As a person with diabetes, you should remember that you should not exercise:

1.   When you have a minor illness, such as a cold or flu. A few days off will not send you back into a state of vegetativeness. When you feel fit you will be able to get back into your exercise routine and you can make up for lost time.

2.   When you have a minor injury. Don’t further irritate a blister on your foot by staying with your routine. The insult to the injury could result in infection, a foot ulcer, or worse. Switch to a second exercise that uses the other parts of your body until the injury heals.

Remember – and this is for everyone who exercises, whether they have diabetes or not – you should begin an exercise session with five to ten minutes of stretching and warming up and end the session with five to ten minutes of stretching and cooling down. The warm-up will give you the flexibility you need during exercise and the cool-down will allow stressed muscles and joints to relax properly.

The real part of your exercise program is the twenty to thirty minutes of activity in the middle.

Wow strenuous this exercise should be is up to you, your physical status and your fitness status. You may need to measure your heart rate in order to determine how much effort you require to achieve exercise benefits. Discuss how to measure heart rate with your doctor or with an exercise expert at a health club or at your local hospital.

Of course, if you have been totally inactive for the past twenty years, getting into exercise will be and should be a slow, step-by-step process. Don’t rush out and attempt to run five kilometers at full speed. That’s foolish and is sure to result in some dramatic problems.

Do start slowly and build up your exercise intensity over a period of weeks. Try to schedule exercise on an every-other-day basis, setting aside about an hour on each of these days. You’ll need ten minutes to warm up, twenty to thirty minutes of exercise, and another ten minutes to cool down. Add minutes to put on your exercise clothing and more minutes to change back to regular clothes.

For most adults, the right kind of exercise, the right length of time, done three times a week will produce the desired benefits. If you exercise less than this you will not get the full benefits. On the other hand, if you exercise more, such as every day or for two hours each exercise day, you won’t necessarily gain benefits, although you might feel better and your endurance might improve faster. In any case, moderation is always a good idea.

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