"I was an only child, so I was pretty close to both of my parents, especially my dad," she tells Health. "But as a type 2 diabetic he experienced a lot of complications, and he spent a lot of time in doctor's offices or at the hospital."
Libonati's father dealt with many of the more severe complications associated with unmanaged type 2 diabetes: He lost his vision, experienced kidney failure, had hypertension, and suffered nerve damage (known as diabetic neuropathy) in his legs. He died in 2007 when Libonati was just 15 years old.
"I only had my dad for fifteen years but he was super dad to me," she says. "We went everywhere together and he was always smiling, even when I knew he felt sick from the complications."
Libonati remembers her father also used to tell the "best stories"—perhaps that's why she decided to pursue a career in journalism. "I think it was definitely a way of trying to connect with his memory."
But before she left for college, Libonati began to experience some health issues of her own: fatigue, nausea, extreme thirst. She was eventually diagnosed with type 2 diabetes—and had been experiencing severe symptoms from it. "They made me stay in the hospital [intensive care unit] for two weeks because I had diabetic ketoacidosis and pancreatitis."
RELATED: After Being Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes, This Actor Found Her Voice to Help Others
The diagnosis, despite having a family history of the disease, was a shock to Libonati. "I was only 24 and felt really scared," she says. "I thought I would be dead in less than five years. I didn't know that there was a way to live a good life with diabetes."
Because Libonati associated diabetes with the death of her father, she struggled to manage her diagnosis. It wasn't until began seeking support from a diabetes community online that she started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"I started talking to other patients and saw them living healthy lives," she says. "They were playing sports and all sorts of other things I thought were impossible with type 2 diabetes. It was the first time I had some hope that I could find a way to live with diabetes."
Her struggles with the disease—paired with her knack for storytelling—drove her to help others with type 2 diabetes. "In the beginning, I was in denial, and as a result, I was a rebel when it came to managing my disease because i thought diabetes couldn't be controlled," she says. "So now I want to inspire other people with my own personal journey to show them that that's not true."
Libonati is in a particularly important position to be able to do this: She's one of 16 million adults in Brazil living with type 2 diabetes, according to the International Diabetes Foundation. Libonati says she's an exception among the many people in her country that struggle to manage their disease.
RELATED: Why One Nurse Dedicated Her Career to Helping Underserved Communities Fight Type 2 Diabetes
"We have a good public health care system," she says. "But at the same time it is a huge country with a lot of people suffering from diabetes and everyone doesn't have the same access to the same medicine and the same treatment."
And despite having a managed case of the disease, Libonati says she still finds herself struggling at times ."There are still days when I hate it and I wish I didn't have to think about it," she says.
These health struggles that she and so many others with diabetes face are often compounded by the stigma associated with the disease. "A lot of people don't understand what diabetes is, and so they assume that I became a type 2 diabetic because I was over weight and lazy, or because I ate too much sugar," she says. "That's just not true." She adds that Brazil still has instances of fatphobia. "People assume your weight and the fact that you have diabetes is your fault," she says.
Because of that, Libonati says she hopes that her work as a journalist—sharing her story and the stories of others—can help show more people what the disease truly looks like.
"I hope that the work that I do and the stories I"m able to share can help other people," she says. "With so many people in Brazil affected by the disease, it's important that people are able to get access to support and to the right information. It's important they know they are not alone."
Libonati, now 30, also feels a sense of responsibility to honor her father with the work she's doing around diabetes. "Back when my dad was sick, he didn't have access to a lot of the things I have access to now, and I wish he had," she says. "Maybe it would have helped him live a longer life. But I think in a lot of ways my passion for helping others is really about him. Everything I do is for my dad and I hope that I inherited some of his storytelling skills to try and help as many people as possible."
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]]>"It was the first time I remember seeing the value of how to use your voice," she tells Health, remembering the sound of the audience erupting with applause after her performance. "That performance is forever etched in my memory because it was the day I realized that if I had something profound to say, and I said it in just the right way, people would listen."
Raybon went on to pursue a career in acting—she fell in love with the "electric energy" it gave her—but shortly after her pursuit began, she began to struggle with some health issues.
"My weight really got out of control around 2010," she says. "There were times where I got really sick and nearly passed out in acting class or a workshop because I hadn't eaten." But it wasn't until Raybon began experiencing issues with her vision, that she decided it was time to see a doctor.
RELATED: How This Woman's PCOS Diagnosis Led to Her Being Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes
"My maternal grandmother was blind due to complications from type 2 diabetes, and so were two of her sisters, and when the issues with my eyes started, I got really scared," she says. It turns out, her worries were right: Raybon was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes—and just in time. "[My doctor] told me that if I didn't get my blood sugar under control, I wasn't going to be here for very long," she says.
It was then that Raybon knew she had to make some changes in her life—and her paternal grandmother—whom Raybon felt she had a responsibility to care for—was one person who helped her with that decision. "One day she asked me, 'When are you going to live your life?' and when I tried to explain that I had to take care of her, she told me that God was taking care of her [and that] I had to take care of myself," Raybon says. "It was gut-wrenching, but to be honest, it was exactly what I needed to hear."
