Manage your diabetes to have fewer complications

Impactful changes to your lifestyle that you can make at home can lead to big improvements in your blood sugar control.

The information in this article is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace medical advice from your doctor.

Nearly 1 in 3 adults over age 65 in the United States has diabetes. If you’re one of them, that diagnosis can feel overwhelming. Especially if you think you’ll need to change your entire eating and exercise routine all at once. While complications from diabetes can be controlled with healthy lifestyle tweaks, you don’t need to figure it all out by yourself. A Health and Well-being Assessment can help you with this transition.

“It’s a partnership. Treating diabetes is not just about taking medications but also making a few changes in your life that can make a really big difference,” says Pamela Eliason, FNP–BC. She is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and a team lead for Matrix Medical Network in Summerville, South Carolina.

When you have diabetes, making healthy changes can improve how you feel day-to-day. It can improve your energy levels, mood, feelings of hunger, and more. Lifestyle changes will also help decrease your risk of complications, including vision loss, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke, lower-limb amputations, and certain types of cancer.

Your Health and Well-being Assessment can give you tools to help you manage your disease. These four suggestions are great places to start if you still haven’t booked your appointment.

A Health and Well-being Assessment is a good time to discuss healthy habits with a licensed clinician — plus, it’s part of your plan. Call Matrix Medical Network at 855-204-1752 855-204-1752 (TTY: 711) or schedule online. (Weekdays: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET; Saturday: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET)

Make dietary changes that will stick

Try not to dwell on what you may not be able to eat, such as foods with a lot of added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium. Focus on all the delicious foods you can eat. There are endless varieties of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats, dairy, beans, nuts, and seeds that are on any diabetes-management menu. Explore those options to figure out which ones you enjoy most, so a healthy diet will be enjoyable.

“We need to think of food as medicine,” says Eliason.

In addition to changing what you eat, you should also adjust how often you do it. Eliason advises patients to eat every three to four hours to keep their blood sugar levels more stable. She also suggests having a bedtime snack, such as a piece of toast with peanut butter or a hardboiled egg, to further manage your blood sugar throughout the night.

Make physical activity part of your daily routine

Eliason says she hears from patients all the time that making exercise a habit can be hard. But it’s one of the most important ways to help manage your condition.

“Exercise is one of the best things folks with diabetes can do because it helps muscles use glucose in a more effective way, which improves glycemic control,” says Eliason.

If regular physical activity is new to you, she recommends starting with walking. It’s the easiest form of exercise and it gets your muscles moving. Rather than planning to walk a certain distance, set a timer on your phone for five minutes, then take a stroll. When the timer goes off, turn around and walk back.

“That’s 10 minutes of exercise you didn’t have before,” says Eliason.

As you progress, you can bump up the time by a minute or two until you reach 30 minutes total of walking. The American Diabetes Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week.

Find a diabetes support group

No one can relate to your situation better than other people who have diabetes too. Support groups can help you talk through your struggles with being diagnosed with a chronic illness and managing the complications. Members can also share useful tips about eating, exercise, and more.

Research shows that peer support can improve your ability to manage your diabetes at home and improve your fasting glucose levels. To find a group near you, start by asking your Matrix clinician. Support groups are often available at local hospitals and other medical centers. They may also have virtual options as well.

Schedule your yearly Health and Well-being Assessment

This may be the most important step to take. Matrix clinicians who lead these visits are trained to counsel their patients about healthy living. And they can also detect diabetes if you haven’t already been diagnosed before their visit.

“We want to treat people with diabetes as early as possible, so that it doesn’t get to a bad point — and that involves a lot of teaching on our part,” says Eliason.

Your Matrix clinician will give you a test, such as an A1C test, which is a blood test that measures how well your glucose levels have been controlled over the last three months. That gives you and your clinician an idea of how well your medications and lifestyle changes are working for your diabetes.

If your levels are in the normal range, it reinforces those healthy habits that you’ve hopefully already started. If there is still room for improvement, you can discuss other ways to make additional changes. Or you can consider making medication adjustments. Either way, knowing where you are and the progress you’ve made can keep you on the right track to living a long and full life.

See our sources:
Statistics about diabetes: American Diabetes Association
Benefits of diabetes self-management: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Coping with a type 2 diabetes diagnosis: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Weekly exercise targets: American Diabetes Association
Peer support: Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders

Cited sources were last reviewed on 6/16/2025

Y0040_GHHMPF4EN_C