Fitness with diabetes

Presenter - Ok. Lennus Evans has been in touch with us, he's type II diabetes, what fitness regime would you suggest for a man at the onset of age-related diabetes?

Lucy - Definitely doing something cardiovascular, and as we discussed, cardiovascular, that's again sort of increasing the heart rate. You know the swimming would be quite good to – again I wouldn't necessarily recommend running but I definitely sort of say walking or getting some equipment at home, something like a stationary bike, or to get a – what we call a cross trainer. What I would say is, for someone with diabetes II is to make sure when they're training that they drink plenty of water, you know it's really important to keep yourself – because diabetes, diabetics can become very dehydrated quickly so it is essential to do that. Look at diet as well, which he probably will be anyway because a lot of it –

Presenter - Diabetic, yes

Lucy - Is controlled by diet. But just finding an exercise that he enjoys, he doesn't have to train ridiculously hard, it just needs to feel sort of slightly challenging, slightly out of breath and just setting a goal of again making sure he's doing it sort of 3 times a week and it will sort of, it will certainly help reduce the effects of diabetes

Presenter - Ok. Janet's question here ties into what we've just been talking about, Janet Gidling I think it is – "I love taking brisk walks, but I'm not sure whether they should be taken before eating or after eating. Sometimes I go early morning but don't know whether to eat breakfast first." Now I would have thought eating breakfast will fuel you up ready for your walk?

Lucy - Yes it's kind – to be honest if it's a tiny piece of toast with some honey or a banana, that's quite good because it will give you a bit of energy and really you don't want to do that on a completely empty stomach, but saying that you wouldn't want to sit down and have waffles, hash browns and like a massive big breakfast –

Presenter - You'll want to go back to sleep again

Lucy - Something like a banana is great because that gives you a little bit of energy, so have something tiny but don't go out really on a full stomach, but if she is exercising, sort of if she's going for her brisk walk in the morning, I'd say just sort of have like a piece of toast or a banana and then perhaps have something else when she comes back

Presenter - Ok, got another one here from Fatya, I think it's Shahaya – "hi, I'm 90kgs and my height is 165cm" – which I think is about 6 foot-ish is it?

Lucy - Yes, certainly not my height

Presenter - Around that.

Lucy - Nice and tall

Presenter - "Please could you advise me the best way to reduce my weight, by the way I'm working long hours and have a walking machine at home and trying to work on it 10-15 minutes daily. Thanks in advance."

Lucy - Ok, right well I would say – she's trying to do it daily which is fantastic, but that's quite a hard challenge to do it every single day, so I would say she'd probably actually be better off just aiming for 3-5 times a week, she's obviously fairly motivated to do it daily, and if she can to up the time a little bit, and I think – so if it is now that she doesn't do it every day, she just goes to doing it 3 times a week and for 20 minutes because she's doing it from home, put on her favourite music so she gets a really fun workout and just you know be persistent, because she will start to see results definitely. Also as it's at home a lot of these treadmills are quite good with kind of giving you information like how many calories you've burnt, what speed you're walking –

Presenter - How accurate are those on board computers?

Lucy - They're fairly – you know you've kind of, I think the one thing I use as kind of a very rough guide are the heart rate things, because I think that they're not that accurate, but the calorie burn is approximate and – but they're quite good motivators. Obviously she's working at home on one of those, she could sort of set a challenge and one night it could be let's get on there and burn off 200 calories which she'd probably do in about 20 minutes and the following, or second night to go for just walking a mile and try and reduce the speed, do it so she's competing slightly faster

Presenter - Ok. Rattling through these questions, Tony Selves has been in touch with us, Tony thanks very much for your email – how much walking would it take to get fit per day per week?

Lucy - Ok well I've said this so many times

Presenter - I know

Lucy - even you know the answer – it's 3 times a week and after 3 weeks you should really notice a difference, but it's making sure that you're walking at a level that is making you feel somewhat hard, that you are feeling slightly out of breath, and if you're fairly fit you might need to find somewhere that's got slight inclines because you know the minute you start walking up a hill that's a lot more challenging than walking on something flatter, so you know 3 times a week, at least 20 minutes, it needs to feel somewhat hard, and after 3 weeks he should really notice a difference