He lowered his blood sugar levels big time. All it took were these steps.

News flash: Diet and exercise are good for you and can improve your health and well-being. Just ask Fort Lauderdale attorney Steven Valancy, who dramatically changed his lifestyle after being diagnosed nearly five years ago with Type 2 diabetes.

“I don’t want to lose my eyesight or my limbs,” said Valancy, who back then lived a sedentary existence “tied to his desk and eating the wrong food” and was more than 50 pounds overweight.

“I had excessive thirst. Also, from time to time I would feel sort of dizzy. I just didn’t feel right,” he recalled. “I went to the doctor for a physical, did the blood work and he told me I had diabetes. Actually, my blood sugar was quite high at the time — 320.” (Normal blood sugar levels are under 140 mg/dl, according to the American Diabetes Association.)

“I was kind of scared by the news. I really didn’t know how to react. I knew I was working more than I should. I was working a lot of hours at the time and not taking care of myself, and not eating healthy and not exercising,” Valancy said. “I really didn’t take immediate action. I guess, in part, I wasn’t really sure what to do.”

After Valancy’s diagnosis, his weight and blood sugar went up and down. About a year ago, he chose to get serious about his health.

“It was like a process for me. My dad passed away. That was earlier this year. That kind of made me start thinking about my own mortality. And my daughter is pregnant. I’m going to be a grandfather in March.”

Valancy stepped up his diet and fitness regimen at Broward Health Medical Center’s Wellness Center.

“I go to the gym every day. It’s become like a passion. It’s like an addiction,” said Valancy, who practices condominium and homeowners law. “I started doing spinning classes over there. And I love it. My wife and I do it together. We go to the gym basically six days, sometimes seven days a week.”

Valancy and wife Carolyn, a paralegal in his law firm, work three blocks from Broward Health and walk there every day. “It’s really perfect for us,” he said. “We walk over there, warm up as we walk to the hospital. We do our workout and then we walk back.”

They work out with a personal trainer three days a week and attend spinning classes another three or four times weekly.

The beginning workouts weren’t easy.

“The first time, we were doing 30-minute classes and we were having trouble finishing. It was like just dragging. It took a lot out of us and we didn’t have the stamina or endurance to do it. I would say it took probably about three months to sort of get up to speed. And then, it’s just gotten better and better.”

The results, so far:

“We have an incredible amount of endurance,” Valancy said. “I’m 59 years old. She’s 60. Most of the people in our spin classes are probably half our age, I would think. But we can routinely ride 20 miles in each class. That’s our goal, sometimes more than 20 miles.”

Valancy said he and Carolyn also “sleep better at night. We feel better.”

“I’m not a perfect picture of health. I still have weight to lose, about 20 to 25 pounds. I’m sort of a work in progress,” said Valancy, who already has lost about 35 pounds. “I’m pretty muscular now. I’ve built up a lot where my arms are pretty solid, my legs are pretty solid. I have the gut, which I’m working on getting rid of — that’s really the food part of it.”

His daily blood sugar level now is usually 105. His A1C levels, which track blood sugar over two to three months, have dropped from nearly 9 percent to 6 percent.

The higher the percentage, the higher your blood sugar levels over the past two to three months., according to the American Diabetes Association.

“The goal for most adults with diabetes is an A1C that is less than 7 percent,” according to the American Diabetes Association.

A few other health benefits from Valancy’s new better-living routine: “My triglycerides and my cholesterol dropped significantly,” he said. “My doctor thought it might have been a mistake, but it’s not. I attribute it to working out, and eating healthy, of course.”

Valancy believes his new diet has contributed about 80 percent of his weight loss.

“I started eating healthier in terms of avoiding refined sugars and carbs. I’m still eating carbs, but I have a different kind of diet now,” he said. “Oatmeal in the morning with some fruit — berries — and fat-free yogurt. That’s generally my breakfast. And for lunch, I’ll have a salad with some lean protein: chicken or fish or something. Dinner is the same thing: a salad with a vegetable and a protein.”

