Molokai Fitness: Heal yourself with your diet

Community Contributed

By Ayda Ersoy

What if you can heal yourself just by changing your diet? I don’t think anyone needs to tell you that you should lose weight, or exercise, or start following a diet. You know exactly what you need to do. Am I right?

If you look around Molokai, a large amount of the population has diabetes and is overweight. In the U.S., 21 million people have diabetes, another 8 million have it but are as yet undiagnosed, and an astonishing 86 million are pre-diabetic. The numbers are increasing every year.

So what are we doing wrong? What has changed in the last 20 or 30 years to make this problem get so big?

I’m not suggesting that anyone should just quit their medication. But I suggest you do take a look at your diet and give much more attention to what you are eating. Get some nutritional help, and learn about your body type and the diet that is correct for you.

First, let’s look at what exactly type 2 diabetes is. The pancreas is the organ in your body that makes insulin. Insulin regulates fat storage, and your body needs insulin in order to have the correct glucose levels in your blood. With type 2 diabetes your body is still making insulin, just not enough. So when you overfeed your body by eating too high carbs, sugar and unhealthy fat choices, you will have a hard time decreasing your blood sugar level. You will become insulin resistant, which means that although the pancreas is still making insulin, your body is not using it effectively.

What we can do, is to use a combination of therapy and eating healthy food choices. I suggest you start by watching your carbs intake. Most of the time you don’t even realize that even in a small amount of food you are taking so much carbs. And when you eat too many carbs in one meal your blood sugar will rise high so quick, and you may feel tired and hungry soon after your meal.

That’s why it is crucial to learn to eat the correct food for your body type. If your diet is wrong, it doesn’t matter which medication you are on, it is not going to have the correct positive effects on your health.

I want to hold a free workshop at Home Pumehana in November to talk more about this, and what you can do with your diet to start seeing some positive changes. I want to help as many people as I can, please contact me if you’re interested to come along and we’ll arrange a time that’s best for as many people as possible. You can email me at ayda@aydaersoy.com or text me at 808-276-6892.