together. Whatever new lifestyle habits that they need to learn to adopt, you learn, do and explore these new lifestyle habits together with them. I used to conduct many diabetes-related healthy lifestyle, educational, training workshops and coaching programs but they were all conducted in-person. So ever since the start of the pandemic, I have stopped doing them. In the coming months, I am planning to develop and launch new online versions of these diabetes-related lifestyle habits programs that I used to conduct. So if you're keen to be updated whenever I have new contents or programs related to diabetes, you can go to www.DiabetesOvercomers.com and subscribe to the email updates. Let Habits be Thy Medicine. I am Dr Chan. Eat Well and Be Well.

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