First on the list of changes for Raybon: tackling her relationship with food. "I became a raw vegan and started making all my meals," she says. "After four months, I lost 40 pounds, and that's without having started any sort of exercise—it's all been my diet, drinking water, and managing my stress."
RELATED: Why One Nurse Dedicated Her Career to Helping Underserved Communities Fight Type 2 Diabetes
The changes Raybon made didn't just alter how she looks—they also improved her health, and how she feels about her future.
"My A1C [a test that measures blood sugar] is back to a normal non-diabetic range. My kidney function is normal. My sleep apnea is gone, which means I don't have to use a CPAP machine anymore," she says. "I still go to the doctor and get diabetic screening labs done to make sure everything is fine. Honestly, I couldn't be more grateful for the state of my health right now."
The renewed passion for life and evolution of Raybon's acting career led her to create MiasGhia, a YouTube channel she hopes can inspire other people to live the life they deserve. She's using the new venture to show the power of her voice, just like Mrs. Reynolds taught her.
"I think a lot of times we don't live up to the best versions of ourselves and that's what I want my YouTube channel to be about," she says. "Telling people that they deserve to feel good and not to wait. Because too often we miss out on experiences out of fear or out of a sense of obligation."
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]]>"The majority of patients were coming in for amputations or for kidney dialysis because their type 2 diabetes had gone unmanaged," Sumlin, a professor, researcher, and chief health officer at Community Coalition of Health, tells Health. "Of that group, about 80% were minorities."
That realization—that she was downstream of a major health issue among minorities—prompted her to return to school at the age of 34 to get her master's degree in nursing, focusing specifically on diabetes management. She later went on to get her doctoral degree in nursing, focusing on food and how it affects diabetes management. "It broke my heart to see so many people having problems managing their type 2 diabetes when it didn't have to be that way," she says.
According to Sumlin, one of the biggest issues minority communities face regarding type 2 diabetes is a lack of education. "Many people just think they need to do what the doctor tells them and that's it," she says. "What they often don't realize is that it's more than just taking the right medicine. You need the right medicine, the right food, and a proper amount of exercise."
RELATED: How This Registered Dietitian Helps Her Clients—And Family Members—Struggling With Type 2 Diabetes
For those in minority communities in particular, food is a large part of the culture—and diet changes are a tough suggestion. "When you tell people they can't eat their cultural foods, it's asking them to give up their identity," she says. "That's a tough sell."
In order to find a sustainable solution for those who heavily relied on food to connect to their culture, Sumlin knew she needed to find a different approach to diet changes. "I don't want people to not be able to eat grandma's recipes. I just want them to find some ways to make them a little healthier so they can continue to enjoy them, and that takes a mindset change," she says. "Too many people think, 'I have insulin so I can eat whatever I want.' And the reality is that's not true and you have to ask, do you have your diabetes under control or does your diabetes control you?"
Stress, too, is an important factor in controlling diabetes—and it's something those in minority communities are also disproportionately affected by due to health disparities. "It's not easy to rise above for a lot of people and not being able to handle that stress effectively can contribute to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes," says Sumlin.
Another huge factor in managing diabetes—exercise—is also sometimes met with resistance, adds Sumlin. But, she says, getting in some physical activity can be easier than many people think. "A lot of people don't realize that if you have high blood sugar [levels], simply taking a walk around the block can help bring [them] down. And that's something you can do in the present moment to regain some control over your health," she says.
In addition to maintaining a healthy diet, watching stress levels, and getting some daily exercise, Sumlin also says that another good habit to get into if you struggle with type 2 diabetes is checking your blood sugar levels on a regular basis. "Not just to show your health care provider, who you may not be seeing for three months, but to know in the moment that you need to take some steps to manage it," she says.
RELATED: These 3 Siblings All Have Type 2 Diabetes—Here's How They Manage the Condition Together
While these may sound like minor steps, Sumlin explains how they can have big results. "Having these tools and education available opens up a whole world of possibilities for people in terms of what they can do, what they can take control of, to manage their diabetes better," she says.
But as a health care provider, Sumlin doesn't just teach and care for her patients—she learns from them, too; mainly how to be more patient. "There's a lot of denial in the beginning," she says. "People don't want to believe they have diabetes and I have to be OK with that. Sometimes it takes a long time for people to be ready for help. But when they are ready, I have to get people to realize that this is going to be a 24-hour disease that has to be managed to avoid these more serious complications."
Sumlin, who now has more than 18 years working with diabetes patients, has a message for people already dealing with the early signs of complications from Type 2 diabetes.
"It doesn't have to end up with blindness or amputations or kidney failure. You can live with it if you manage it, and the main thing I help people to think about is what motivates them to manage their diabetes," she says. "Maybe it's that you want to be here for your grandkids. But whatever it is, you have to find a reason to keep getting up every day and making the right decisions for yourself, because that's the only way it's going to work."
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]]>Roa's health was also on her parents' minds. She grew up in Bakersfield, California—her parents emigrated from Mexico to work in agriculture and provide a better life for their children. Roa's doctors told her parents she was prediabetic, or that her blood sugar levels were higher than normal, but high enough to be considered type 2 diabetes. With that news, Roa's parents would constantly make comments about what she was eating, and not keep certain foods in the house for her to eat.