The Valancys eat most of their meals at home. “We do go out to eat occasionally, but it’s easier for me to eat at home. And I know what’s in it. And portion control — I have a scale. I weigh my food. Before I started to do this, I was eating enough for three people.”

Unfortunately, the concept of diet and exercise can be overwhelming for many people, according to exercise physiologist Chantis Mantilla, Ph.D., community health manager at Baptist Health South Florida.

She recommends her patients start with “small steps.”

“We know to eat healthy. We know we need to move more. We know we need to sleep. We know we need to hydrate. That’s a lot of things. I always recommend, ‘Start with one thing,’” Mantilla said. “I always tell people first things first: What do you enjoy doing? Because if someone tells me I do not like to run and I’m going to go run, it’s like why are you running? If you don’t like it, you’re not going to stick to it.

“That’s true for any of these habit changes, whether it’s dietary, whether it’s exercise. With any of these habits, there has to be an aspect of enjoyment and an aspect of making it a smart goal, something that’s specific, something that’s measurable. Once you’ve achieved that and done it, let’s say for the course of a month, then say, ‘Great, I have this new habit, I’ve kept up with it, what should I add next? What’s the next step?’”

For diet, Mantilla recommends following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate program.

“Basically it says that half of your plate should be fruits and veggies, a quarter of your plate should be whole grains and the other quarter should be a lean protein,” she said. “It’s a little bit easier of a guide. It’s not calorie counting. When you look at it, it’s not talking calories, it’s talking more the quality and the quantity of food that you’re having.”

There are three types of diabetes. About 1.25 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, in which the body does not produce insulin, the hormone needed to get glucose from the bloodstream into cells for energy.

Gestational diabetes can occur during pregnancy if a woman’s hormones block the action of her body’s natural insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association. The woman’s health — and her baby’s — can be at risk.

The most common form of diabetes is Type 2, which affects 90 percent to 95 percent of the 30 million Americans with the disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Type 2 patients are the ones whose health can improve through diet and exercise.

“With Type 2 diabetes, there are two aspects that are happening: Either you don’t produce enough insulin, or you are producing enough but your body is just not using it well and that’s called insulin resistance,” Mantilla said.

Who is at risk for Type 2 diabetes?

“Excess weight is the No. 1 predictor,” said Mantilla, adding heredity and genetics play a role.

“For example, someone who has a mother who has Type 2 diabetes or had gestational diabetes, their risk is much higher and they’re more prevalent to having Type 2 diabetes,” she said. “Also, race and ethnicity are big contributors, so African-American, Latino and Asian populations are the most at-risk for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.”

Dr. Pascual De Santis, a longtime Baptist Health endocrinologist, said that for many people with Type 2 diabetes, their lifestyles and environment work against having good health.

“We sleep very little. We don’t rest. We work too hard. We eat junk because it’s quick and easy. We don’t have time to cook. The food that’s available around, it’s usually high in calories, processed and so on,” he said. “You get used to that as being the norm. The standard. That’s terrible for a diabetic.”

De Santis said people with diabetes are “up against the world, pretty much.”

“They need this constant source of good energy or good knowledge of how things should be done so that you don’t fail,” he said. “This is what’s hard. You see many diabetics at the beginning after being newly diagnosed, to really engage in significant lifestyle changes and so on. But even those who do that long-term, the difficulty is to maintain it. Again, you’re in an environment that is not conducive to maintain a proper lifestyle.

“If you don’t have that anywhere, at home, in your workplace, you need a program, you need something that can support you that way.”

That’s where the programs at Baptist, Broward Health and other South Florida medical centers come in.

“They expect me there,” Valancy said of his new routine at the Broward Health Wellness Center. “My trainer knows I’m coming Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and I show up. My spinning class knows I’m coming Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and I show up. They expect me. I’m part of the family. It’s the same group of people in these classes. You really feel welcome there.”