Doctors and health programs try to help people avoid type 2 diabetes by changing their habits, but we don’t fully understand how exactly those habit-changing tricks—like setting goals or building confidence—actually work to make people stick to healthier choices.

Doctors and nurses in regular clinics aren’t getting enough help or training from diabetes researchers to use proven lifestyle tips—like better eating and exercise—to stop people from getting type 2 diabetes.

People who feel confident they can handle setbacks and stick to healthy habits are more likely to keep off the weight in diabetes prevention programs—but even if someone starts out super confident, that doesn’t mean they’ll succeed, and it’s not the biggest reason why some people do or don’t lose weight.

Making lasting changes to how you eat and move can help stop prediabetes from turning into full-blown diabetes—but in real life, most people struggle to stick with these changes, so they don’t work as well as they do in fancy research studies.