"I was just a kid," Roa says. "So I never really understood why my parents were so strict about it."
But when she turned 21, she began to realize why her parents put so much emphasis on her diet. Roa began experiencing a series of complications from being prediabetic. She was also diagnosed with both polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). "My weight really made all of these things worse," she says. "So did my diet."
RELATED: How This Registered Dietitian Helps Her Clients—And Family Members—Struggling With Type 2 Diabetes
After years of being told she was prediabetic, Roa was eventually diagnosed with full-blown type 2 diabetes. "It really hit me hard. I thought my life was over," she says. "I thought it was impossible to live a good life with type 2 diabetes because of everything I'd seen and heard from family members who had lost limbs and experienced other serious complications."
Roa didn't immediately tackle her condition following her diagnosis—she didn't even tell her family that she'd been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. "After all the things I'd heard growing up about my diet and my weight, I was very afraid of what they'd say, and I didn't want to hear 'I told you so,'" she says.
It wasn't until Roa reached out to her grandfather, who also has type 2 diabetes—that she began making positive steps in managing her disease. "At first I was just going on the internet and finding some old and dated information about type 2 and what to do," she says. "There was nothing aimed at a 21-year-old [woman] and it didn't really help me. Eventually things got so bad that I confided in my grandpa."
At the time, Roa's grandfather had been living with type 2 diabetes for 23 years. He offered her real-world advice about living with the disease, as well as the empathy anyone newly diagnosed with a chronic illness needs.
RELATED: These 3 Siblings All Have Type 2 Diabetes—Here's How They Manage the Condition Together
"No one really tells you how much your sugars are going to fluctuate and having my grandpa to fill in some of the gaps was such a relief," she says. "One time I called him in the middle of night because I woke up drenched with sweat and my sugar was in the sixties. He told me I needed to drink a coke or something with sugar right away because if I got too low, I could go into a coma."
The more Roa talked to her grandfather about type 2 diabetes, the more comfortable she felt with her diagnosis—which also helped her talk to other family members about it. "He didn't shame me," she said. "He embraced me and told me that my life wasn't over. He said type 2 diabetes needed to be managed, but that If i did the right things, I could live a long and happy life."
In addition to coming clean to her family, Roa also needed to reexamine another thing: Her relationship with food. "I come from a Mexican family and there is always rice and tortillas with every meal. So that's been difficult sometimes, to have to avoid or cut back on some of those cultural foods," she says. But she soon taught herself that she could still eat the foods she loved—just in moderation. "Before I would eat 10 tacos and stuff myself," she says. "Now I have two and I feel good, and I still get to share in that sense of community with my friends and family."
Briana had always had a complicated relationship to food and learning how to change her approach was difficult at first.
RELATED: After Being Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes, This Woman Began Addressing Her Emotions Around Food
"I come from a Mexican family and there is always rice and tortillas with every meal. So that's been difficult sometimes, to have to avoid or cut back on some of those cultural foods. But moderation has been the biggest key for me. Before I would eat ten tacos and stuff myself. Now I have two and I feel good, and I still get to share in that sense of community with my friends and family."
And it's not just her relationship with food—Roa also changed her outlook and approach to exercise. "I couldn't even walk a mile when I started, and now I'm doing five miles every weekend," she says. "I'm able to run and go for hikes and seeing that progress has fueled me to keep going."
Through her experiences, Roa has learned just how important it is to talk about your condition and have a strong support system, and she hopes others can learn the same. "So many people feel embarrassed about having type 2 diabetes, and I was there myself," she says. "It's important for people to know that anyone can be impacted by the disease, not just people who look a certain way, and you need to talk to your health care providers when you're struggling. They can't help you unless you're willing to talk to them."
Now 24, Roa's hard work in managing her condition has paid off. "I'm proud to say I'm no longer on the diabetes spectrum," she says. "It feels great."
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]]>"Before games, I decided to not eat any foods with any carbs in them," Rose, now 35, tells Health. "It was a lot of protein and salads with non-starchy vegetables. The next game, I'd eat something that was rich in starches, like pasta or a sandwich, and then I would compare how my body felt."
The results surprised Rose. "I would feel more tired during the game if I didn't have any carbs, and I realized that the body actually needs carbohydrates for performance," she says.
But while she was paying attention to what she put into her body—and how she felt after—she couldn't say the same for the rest of her family. "We moved from Jamaica to Florida when I was really young, and my family didn't really raise my brother or [me] to be health conscious," she says. "They wanted us to be active and were very into sports, but food-wise, the main focus was eating traditional Jamaican dishes."
RELATED: These 3 Siblings All Have Type 2 Diabetes—Here's How They Manage the Condition Together
When the time came for Rose to pick a major in college, she went with her first love: sports—but she soon changed her mind to something that could help more people. "I was doing my undergraduate work and it dawned on me that not every needs a physical therapist," she says. "I started thinking about the impact I wanted to make, I tried to focus on something that could help everyone and anyone."
That's when she decided on nutrition. "Food is something everyone needs," she says. "It's something that brings people together." But it would become much more personal to her when her family members started developing type 2 diabetes.
