Amazingly, despite the fact that good diet and exercise are by far the best things you can do to treat type 2 diabetes, it's actually in the guidelines in Australia to commence metformin from the beginning. The reason being that studies have shown that the number of patients who actually do make long-term changes to their diet and exercise routines is excruciatingly small. So small, that it's best just to assume they won't actually do it, so just commence metformin (while still giving the advice, of course). At least this way the 95% (I dunno what the actual number is) of patients who won't change will be getting some BSL reduction in the meantime.