The most important thing to understand about exercise is that it does not have to be "No Pain, No Gain." You do not have to spend hours in a gym pumping iron to get the benefits of exercise. in fact, if you do nothing more than walk for 20 to 30 minutes every day, it will benefit you immensely. Our exercise program, like our diet program, is designed to be extremely flexible, and has at its core the philosophy that the more you do, the more you will benefit - as long as you exercise "smart."

To us, exercising "smart" means developing a balanced exercise program that matches your capabilities with your needs. A typical program will include a balance of both cardiorespiratory and resistance training.

Building an "Aerobic" Base

Developing a strong "aerobic base" is at the core of our program. Basically, there are two types of training: aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight-lifting). In aerobic exercising, the body burns its stores of fat as part of a continuous process. If you exercise aerobically for 40 minutes, your body becomes a fat burning engine for 40 minutes. Walking, jogging, running, rowing, bicycling, and using elliptical machines, treadmills, and stair-steppers are all examples of aerobic exercising. Since a build-up of fat contributes strongly to most Type 2 diabetes, losing that fat is important for long-term diabetic control. Click here to see all the benefits of building a strong aerobic base.

Anaerobic training burns sugar to sustain your body during exercise. It is typically associated with short bursts of energy, such as when you are lifting heavy weights. It also takes place when your heart rate reaches a certain level, typically above 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Anaerobic training can be dangerous for a diabetic whose blood sugar is not in control. When your blood sugar is high, not enough sugar is being absorbed by your cells. When you exercise anaerobically, your cells burn sugar for energy. Guess what happens when not enough sugar is going into your cells to sustain the energy your muscles need? Quite literally, you muscles start consuming their own tissue and you get weaker instead of stronger.

The bottom line is that if your heart rate gets too high, your aerobic exercising can become anaerobic. Conversely, you can also exercise aerobically when you are lifting weights -- at least you can be burning fat and sugar at the same time. It all depends upon your heart rate when you're doing the exercises.

Because building an aerobic base is so important, we strongly recommend that anyone embarking on an exercise program focus on this FIRST. Since fitness professionals often say that this can take as long as five months if someone is out of shape, you can easily spend the first few months of exercising focused primarily, or even exclusively, on cardio exercising.

As a diabetic, furthermore, don't worry about doing everything at once. You're in a long-term marathon, not a short-term sprint. Take your exercising a step at a time and you'll end up the one who wins the race.

No Pain, No Gain. No Way: After you've built an aerobic base, you should take the next step into resistance training, which has long-term importance for diabetics because it causes the body to absorb sugar from the blood stream. When you move into weight lifting, however, take it one step at a time. The old way of "no pain, no gain" is ancient history. The way to great health is through what most people will consider to be relatively light exercising. A foreign as it may seem, you can build a solid aerobic base almost without sweating. That's because sweating and burning fat are not related.

To follow the program:

• You should do some core exercises daily, most of which can be done in your home
• You should do aerobic training at least three days a week, either in a gym where you have access to specialized equipment like ellipitcal machines, treadmills, and spinning machines, but outdoors also works fine
• You should wear a heart rate monitor to help keep yourself in your aerobic zone
• You should focus your resistance training around lighter weight and more reps, and can even incorporate cardio exercises in "supersets" to get both aerobic and anaerobic benefits in the same workout