According to Rose, who's now a registered dietician and certified diabetes educator, her cultural cuisine likely played a big role in the type 2 diabetes diagnoses in her family. "A lot of the traditional foods from Jamaica were rich in starches and then when you add in the starches that are prevalent in American cuisine, it's no wonder that people started developing type 2 diabetes," she says. "Seeing this pattern only served to fuel my passion for helping people improve their lives by improving their diets."
But, as Rose soon found out, improving someone's diet usually focuses on more than just food choices. "One way that I encourage people to show themselves kindness around their choices is that food doesn't have any morals attached to it," she says, speaking of her family members and clients who have a tendency to beat themselves over making the "right" food choices. "Food is just food," she says. "There is no good food and bad food."
She also found that it's important to keep a person's culture in mind when working with them on food choices—and that forbidding favorite foods (and encouraging a salad-only diet) wouldn't lead to sustainable success. "One size does not fit all when it comes to eating with type 2 diabetes," says Rose.
RELATED: After Being Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes, This Woman Began Addressing Her Emotions Around Food
Instead, she regularly recommends what's known as the Healthy Eating Plate Method, courtesy of Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which recommends half of your plate consisting of fruits and vegetables, a quarter of your plate as grains, and the last quarter made up of protein.
"This method allows people to mix and match food they like," says Rose. "So if you don't like fish you can sub out a lean meat as a source of protein. If you don't like potatoes, you aren't forcing yourself to eat potatoes. This gives people a chance at building more sustainable habits because your food shouldn't taste like cardboard and sadness."
Still, with so much bad information out there, it can be hard for Type 2 diabetics to feel like they aren't being shamed for making the wrong choice. Especially when it comes to consuming sugars.
"One of the first things I recommend to people with Type 2 diabetes is to increase their intake of fruits and vegetables to make sure we are getting enough fiber. And while yes, fruit does contain sugar, it also contains vitamins, fiber and other nutrients the body needs to function properly."
Just like she did on the soccer field, Kim has learned that knowing how the food you eat impacts your body goes a long way in helping people make changes. Part of her job is empowering people to make their own choices by educating them.
"Knowledge is power, when it comes to health and so I try and explain some of the issues that diabetes can cause down the road. Things like blindness and kidney failure. Then we discuss whether or not they are experiencing any of those issues or complications. I also let people know that I'm not there to take away their favorite foods. I'm there to help guide them to make changes that can help avoid some of the negative outcomes associated with unmanaged diabetes."
RELATED: Type 2 Diabetes Prompted This Woman to Give Up the Unhealthy Eating Traditions She'd Grown Up With
In addition to providing the framework for clients with Type 2 diabetes to make changes in their diets, Kim also provides motivational support in the form of postcards.
"I received a post card from a client five years saying how much I had helped them. Since then, they send a post card every year and it made me realize how much that little bit of validation motivated me. So now, I will send postcards to people checking in with them, encouraging them to keep up the good work, or simply opening the door for them to feel like they can reach out if they are struggling."
Kim has seen firsthand with her family members how hard it can be to manage Type 2 diabetes. She also knows how all the noise out there can be overwhelming, particularly when it comes to social media and the influx of fad diets claiming to "fix" your condition.
"Type 2 diabetes is not your fault. And the best way to move forward is to take a breath, then reach out a trained health care provider who understands your condition and can help you get on track."
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]]>"We didn't really know anyone outside the church," Fabian Cambron, 45, who was 2 years old when the family arrived in Little Village, tells Health. "Eating together was always a big deal for us. Food was kind of out love language. If you didn't eat what my mother made, it was like rejecting that love."
Fabian's siblings—Carlos Cambron, 37, and Liz Cambron, 30—have those same memories. "I loved my mother's food. Especially her mole," Carlos says. "I can still smell the smells, and feel my eyes burning from all the peppers she used to use," Liz adds. "Even now it brings me right back to watching her in the kitchen."
But while most of the Cambron family traditions were lighthearted and fun—family dinners, working on cars, listening to Metallica—another kind of tradition was a bit more insidious and posed a risk to the family's health: type 2 diabetes.
RELATED: What It's Like Battling Type 2 Diabetes When You Have an Anxiety Disorder
Rosa Cambron, the siblings' mother, was the first in the family to be diagnosed with the chronic condition. "From a young age, I would see her checking her blood sugar and going to the doctor for checkups," Liz says. "We all had to learn pretty quick how to spot the warning signs." Rosa's mother and sister also had type 2 diabetes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hispanic or Latinx Americans have a 50% chance of developing Type 2 diabetes over the course of their lifetimes—that's compared to a 40% chance of non-Hispanic/Latinx Americans. They're also more likely to develop the condition at an early age, and they have a higher chance of developing complications from the condition, like kidney disease or failure, and blindness.
Fabian, who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at 21 years old is beginning to experience one of those complications: diabetic kidney disease, which occurs when, over time, excess blood sugar damages blood vessels in the kidneys, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
"I haven't always done the best job taking care of [my diabetes]," Fabian says. "Now the doctor says that I'm starting to lose function in my kidneys and I'm going to need a transplant. We've started trying to get ahead of that and get on a transplant list."
