The Chicken or the Egg?

Okay, so... is it the chicken or the egg?

Is it the exercise or the diet?

I'm finding that since I've been working on getting back on track, that I've been more faithful in the exercise area than the diet area, and it would appear to me that right now exercise trumps diet, yes?

Or... maybe. The past few days I've had some cheats, some maybe significant, when it comes to the diet (yes, the 2 cherry pies at mcdonald's again, oops?)... but as a whole the diet has been still a big improvement over the 2 weeks before that.

But essentially i've been going on 2 to 3 mile walks each day. So, faithful on the exercise, semi-faithful on the diet, and the net result is I'm back to 356, or 3 pounds re-lost.

But then my head argues, wait a minute!!! About 5 years ago when I lost 80 pounds on the Atkins diet, I accomplished that with virtually no exercise.

Ahhhh, you may say, but you were 5 years younger then as well. The weight does not seem to come off quite so easily on diet alone this time around.

Well, the truth is that both are pretty vital, I'm finding. It's when I was both faithful on the diet AND exercising regularly that the weight has come off the fastest. And while I'm encouraged by having re-lost the weight, I still need to get better at the diet, for one good reason... blood sugar. I'm about to get a physical exam scheduled, it's been about a year and a half since I had one, and I've drug my feet on it for one reason... my blood sugar was higher than normal and the doctor said I'm borderline diabetic, if i had a second reading in a row like that that's technically a diagnosis of diabetes. That's not really a diagnosis I want to be hung with. I know, if I AM actually diabetic, then I should know about it and go accordingly, right? But I also know that with type 2 diabetes, it's often the kind of thing that can be controlled or reversed by getting good control of blood sugar. So having that under control, well I don't know if that will prevent me from being diagnosed as diabetic or not because I don't know what all goes into such a diagnosis... but even if I am diagnosed as such it's a lot better off if blood sugar is under control. So.... chicken or egg or whatever, the exercise is important, but... i have to stay away from those mcdonalds pies!