The View’s Sherri Shepherd is one tough cookie. She’s been through it all: weight loss, infertility, abortion, but she’s not only lived through it, but has managed to thrive. Sherri is also one of the 10 percent of U.S. women living with diabetes. As she and countless others have learned, dealing with the disease is about making healthy lifestyle choices…and sticking with them.
“If I didn’t have diabetes, I would probably be at the International House of Pancakes eating a stack of pancakes with butter and syrup,” says Shepherd, 46. “I would probably be 250 pounds. I would not be going to the doctor. I probably wouldn’t be married to my husband, Lamar Sally. I wouldn’t be healthy for my son, Jeffrey.”
At 5-foot-1, she now weighs 157 pounds, down from 197 pounds several years ago. Once she was taking three medications for diabetes, but now that she’s eating healthier, exercising regularly and keeping her blood sugar in the right range, the doctor has taken her off all medications for the disease.
Shepherd details her struggles with diabetes and the changes she made in her life in her new book, Plan D: How to Lose Weight and Beat Diabetes (Even If You Don’t Have It), written with Billie Fitzpatrick.
What are the diabetes-management rules that she lives by?
1. Find a doctor who challenges you.
“My mom died of diabetes complications when she was 41. When I was 40, my doctor told me, ‘I don’t know when you’re going to have a stroke, but it’s going to happen.’ That was my wake up call.”
READ: 4 Things That Make Diabetes Worse
2. Scare yourself.
“Diabetes makes you feel like you’re in a fog. I needed clarity, because I was about to joinThe View and sit at a table with four formidable women. So I vowed to get healthy and strut my stuff in a swimsuit on TV. It worked: I lost 10 inches in…
… three months.”
3. Will yourself to work out.
“My trainer — who I like to call the evil one — and I do intervals three times a week. He puts that sucker on a crazy level-12 incline at 4.6 miles per hour, then varies the incline until I feel like I’m going to fly right off.”
4. Focus on your assets.
“I hate squats, but I love my new booty. So I do those squats, and I run stairs, too.”
For more information on how to LIVE with diabetes, click here.
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