Gloria Hunniford, 79, first earned her presenting stripes in the 1970s and 1980s on Good Evening Ulster and on the ITV Network Sunday Sunday and We Love TV. Her affable demeanour and accrued wisdom over the years has made her an authority on a number of issues. These attributes are on full display on the ITV chat show Loose Women, where she regular presents and appears as a guest panelist.
Drawing on her own experiences, she routinely provides practical advice to viewers on how to tackle different challenges, and one notable example came a couple of years back, when she divulged how she cured herself of prediabetes.
As Diabetes UK explained: “Prediabetes means that your blood sugars are higher than usual, but not high enough for you to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. It also means that you are at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.”
Fortunately, making healthy lifestyle interventions can stop the condition from developing into type 2 diabetes.
The Loose Women presenter was advised to overhaul aspects of her lifestyle after the results of an annual blood test in 2013 revealed that she was pre-diabetic.
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As Diabetes.co.uk explained: “Carbohydrate is broken down into glucose relatively quickly and therefore has a more pronounced effect on blood sugar levels than either fat or protein.”
As the health body notes, carbohydrate is found, to varying degrees in a wide variety of food, notably in starchy foods such as rice, pasta and flour (therefore including pastry, bread and other dough based foods).
Gloria shunned bread, pasta and potatoes, modifying her breakfast to include egg or sausage but without the bread.
What the does the rest of her day look like?
Gloria said: “It’s soup or salad with fish for lunch and in the evening I’ll replace potatoes with cauliflower, which has the same sort of crunch.
“Instead of sugary snacks I’ll have a chunk of cheese, nuts or a glass of milk.”
Revising her daily diet yielded impressive results: “After cutting out sugar and carbs, I’d dropped two stone to 8st 7lb – a little too thin, so I’m now back up at 9st 1lb.”
According to Diabetes UK: “If you are overweight and at high risk of Type 2 diabetes, losing just five percent of your body weight can significantly reduce your risk.”
In addition to eating a healthy, balanced diet, exercise plays a crucial role in weight management and warding off the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
According to the NHS, everyone should aim to do at least 2.5 hours of physical activity every week.
You can be active anywhere as long as what you’re doing gets you out of breath.
This could be:
- Fast walking
- Climbing stairs
- Doing more strenuous housework or gardening
Diabetes UK added: “Try some new kind of activity if you’re getting a bit bored of what you’ve been doing.”