Insulin Resistance, Cardio Workouts and one panicky woman

Hi there RLR I want to first most say thank you for taking time out of your day to answer all of us! It's a wonderful thing your doing!

With that out of the way on to my questions

I was just diagnosed just about a month ago with insulin resistance. Now I know this is also refered to as pre-diabetes. My Mom has Type II diabetes so I wasnt to surprised they put me on 500 mg of metformin 2x daily and I admit I'm starting to feel better slowly..

Now they have me set up with an appointment to see an endroconlogist and in turn i'm then to see a dietician.. I guess my question is in the mean time is there things I should be avoiding food wise? I've been eating 3 meals plus 2 snacks I had started doing that before I was diagnosed but since I've been doing this on my own thus far I was wondering should I be avoiding sugar and bad carbs? Like they normally do with a diabetic. Secondly should I be monitoring my blood sugar? I wasn't diagnosed by my primary doctor it was actually my ob/gyn that found it after some blood tests and I'm sure the majority of these questions will be answered when I see the endroconologist but I could use some advice in the interim.

Also I've started an excerise program I'm not going to hide it I'm terribly out of shape and definately what would be termed as morbidly obese I've been trying to take thing slowly seeing I havent had a very active life in the past 10 years and I've been doing 4 days a week thus far (this is only week 2) and I'll admit i feel fantastic while I'm doing it. I've been mainly doing treadmill and eliptical work as well as bike but I find I can only last 3-5 mins on the machine before I start to worry I'm doing too much and I'm going to have a heart attack or stop breathing.. typical anxiety symptoms and then I go from moving around to sitting which I know isn't good either to warm up your muscles and your heart rate like that and just flat out sit. I haven't had any pain really nothing that would suggest that anything is seriously going wrong mostly pain in the joints and muscles but that's mild for the most part except for an old knee injury that likes to remind me it's there but as soon as I start working it. it begins to feel better. Mainly what would you suggest for someone new to the excerise world with the above issues to face I'm really comitted to making changes in my life but I want to be safe at the same time. I know at my current weight which I won't divulge lol but I will say it's alot that any movement will help greatly and I know it's going to take time before I'm up there with the excerise guru's at the gym and I'm willing to work at it.. I guess I just need to know what I should be doing when. So far I've been managing 15-20 mins each time I go to the gym except tonight but that knee of mine started to act up on me so I stopped after about 12 mins of excerising, Also how many mintues of stretching should you do before working out/ cooling down?

Thank you for taking the time to read my rather lengthy post I appreciate it

The Worry Wart
~Trina

Thank you for your post and essentially, you've already answered your own questions. Certainly you should begin to monitor your glucose and take steps with both diet and exercise to ward off the progression to type II Diabetes, which I'm sure you've already been told can be reversed. The intake of refined sugars and simple carbohydrates are indeed adversarial to your efforts to resist type II DM. Furthermore, it's no secret that DM provokes other risk factors and you should waste no time in establishing a firm commitment to changing certain habits and develop a lifelong plan for your health.

While I can make general suggestions in the areas of diet and exercise, you really should make avid use of the multitude of free services available for diabetics that discuss diet and exercise programs most tailored to the condition. There are not only online services available, but many avenues through the Diabetes foundation and other portals can help you achieve your goals and continously provide you with the latest and most successful programs.