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Breaking the Family History of Type 2 Diabetes

With diabetes running in her family, Jill Waage didn't want her children to hear the same diagnoses that she and her father had. So with the help of her husband, Jill embarked on a lifestyle improvement program to break the family chain of diabetes.

By Julia Martinusen

Meet Jill

The timing was torture. It was almost Halloween in 2005 when Jill Waage learned she had pre-diabetes. "I was really depressed," she says. "Think of it -- being faced with all that candy and feeling like I could never eat it again!"

This wasn't Jill's first brush with the disease that runs in her family. Jill's grandmother and father both had type 2 diabetes. And after the birth of daughter Eliza in 2002, Jill found out she had pre-diabetes. "Since I had gestational diabetes, I expected it," she says. "But I was shocked that it happened so soon." She already knew how diabetes could affect a whole family.

"I remember when Dad found out in his early 40s. Mom changed the way she cooked," Jill says. "She started serving tossed salad every night with low-fat homemade dressing on the side. She'd buy light canned fruit and rinse off the syrup. And for desserts on special occasions, she'd make two -- one with low-calorie sweetener for Dad and one with sugar for the rest of us. I grew up eating Pear-Lime Salad at every family gathering, and there were always two."

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