This year one of our goals at Divabetic is to encourage our divas to embrace the holidays like Valentine’s Day without compromising their diabetes health.

Celebrate your health and take some time to enjoy your own wellbeing and happiness. Here are some ways you can love yourself this Valentine’s Day:

Love your exercise. Spending some time outdoors, at the gym, or on your yoga mat is a perfect way to give back to you. Exercise will help boost your mood, leaving you feeling happier and more relaxed. Regular exercise will also help prevent or manage a wide range of illnesses.

Love your health. Without health we can’t have happiness, which is why it is so important to take time to look after ourselves. This Valentine’s Day, think about your heart and work on ways to reduce unnecessary stress in your life.

What if, when you make your list of valentines, you include yourself this time? Showing yourself and your diabetes health some love could be your sweetest decision yet….

If we don’t take the time to honor and appreciate ourselves, how can we expect that others will?

With this inspiration, we hope that you feel the love from everyone around you, including yourself – maybe not just today, but year round! Happy Valentine’s day!

‘Love to Me’ by Poet  Lorraine Brooks

can I return my love to me

with stems of flowers by the sea

or maybe with a beating heart

that says our paths must never part… READ MORE

Susan Weiner MS RDN CDE CDN, 2015 AADE Diabetes Educator of the Year and author of “The CompleteDiabetes Organizer: Your Guide to a Less Stressful and More Manageable Diabetes Life” offers this advice for Valentine’s Day:

1 – Start the day with some love. Toast up a piece of whole grain bread and prepare a bulls eye egg in a non stick pan with a bit of olive oil. Use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out the middle of the toast, and place the toast on top of the egg, so the heart shape is visible. It will bring a smile to your lovers face!

2 – Use an empty heart shaped box, and small pieces of colorful plastic wrap. Use sliced bananas, melon, and strawberries and drizzle a small amount of dark chocolate on these sweet fruits. Place the chocolate drizzled fruit in the wrap and fill the box. Homemade, delicious and thoughtful. If you choose to dip the fruit in hot dark chocolate, consider adding a few nuts for extra crunch and texture.

You may chalk it up to another Hallmark holiday, but there’s no denying that Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to put on a cute outfit and hit the town. Whether you’re going out on a romantic night on the town. Why not ‘Go Red!’ and raise awareness for heart disease in honor of Valentine’s Day?

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S.

Type 2 diabetes independently increases the risk of heart disease in pre-menopausal women and those in the first years of menopause, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions 2013.

What does the color red say about you?

The red dress effect is a putative phenomenon in which people wearing red clothing, such as a red dress, are perceived to be more sexually appealing than they are when wearing other colors.

Research has shown that wearing red clothes can make women more attractive to men. But do women take advantage of this fact by wearing red when they want to attract a man’s attention?

“A woman’s closet can foster strong relations by serving as a reminder to ones nostalgic roots and past, communicating an authenticity of its own,” says Rich In Love Fashion Blogger, Spokesmodel, Author and fabulous Diabetes Advocate, Doris Hobbs. READ MORE

From style to Chef Ward Alper aka ‘The Decadent Diabetic’, who is living with type 2 diabetes, is determined to show the world how to manage diabetes and still eat decadently.  “A diagnosis of diabetes doesn’t have to mean the end of great eating!”, says the Decadent Diabetic.The Decadent Diabetic’s advice for home cooks for Valentine’s Day:

Make it simple and ahead: It is Tuesday and you probably had to work and will need to work tomorrow.

1- Make as much as you can ahead of time. You don’t want to slave over a hot stove and fall asleep in your food

2 – Keep it light. A heavy meal may keep you from “getting lucky”

3 – Make sure it is something the one you love… loves. Nothing can put a damper on a romantic meal like the other person saying : “I don’t eat that.”

4 – Finish with Chocolate. It is Valentine’s day…do I need to say more?

Enjoy Loveable Lamb Recipe by the Decadent Diabetic

Janis Roszler LMFT, RD, LD/N, CDE, FAND author of “Sex and Diabetes” and “The Secrets of Living and Loving with Diabetes” offers this advice to couples for Valentine’s Day:

1 – Hug!  Every day, hug your partner until you both feel relaxed. It’s a non-sexual hug that nurtures your emotional needs while it enriches your relationship.  When you feel more connected, romantic moments get even better!

2 – Do one romantic thing for your loved one each day – send a loving text, call to say you miss them, place a romantic note in their sink, buy their favorite food, etc.  Show that you are thinking of them.  Very romantic!

It’s difficult to love yourself and your diabetes health if you’re constantly feeling deprived of the foods you love. The Diabetic Pastry Chef, Stacey Harris, who is living with type 2 diabetes, wants you to have your cake and eat it, too, without sacrificing  your diabetes self-care.

Stacey has created recipes for making breads, cakes and other desserts diabetic-friendly by swapping out the sugar, blending the flour and cutting the milk carbohydrates. 

Enjoy  Mini Rose Heart Cookies Recipe by The Diabetic Pastry Chef, Stacey Harris

Songs have been written about every topic imaginable, but the best ones — from swooning ’50s ballads to contemporary club bangers — have been penned about the ups and downs of being in love. One of our favorite pop stars is George Michael.

Few songwriters from the 1980’s were as capable of writing both heart-wrenching torch ballads speaking to the essential isolation at the core of the human condition, and sugary pop trifles where the only word you needed to understand was “jitterbug.” And the best of his songs usually fell somewhere in between, bold and bubbly declarations of independence and deliverance that still admitted how scared and unsure he was about all of it, a too-rare combination of pro prowess and outsider insecurity that seemed to make him more relatable the more popular he became.

LISTEN NOW: Diabetes Late Nite inspired by George Michael podcast. Enjoy our first-ever Valentine’s Day Party featuring Chef Ward Alper aka ‘The Decadent Diabetic’, ‘Rich In Love’ fashion blogger Doris Hobbs, the Charlie’s Angels of Outreach and Poet Lorraine Brooks.

Learning to accept yourself for who you are is the most important step to self-love. Stop comparing yourself to others and learn to embrace the person you are.

Finally, Valentine’s Day offers the perfect excuse to get educated about Heart Health.  Your heart isn’t only your most critical muscle — it’s what keeps you alive, after all — but also one of the hardest working. It ticks 24-7 and except for the times when you’re relaxing or sleeping, it rarely gets a break. Below, find fascinating facts about your heart that might inspire you to give it a little more TLC every day.

Want to know how big your heart is? Make a fist. Heart size depends on the size of the person as well as the condition of their heart. Generally speaking, a healthy heart is about the size of the person’s fist.

During the average human lifespan, the heart beats over 2.5 billion times. The human heart beats approximately 100,000 times per day and 35 million times each year of life.

Every minute, your heart pumps about five quarts of blood through a system of blood vessels that’s over 60,000 miles long, according to the Cleveland Clinic. That translates to about 2,000 gallons of blood every day.