RELATED: 5 Strange Symptoms That Could Be Early Signs of Diabetes
But it's not just Fabian who struggles with the chronic condition—both Carlos and Liz, and Fabian's oldest son all have type 2 diabetes as well. "I haven't dealt with the kidney issues Fabian has but I am often exhausted no matter how much I sleep and have experienced some vision issues and tingling in my feet," Carlos says. "Mostly though, it's when I'm not taking care of myself [or] doing a good job of taking my medication."
According to the NIDDK, type 2 diabetes is caused by a few different factors, including: being overweight or obese, lacking physical activity, insulin resistance, and/or genetics. Both Fabian and Carlos believe that the food they grew up eating—and are still drawn to today as part of their culture—may have contributed to their condition.
"It's a lot of rice and fatty foods," Carlos says of the dinners he shared with his family. "But that's the food we've always eaten so it's hard to get away from that." Fabian added that water was often missing from the family's diet. "It was always soda, which obviously wasn't the best choice," he says.
When Liz, the youngest of the siblings with type 2 diabetes, got diagnosed, she tried to make lifestyle changes—and though some were successful, they were made difficult by her desire not to be alienated from her culture.
RELATED: 5 Important Tests for Type 2 Diabetes
"I started working out and got into the Beach Body program," Liz says. "And as far as what I was eating, I tried going vegetarian which was really hard to explain to my family. My mother would be like, 'What do you mean you don't want my food?' It was hard for me to balance wanting to take care of my health with wanting to feel like I was connected to my culture."
Still, her brothers recognize and appreciate the effort Liz has put into her health—and theirs. "Liz is definitely the healthier one," Carlos says. "And she tries to share tips and recipes with us for healthier options."
That help is important for Fabian especially, who, with a kidney transplant on the horizon and two children at home, has a renewed motivation to manage his health. "I want to be around for them," he says. "So I have to take care of myself better."
For Liz, who's getting married this summer, it's not only about keeping herself and her brothers healthier, too—it's about keeping family traditions alive, and the opportunity to make new ones. "I lost my father fifteen years ago but have been so lucky to have three brothers who are all like a father," she says. "I want them to be around when I have kids someday. I want them to have their uncles."
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]]>“I had grown up, like we all do, being told to eat when you’re happy and eat when you’re sad, but it wasn’t until later that I realized how much I was tying my emotions to food,” McFierce, a 34-year-old DJ, tells Health.
As an adult, she fell into a cycle of shaming herself for those feelings and then shaming her body’s reaction to the unhealthy eating habits that followed. She developed body dysmorphia, a mental health condition marked by a preoccupation with how her body looked. The Bronx native, who had been a dancer her entire life, began to see signs that her health was deteriorating.
“From 2012 to 2015, my body was going through all these changes," she says, which included weight gain. "I was trying as hard as I could to keep those changes under wraps because I felt embarrassed." A doctor told her she was pre-diabetic, and her plan was to start eating better to avoid developing diabetes.
In 2016, McFierce began to experience some of the telltale signs of diabetes. She was constantly fatigued, her feet would swell, and she started fainting. Professionally, she was beginning to make a name for herself as the first black woman to become the resident DJ at Madison Square Garden in 2017.
But all the hard work she put in to make her career a success was also making it easy for her to ignore her health problems. “I was out there hustling and grinding every day, and that became my excuse to not look inside and work on how I was actually feeling," she says. "To be honest, I was probably pre-diabetic for a couple years, and just didn’t want to address it.”
RELATED: After She Was Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes, This Woman's Doctor Blamed Her for Causing It
Once McFierce finally went back to a doctor in 2017 when she was 31, she found out she had type 2 diabetes. To get her diabetes under control, she realized she needed a whole-body solution that would address both her physical and mental health. But when she tried to explain that to her doctor, she didn't get any encouragement.
“I was really disappointed in how my doctor treated me; she didn’t listen, and instead of helping me educate myself, she asked if I wanted a flu shot," says McFierce. "Unfortunately that sort of treatment is something a lot of underserved communities and black women in particular have to deal with. But I made the decision that day to find a new doctor, and they took the time to sit with me, help me figure out what to do for my health, and also push me to go to therapy.”
When she was diagnosed, McFierce's A1C was 9.5. After switching doctors, she set her mind on one goal: reversing her diabetes. “I’m the type of person who, when I set my mind to something I want, I get it," she says. "And I reversed my diabetes in four months. But then I went right back to all the same habits that had gotten me sick.”
RELATED: Type 2 Diabetes Prompted This Woman to Give Up the Unhealthy Eating Traditions She'd Grown Up With
The setback triggered a lot of the feelings of shame and sadness she had while growing up, which she realized stemmed from being judged by how she looked as a dancer. “As a little black girl who had a body that was changing a lot, I was internalizing a lot of the criticism, and that turned into body dysmorphia,” she explains.
McFierce had been eating her feelings, stuffing herself with food to stuff down the pain. Her goal of reversing her diabetes would be impossible, she realized, until she dealt with the root cause.
That realization began a new chapter for McFierce, and it helped inspire her to start Look IN vs Lookin', a wellness brand aimed at providing support and guidance for healthy living. She describes it as "a safe space for people to find support within themselves to take back into their lives."
