Prediabetes is the stage where the outcome is still open

Type 2 diabetes is usually preceded by prediabetes, and prediabetes is the
stage at which the outcome is still open: it can be prevented or delayed. That
is the reasoning behind the CDC's public work on diabetes, and behind its
first national prediabetes awareness campaign, Do I Have Prediabetes?

Most people with prediabetes do not know they have it, which is what an
awareness campaign is for — the condition produces no symptom that would send
anyone to a doctor.

What the programmes actually offer

DSMES — Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support. Practical skills
and tools for making the lifestyle changes that manage diabetes. Not a class
about the disease: a course in doing the things that control it.

Prevention for people with prediabetes. Guidance on preventing or delaying
type 2 diabetes for people who have prediabetes or think they might.

Habits, not resolutions

The CDC's own framing of behaviour change is worth repeating because it is
unusually concrete — three steps to building a healthy habit, rather than
an instruction to eat better and exercise more.

The distinction matters for a condition managed over decades. A resolution is
a decision made once; a habit is a decision that stops having to be made. For
diabetes and prediabetes, where the treatment is what you do every day for the
rest of your life, only the second kind survives.

If you have prediabetes, or think you might, the question worth asking your
provider is not whether your numbers are bad but **which single change you
should make first** — which is what these programmes are built to answer.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.