“I’ve been cheated in my life so I deserve to eat what I want!”

June spoke these words through her tears. Her doctor had told her that her blood levels were very high.

“I don’t want to alarm you ,” the doctor had said, “but you need to come back in three months for another fasting blood test. We don’t want to diagnose diabetes yet. We need several readings. But with the history of diabetes in your family, with your being overweight by about 50 pounds, and all your chronic pain and bone issues, diabetes could seriously affect your already compromised lifestyle…and maybe your life.”

June’s doctor explained the reasons why diabetes as a lifestyle could be particularly dangerous. For an older adult it could lead to blindness, it contribute to heart disease, and can lead to diabetic neuropathy—losing the sensation of touch in feet, for example. If June developed a sore, or picked up a splinter the wound could fester and she might not be aware of it until the infection was serious and her foot might even have to be amputated.

“You already have a number of medical problems,” June’s doctor said, “Diabetes affects so many parts of the body. We would have a difficult time treating you, and diabetes will make you sicker.”

I asked June what she would have to do to not get diabetes. The best thing for her, she said, would be to lose weight. But—exercise was difficult for her because of chronic pain issues. Weight loss had been an issue that she has dealt with for a long time with various programs, all of which work at first and then don’t.