“When it comes to finding support, it’s kind of like dating. You need to try a few things to figure out what works best for you while keeping in mind you are the top person in your support group,” she says. The community she has built around Look IN has helped her make healthy choices even when she is traveling or busy with work.
RELATED: What is Type 2 Diabetes?
“For too long, as a person who is in the public eye, I felt like I had to be put-together all time," she says. "I felt embarrassed to not look a certain way that society says I was supposed to look. I felt embarrassed to have days where I feel sad, and embarrassed to have to be dealing with diabetes."
"But I can’t live my life that way," she continues. "I’m the one who has to make the choices for my life, and having Look IN as a support system has shown me that I’m not the only one who needed that message to improve my health.”
There are still days where it’s hard for McFierce to make the right choice, especially when it comes to diet and lifestyle. “There are plenty of times where I want something greasy, like a bacon, egg, and cheese," she says. "But I’ve found most of the time I have a craving, I’m actually thirsty, so I drink some water and sit with the feelings I’m feeling instead of trying to eat them away. After a few minutes, if I am still hungry, it’s a lot easier to make a choice food-wise I can feel good about once I’ve checked in with myself.”
This process of being present and mindful is one of the biggest ways McFierce keeps her health on track. Her A1C level is now 6.6, which is on the border of reversing her diabetes again.
RELATED: What Is Blood Glucose–and What Makes It High or Low?
“I know it’s not easy to find the time. It’s not always easy for me, even though I know it is something I need," she says. "That’s been a big part of this journey: feeling worthy of those choices that will benefit my health. But I promise you, you have five minutes to sit with yourself. To be present in your own life and your own body.”
That last part, for a perfectionist like McFierce, is especially important when it comes to things like blood sugar fluctuations. But she's learned to celebrate her successes and forgive herself for the occasional slip-up.
“People, and especially people with diabetes, have to make so many choices in a day. You’re not always going to make the best choice. And it’s important for me to remember that that’s OK," she says. "One choice doesn’t define me and it doesn’t have to stop me from loving myself enough to make a better one next time. That’s where I need to have the grace for myself to not be perfect all the time.”
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]]>“To do what I do for a living and to have allowed my health to get this bad was embarrassing," McDonald, 49, tells Health. “I was angry and confused. And in that moment, I was distraught. I thought, If this is what’s happened to me, what have I been doing to my clients?”
For two years, the Los Angeles-based mother of two was already experiencing what she now realizes are some of the tell-tale signs of diabetes. She was always hungry—eating every hour when she was awake—and constantly thirsty.
“I actually thought it was good because I was drinking so much more water, and that new habit just meant I had to go to the bathroom more,” she explains. “But I was also dealing with fatigue and blurry vision for over two years, and finally I decided it was time to go see the doctor.”
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Her physicians ran an assortment of tests, and McDonald was sent on her way. But after returning home, she received a call from the doctor. “He said that I needed to come back in the next morning," she recalls. "Usually it takes a while to hear anything back, and he was so serious about it that I knew something was wrong.”
Her test revealed that her blood sugar levels and other diabetes markers were so high, she was only allowed to leave after receiving insulin. “They injected me and gave me some medicine to take with me, then told me that if my numbers didn’t come down, I was going to the hospital," she remembers.
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After her diagnosis, she was confronted with some of the same food and eating choices she’d been helping her clients with.
“I knew what everyone else knew about diabetes. I knew about the complications. But I didn’t know how you got it or how it came into your life," she says. "Being a chef, you’re also a teacher, and in an instant that was dismantled for me. I had to rethink everything I knew and everything I’d been teaching other people. And I had to do it fast.”
In addition to insulin and medication, the doctors gave her a diet to follow. “It was basically 150 grams of carbs, and I realized that they were telling me to eat the things I was already eating, the things that had led me to the state I was in. Obviously that wasn’t going to be the way I got back on track, so I went home and started googling 'how to beat type 2 diabetes,'” she says.
After a few hours reading articles and watching YouTube videos, McDonald discovered a doctor who was an advocate for the ketogenic diet, or keto diet—a plan that involves cutting way back on carbohydrates, to 50 grams a day or less, to help the body achieve a state of ketosis. Once in ketosis, the body has to burn fat (rather than sugar) for energy.
A lot of what the doctor said resonated with McDonald. Immediately after switching her diet and breaking up with sugar, she felt better. “I started sleeping better, and weight I’d had for over a decade was just melting away. I was amazed at how quickly it worked.”
Three months after her diagnosis, she went to see her new doctor. While reviewing her lab results, the doctor stopped; she couldn’t believe what was on the screen. McDonald's blood sugar was 81. “She asked if I wanted to know my A1C,” she says. “And she told me it was 5.6, which is a non-diabetic range. She was in shock. She kept asking me what I had done. And all I had really done was changed my diet.”
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Shifting her diet was crucial, but she realized she needed to find a community of other people, and other women, to help keep her on the road to good health. “It was really important to me that I find a supportive group of women who were on the same journey I was on," she says. "As a mom, I’m often overlooked. Moms aren’t supposed to have a bad day. Mom cooks, she cleans, she gets the groceries. She’s always smiling. That’s what she’s supposed to do. No one looks at me like, this is Staci the person and she deserves someone to encourage her, to uplift her. And so having a sisterhood I could lean on was a priority for me when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.”
