Had a checkup with my doctor yesterday. I've gained about 15 pounds from late October... variety of reasons... but it's all attached itself to my middle.

Doc gave me the "don't eat junk" line of advise, told me to not eat too many carbs (don't eat spaghetti like a marathoner on pre-race carb load). But then said exercise is 80% of it.

Exercise is 80% of the battle? I'm confused.

I've lost weight before, post- first preganancy I made WW Lifetime membership. At that point, FOOD was 80% of the battle.

Have the rules advise changed with my changing health?
I have diabetes in my family, I can feel my body changing as I grow older. I am trying to watch what I eat but I've failed every attempt this side of the new year. Just So Discouraged, and the number keeps going up.

I've yet to meet a doctor who had the faintest idea how weight loss or nutrition worked. One of them said to me, "Your lips keep turning blue because you're underweight," when I was actually slightly overweight. And they seem to think that guilt-tripping overweight patients is productive, rather than just making it harder. You might be better off just getting advice from this place. It's a sound forum.

By the way, someone I know who is actually diabetic and trying to lose weight has recently started exercising a lot, and she says it's completely messing up her blood sugar and making it really hard to get the insulin dose right.

I'm intrigued by your user name. What sort of quilting do you do? I'm currently working on a much-overdue dinosaur baby quilt.

I enjoy making pieced quilts - trying to finish a blue split rail pattern for my son. I made 12x12" blocks since a "lightening bolt" style seems overwhelming to my eye - personal taste.

It's to take the place of a baby quilt for him that is still unfinished (speaking of overdue!) --I asked him if the wagons, planes, and trains were too babyish and he said yes.

I've got some paper-piecing that's mid-project too.
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I'm learning that nutrition and medicine are academically separate, and separate professions --which make it hard to piece information together! I want to 'nip this in the bud' -but am finding information overload. One day I'm contemplating HFLC and the next, a diabetic style diet. Sigh. Doc tried to keep it simple but I'm not conviced leaving my eating to its own wiles is a good idea - as evidenced by +6# in 3 months.

in my experience only - and this has nothing to do with a doctor's advice - several years back I began to suspect that my blood sugar wasn't right because I was getting massive headaches when I ate too much sugar, as well as terrible fatigue etc....I didn't want to go to a doctor because I didn't want a diagnosis of anything like that on my official medical record or precluding me from treatments in the future (pre-existing conditions etc)

so I read up ALOT of diabetes and associated conditions, as well as how to test yourself and monitor it....i also had a background in low carb eating and had been trained by a doctor to monitor one of my student's blood sugar levels, who was Type 1 childhood diabetic

so I bought my own meter and testing sticks etc and began testing and sure enough, I was registering in the pre-diabetic range consistently....i began to focus on the right balance of carbs/protein per meal, giving my body several hours between meals to process it, testing myself to see what was the best/worst foods for my body and then i started to lose weight(!!)....then i added in gentle exercise and then, because I naturally like to push myself, I joined a gym and really started working out hard

about a year into my weight loss, eating better and exercising, I went to a health fair sponsored by my DH's work and had my A1C (is that the right term?) tested and it came back within normal range and I was not reading as pre-diabetic in that long term test - again, something that will not be on my official medical record

however I know it's a lifelong issue that my body will always have the potential for and that I need to continue to monitor how my body feels after certain foods, keeping the weight down, exercising, and hopefully losing even more weight

Try calorie counting to begin with, work on maintaining if that's where you need to start, get stable, so that you don't feel that it's scary or you're being deprived and want to binge. Then start introducing a calorie deficit (500cal/day is standard) and looking at eating more healthily. In particular, cut out sugars as far as possible, and don't eat too many carbs. Reading up on glycaemic load may help. Apart from that, I wouldn't worry too much about following any particular diet, you need to find one that works for you. And from what I gather, at this stage it's less about how many carbs you eat and more about whether or not you're losing weight.

I don't have kids, but I have no end of fun making quilts for my friends' kids. I'll PM you the link to my work if you're curious, and I'm always keen to see someone else's quilts!

I think what your doctor might have been trying to get at is that exercise has been shown to improve blood glucose control through a couple of different mechanisms...

I was prediabetic and got a referral to a CDE who was great and she got me into a diabetes prevention program... I lost 20lbs following that program and now my numbers are normal... The goals of the program were pretty modest... Lose 7% of your starting weight and get to a 150 minutes of exercise a week... Which has apparently been shown to reduce the risk of developing diabetes by 56%... I have a very strong family history, so I want to do whatever I can to prevent it or at least delay its onset...

But perhaps the next time you see your doctor ask him exactly what he meant and see if you can get referrals to a Certified Diabetes Educator (C.D.E) and also maybe a nutritionist... that really could be very helpful.

AlaskanLaughter - thanks for sharing. Yes, I agree - even controlling it early, it's going to be a lifelong walk. Glad you were able to get that in check.

Esofia - thanks. I'm having a hard time because I know the carbs are making everything worse (mo' carbs = mo' weight -> PreD). And I'm an emotional eater... so it is spiraling up.
And yes, PM me, we can swap quilt pics I will have to see about getting my imgr or similar back working, to share.

TripSwitch - thank you for the recommendations. That is pretty much what I am looking for - someone to help me prevent the full onset. It will be 6 mos (my dr is moving, and I will be establishing with another dr in his practice) so it may be worth a phone call for the recc.

Maybe start by finding low-carb snacks, then? The approach where you make a small change at a time so that it's manageable sounds like it might be for you. How do you feel about snacking on almonds, say? Emotional eating takes a while to get under control, I don't think anyone stops doing it overnight, so you may as well find something that won't mess with your blood sugar too much for when it happens. Also that way it's a bit more planned, you're more in control, and that helps with the "waaaah it's all going wrong" side of things.

Alaskanlaughter,that was a great idea of yours, to start testing before receiving an actual diagnosis. Many people don't think of trying to keep a diagnosis out of your medical records. Kudos to you!

Becky, it sounds like your doctor is trying to keep you from progressing to full blown diabetes. Exercise is a very important part of lowering blood sugar, along with watching your carb intake. Even if you just take a walk after your largest meal it will help the body utilize the glucose produced by that meal.

When WW said that diet was 80%, they were talking in terms of weight loss.