I hate exercise. I hate people who exercise. I hate reading about exercise.

That's partly what got me into this mess.

Here's what happens when you exercise. Your muscle cells open wide and gobble up blood sugar. All without any help from insulin. So even if everything else is out of whack your muscles are on your side.

The exercise doesn't have to be (that) strenuous, although it does get harder over time to get any benefits from lazy-exercising.

I've dumped about 27kg of ballast so far. That's 60 pounds. That's a lot.

Everything gets easier - except reaching the exercise goal, since I'm now exercising with way less weight (and panting and moaning).

Remember, the goal of this exercise (ha!) is to get the muscle cells to eat the blood sugar on their own. The more muscle you have the more blood sugar it can eat.

So build some strength - much of it happens automatically during the (speed) walks, but it doesn't hurt to add a bit of weight training and muscle building activities. Do a couple of push-ups. Get a dumbbell and do some reps. You're not going for Mr. Muscle, just a little bit of toning. Do crunches. All stuff you can do at home with a yoga mat.

I immediately ordered an Apple Watch.

It helps me stay on track with my daily excercise and move goals, where exercise is loosely defined as anything that makes you move around and elevates your heart rate.

I chose walking - as it is easy to fit into my daily routine. I walk to work. I walk to lunch. I walk home from work. I walk to dinner (if we go out).

Wherever I go I try to find a nice route to walk to get me to my 30 minute goal. That way I can choose to start or end my day going window shopping or people watching.

But not all days cooperate. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's cold. Sometimes the walks aren't speedy enough to count. I guess I could hit the gym, but I really don't want to. (See "It's the smell").

So I got a treadmill. It's ugly, it takes up too much space, but it's part of my "Keep Toti alive" project so it stays.

Find something you like to watch, get an iPad, fix it to the treadmill (they come with an iPad holder these days) and speedwalk your way through it. I rewatched M*A*S*H for a while, the 22 minute episodes were just about enough to get me winded. But soon I was up to MacGyver, at 43 minutes pr. episode.