This desire for a community led her to Mary Van Doorn, the founder of Sugar Mama Strong, a diabetes-focused wellness group and resource for women. “I met Mary online, and her community has been a lifeline for me. It’s a community that understands that sometimes you fall, and they help you get back up. Some of these women have been on the road with type 2 diabetes for years and some are just starting out, but we are all striving for the same abundant living we all deserve to have."
Eight months after she was told she might not live past the winter, McDonald's numbers have stayed consistent. She continues to adhere to a keto diet and has started working out.
“Type 2 diabetes is not a death sentence. It is brought into your life to provide an awareness that your health is off track," she says. "But it’s also an opportunity to reinvent yourself. You just have to have that commitment to change your life and to continue to educate yourself.”
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]]>Some members of Cambron's family are overweight, and her mother, grandmother, aunts, and uncles have diabetes. She recalls going to the doctor with her mom and seeing her inject insulin at every meal. "My oldest brother, he’s also type 2 diabetic, and for too long didn’t take care of himself," she says. "He wasn’t able to participate in a lot of things that someone his age should have been able to do.”
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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the average adult in the United States has a 40% chance of developing type 2 diabetes. But if you’re a Hispanic American adult, your chance is more than 50%, and you’re likely to develop it at a younger age. These trends were apparent in Cambron's family. Her relatives saw diabetes as something that was going to happen, so you just took your medicine and dealt with the complications.
Cambron also developed diabetes six years ago. She began blacking out during periods of intense cardio—she always loved working out and being active. She went to the doctor to find out what was going on. A few weeks later, she was told she was prediabetic, and an endocrinologist recommended she see a diabetes educator to help get her health on track. It was at this meeting that she learned she actually had type 2 diabetes.
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“I remember sitting down with the educator and she kept saying, ‘As a diabetic’ and I tried to correct her, saying I was prediabetic. But she told me, ‘No, you have type 2 diabetes’ and I just started bawling. I felt like I had really let myself down.”
Her diagnosis meant Cambron now had to take insulin, just as her mom did. But it also made her realize she needed to make some changes. “I didn’t want to end up like some of my family members who have diabetic neuropathy (a type of nerve damage caused by the disease) and can’t even go for a walk,” she says.
For too long, Cambron had used her love of physical fitness as the sole barometer of health. She worked out consistently and could run half marathons, but she believed that her workouts compensated for unhealthy food choices. “People always say you can’t outrun a bad diet," she says. "And I really had to learn that the hard way.”
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As she began working on a healthier nutrition plan, she found herself unlearning her own preconceived notions. “Growing up, I don’t ever remember eating a salad. Maybe as a topping on tacos. But it was never something we actively strived to eat," she remembers. "It was something I always assumed was for rich people."
She struggled with giving up some of the foods and flavors she associated with her family traditions. “I felt like I losing part of my Mexican heritage," she says. "When I tried to introduce healthier options, I was definitely shunned a little [by family members]. It was almost like they treated me like I didn’t want to be Mexican because I didn’t want to eat eight tortillas."
Diabetes also became a wedge between her and her friends. She would avoid outings where she might be tempted, and they didn’t want to invite her to events where they were drinking or eating foods she wasn’t supposed to have. She was also embarrassed by her diabetes and would hide when she had to test her blood sugar.
“It was hard for me to get comfortable with it. To realize it was just testing my sugars and wasn’t something to be embarrassed about," she says. "And the more comfortable I got, the more comfortable the people in my life became. Now they are helping remind me to check my blood sugar before meals and it’s really helpful to have that support system.”
After being diagnosed, Cambron was handed a bunch of pamphlets on how to manage her diabetes and sent on her way. Left to her own devices, she wasn’t getting the results she needed, and the desire for another path led her to the Beachbody home workout program, which allowed her to get fit on her own time, without depending on a gym.
RELATED: What Is Type 2 Diabetes?
The variety of workouts and sense of community offered by Beachbody helped her stick to her goals and tackle her food issues. “I struggled with emotional eating ever since I was a kid because of how intertwined my relationships with love and food were," she says. "Breaking that was really hard for me. But with these programs and with the support and encouragement and inspiration of the community, I was able to rebuild my relationship with food. And that completely changed how I was able to manage my diabetes."
The impact was so great that Cambron, while finishing her PhD in cellular molecular biology last year, became a Beachbody instructor. “I’ve accomplished a lot of things in life, but completing the programs really helped me believe in myself for the first time," she says. "That belief was life-changing. And I knew that other people deserved to feel what I was feeling, so I immediately signed up to be a coach.”
As someone who is giving others the confidence they need to make a change, Cambron has continued to embrace a healthier lifestyle. Her doctors recently said that thanks to the lifestyle shifts she's made, she may be able to get off her medication, which has been a long-sought goal. She's realized that her life comes down to choices—and that she gets to make them.
“After I was diagnosed [with diabetes], I fell into a depression," she says. "I felt like it was my destiny to be stuck on the couch, relying on medications, just like my mother. And I had already given up. But changing my mindset from being a victor instead of a victim was ultimately my choice. It was my decision. I’m not a product of my circumstances. I’m a product of my mindset.”
