Everyone is acutely aware of the importance of keeping off excess weight, or removing it altogether. No one knows this more than a person who has been diagnosed with prediabetes or full-blown Type 2 diabetes. Even when a Type 2 diabetic is armed with the insight as to how their disease works, it still doesn't prove to be enough to warrant dropping the extra pounds or kilograms. But if diabetics knew all the reasons why fat isn't good for their health issue, the decision to lose weight would be an easier one.

There are three main ways that fat affects a diabetic:

1. One way fat affects diabetes depends on the type of fat you eat. Even though saturated fat is the worst type of fat, it is ironically the most commonly found fat in the foods we eat. This is the fat that clogs arteries and reduces blood flow to your heart and throughout the rest of your body. Fat not only interrupts healthy blood flow, but it actually changes the elasticity or flexibility of your blood vessels themselves. The more fat there is, the harder and stiffer these vessels become.

Known as LDL or "bad cholesterol," this fat is hidden by such camouflaged titles as "partially hydrogenated" or "hydrogenated".

2. Fat is also important because of how it impacts insulin. Carrying around fat means your body's insulin is prevented from doing its intended job, which is to transport sugar from the blood and into the cells. This is what is commonly referred to as "insulin resistance" because the cells are failing to respond to the normal actions of the hormone insulin. The body produces insulin, but the body's cells become resistant to insulin and cannot use it effectively. The more fat you carry, the more this process is interrupted.

3. Fat is jam-packed with calories or kilojoules. Being so densely packed with calories means even a small amount of excess fat can severely offset the amount of calories that have entered your body. This is of major importance while we are cooking. Consuming an adequate portion of a healthy food is fine, but when we laden it with fatty butter, margarine, sauces, creams or cheese, we have just dramatically increased the fat content by using a relatively small volume of an additional fat-filled substance.

This means that the number of calories or kilojoules for one dish can be doubled, tripled or even more, just by adding fat to it. At the same time, you have not added any real volume to the dish. The lower the caloric value of the food, the more dramatic the added fat is per volume.

Type 2 diabetes is not a condition you must just live with. By making simple changes to your daily routine, its possible to protect your heart, kidneys, eyes and limbs from the damage often caused by diabetes, and eliminate many of the complications you may already experience.