But even the U.S. government's current recommendation for adults to lose weight is 60 to 90 minutes of exercise on most days of the week. That works out to up to 360 minutes of exercise a week.
Dr. Alan Rubin, an endocrinologist in San Francisco and the author of Diabetes for Dummies told me that he personally gets at least 90 minutes of exercise per day and that the only way his patients have been successful in losing weight is getting several hours of exercise every day.
Taking heed, I make sure that I get about 14 or 15 hours of exercise every week. I needed it to lose weight and to maintain that weight loss.
Weight Loss
When I started taking Byetta in February 2006, I weighed 312 pounds. Today I weight 158. That's almost a 50 percent weight loss.
The ADA, on the other hand recommends that, "For obese individuals, a modest weight loss of 5 to 10 percent of body weight may be indicated."
If I had paid attention to the experts, I could have hoped to reduce my weight by 31 pounds and would weigh 281 pounds today. On my 6' 3" frame I would still be obese with a BMI of 35.1, instead of having the low normal BMI that I have today of 19.7.
Carbohydrates
Of all of the ADA's lax standards, nothing disturbs some people with diabetes more than its recommendations that we eat a lot of carbohydrates. It recommends that we get 130 grams of digestible (net) carbohydrates per day. The big beef of most detractors of a low-carb diet is that it's too difficult for us to follow.
Dr. Bernstein stands at the low-carb end of the spectrum. His recommendation is essentially about 42 grams of carbs per day.
The jury's still out on this one. But the remarkable new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes, finally persuaded me that a high fat-diet -- in other words one that makes a low-carb diet possible -- is safe for my heart.
The common complaint about the ADA's lax standards is organizational inertia. But that's not fair.
Diabetes can be overwhelming, especially when we get our diagnosis and realize that we have to totally change the way we live. The ADA certainly realizes that if it told us to change our lifestyles this drastically, even more of us would go into denial and essentially say, "Shove it."
If the ADA had set honest standards, it would be little like telling someone to eat an elephant, my favorite Certified Diabetes Educator tells me. "Initially seems overwhelming and impossible," she says. "But if you do it one bite at a time, especially by setting smaller more easily attained goals, you'll get there eventually."
But those of us who have lived with the disease for several years know well that we feel better and can expect to live longer, healthier lives when we set our own standards much higher. For us, getting to these goals eventually means getting there now.