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]]>“I had my first panic attack at my parents' house,” Ellefson tells Health. “My dad really helped me because he knew exactly what I was dealing with.
Ellefson is one of over 6.8 million Americans who will deal with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in any given year, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. GAD is characterized by excessive worry about a variety of events or activities, such as work or school. People with GAD find it difficult to control their worrying, which may make it challenging to function professionally and in social settings.
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Ellefson's anxiety manifested as stress eating and stomach pain. It wasn't until she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, however, that she found healthy ways to manage it.
Her type 2 diagnosis came out of the blue. In January 2012, she was sitting at her desk at her job in health care administration and realized her vision was so blurry, she couldn’t make out her coworker's face. “I immediately realized something was wrong and called my doctor,” recalls Ellefson.
At the time, she was 28, and she had been dealing with a variety of health issues, including high cholesterol. She'd even been tested for diabetes a few months earlier. The tests were negative, however, and she wasn’t experiencing any of the other classic symptoms of diabetes—such as extreme thirst or hunger. So when she sat down with the doctor, she was shocked to learn her blood sugar was 440.
“The doctor basically told me to consider myself lucky," she says. "That it was like I survived a car crash with no seatbelt.”
Ellefson was put on four oral medications as well as insulin to help get her diabetes under control. But her anxiety continued to cause major problems. “I was miserable and sad, and I was having panic attacks all the time. I had a period of time after diagnosis, almost a year and a half, where I just didn’t know what I was doing.”
During this time, she gained over 40 pounds, and her anxiety got the better of her. She wasn’t taking care of herself, and she began retreating from social functions. “I basically became a shut in,” she explains. “I wasn’t seeing friends or going out. My health was just tanking. I was told I might have early signs of kidney damage and I was told to not even attempt to get pregnant.”
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One day at work, all the issues Ellefson was dealing with came to a head. She began to have a panic attack and ran out of her office. An hour later, she found herself sitting in her car, hyperventilating. “I decided to call a psychologist I found who specialized in anxiety issues. That was really the first step of taking back control and admitting I needed help.”
The psychologist helped Ellefson calm down that day and encouraged her to get out of her house, even if it was just to go for a short walk. So that’s where she started, just walking to the end of the street, and then around the block. Once she was able to walk around the block, she then conquered a foot path around a nearby lake, each day making a little more progress. But she still needed help—and found it in the support of a coworker.
“I had a friend from work who kept trying to get me to run. At first I told her I can’t run. I’m too overweight. My heart will give out. My joints will hurt,” Ellefson remembers. “I had an excuse for everything.”
But the friend was persistent. She got Ellefson to sign up for a gym. “Before I knew it, I was training for a 5K and had signed up for a personal trainer, who I still see now, six years later.”
Once she became physically active, her panic attacks subsided, and she was more outgoing. “To this day, I don’t work out for a calorie burn. I have perfectionist tendencies and can be hard on myself," she says. "Working out, even a 30-minute walk, really helps me calm my mind.”
Despite her success at dialing back her anxiety, Ellefson was still a type 2 diabetic, and fitness was only one piece of the puzzle; she still had to figure out how to eat better. That’s when she discovered meal prepping.
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“I started meal prepping six years ago. I was working long hours, and by the time I got home and worked out, I had no energy to cook food. So it was hard to keep from sliding back into unhealthy eating patterns. Meal prepping helped me set myself up for success.”
She tries to keep her meals, which she prepares on Sundays, colorful and nutrient dense—with half her plate consisting of vegetables and the other half a healthy source of lean protein. Like staying active, meal prepping has become a habit that Sarah sticks with even when she is traveling. “I try to keep it simple. Because I have struggled with emotional eating, I found that if I eat whole, unprocessed foods it really cuts down on cravings. I also really like taking pictures of my meals,” she says.
Tackling her mental and physical health paid off. Sarah was able to lose 90 pounds and got off all of her diabetes medications, including insulin.
“Before getting diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and making all these changes, I felt like life was passing me by," she recalls. "I was really low for a long time and to go from that to where I am now…I feel really proud of the progress I’ve made.”
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A year after Ellefson was taken off her medications, she became pregnant. While doctors monitored her closely and she went back on insulin halfway through the pregnancy, she was able to maintain her healthy habits. Her son, Ben, was born in 2016.
As she became healthier mentally and physically, she has learned to be kinder to herself. “I still have some of my baby weight. And I’m fine with that. My approach now is to just do the best I can and avoid the perfectionist tendencies that come with my anxiety,” she says.
As a working mom, she has also learned the importance of having a strong support system, whether it's the friends she’s made through the gym or running, or at home. “I had a setback about a year ago and I had to go back on medication. And it was hard for me to not feel like a failure. I had worked so hard to get where I was," she explains. "My husband saw that I was struggling, so he jumped in and joined me for some of my runs, and now it’s something that we all do as a family.”
Ben, now three, has also started helping her meal prep, and staying healthy has become a family activity.
“I had a doctor tell me that diabetes would be a marathon and not a sprint, and he was absolutely right," she says. "When I first lost the 90 pounds and was able to stay there for a few years, I thought I had everything under control. But diabetes changes. It’s a journey. And you can’t beat yourself up. You just have to take baby steps.”
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