What is healthy eating anyway? It’s when you eat nutritious foods in amounts that lead to better health and wellness. And it has a big impact on managing your diabetes. With a meal plan, healthy eating doesn’t have to be a challenge. Your health care team can help you create a meal plan that fits your goals, tastes, lifestyle, and any medicines you’re taking.

Being active is one of the best tools for managing diabetes every day. But you don’t have to spend hours at the gym. Being active means moving your body more and sitting less. The hardest part of being active can be making it a habit. Getting on a schedule helps, especially if you take diabetes medicines, since being active and taking medicines can both affect your blood sugar levels.

Monitoring is really important—it helps you figure out what’s working and what’s not in managing your diabetes. You’ll be keeping track of several key things: your blood sugar levels, your activity, and what you eat. It may sound like a lot, but your diabetes care and education specialist can give you hands-on help to make monitoring simple.

You may need medicine to help you stay healthy and manage your diabetes. Medicines help lower the risk for health problems related to diabetes. Some medicines can even help several health problems at once. Your health care team will prescribe the best combination of medicines for your unique needs and situation.

Life comes with risks. Some risks you can’t do anything about, like your age. But some risks you can change, for example by quitting smoking and eating healthy food. And when it comes to diabetes health problems, you can definitely reduce your risk.

Finding healthy ways to deal with the stress of managing a long-term health condition is important. This is especially true with diabetes, since stress can increase your blood sugar levels. There are helpful, healthy ways to deal with stress, like getting more physical activity and asking for support from friends and family.

Problem-solving skills can really help with day-to-day diabetes management. When you can identify and solve a problem, you’ll have more confidence the next time a problem comes up. Try these 3 steps to start solving problems that affect your diabetes care.