Abstract
This study aimed at understanding the experiences of maintaining good dietary self-care among people with type 2 diabetes mellitus and the meaning of negative emotions in the context of dietary self-care. Thirteen type 2 diabetes patients from an Endocrinology and Diabetes Department in the West Midlands region, United Kingdom, were interviewed to explore experiences of dietary self-care and negative emotions. Transcripts were analyzed using the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Three main themes emerged: (a) dietary self-care: a constant challenge, (b) negative emotions: a cause and a consequence, and (c) coping with negative emotions and living with “the diet.” Situations involving poor dietary self-care were identified to understand the context of negative emotions. Perceived dietary restrictions resulted in frustration, anger, and depression, while maintaining dietary self-care resulted in irritation, annoyance, regret, guilt, anger, and depression. The consequence of poor dietary self-care was frustration, depression, and anger, which further resulted in poor dietary self-care, creating a cycle of poor dietary self-care and negative emotions. This reflected the wavering nature of participants’ dietary maintenance. Coping with these negative emotions and poor dietary self-care involved rationalizing and/or acknowledging the importance of maintaining good dietary self-care. Findings showed negative emotions are perceived to impact dietary self-care and diabetes control. Health care providers should incorporate the understanding of experiences of negative emotions in dietary education and cognitive behavioral interventions should be offered to manage negative emotions.
Highlights
Dietary self-care is considered a key component in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)
This study explored in-depth negative emotions arising from dietary self-care
Negative emotions resulted from poor dietary self-care and were contributed to poor dietary self-care as follows: Maintaining a recommended diet was met with challenges, which resulted in a deviation from the recommended diet
Summary
Dietary self-care is considered a key component in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). People with T2DM are recommended to adopt a healthy diet to obtain and maintain good glycemic control and reduce the risk of diabetes complications. Many of them find dietary self-care to be challenging for self-management diabetes (e.g., Halali et al, 2016; Lee et al, 2019; Mathew et al, 2012; Schure et al, 2019). People struggle with old dietary habits because they lose the “traditional food flavours” they are used to when they try to maintain healthier practices (Lee et al, 2019; Sumlin & Brown, 2017). Food itself may have complex meanings, and acquire associations with pleasure, relaxation, reward, and comfort (e.g., Desmet & Schifferstein, 2008; Locher et al, 2005; Wu et al, 2019)
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