Choose the most suitable option to replace the highlighted part of the sentence: The doctor advised him to avoid eating sweets and doing exercise regularly.

Correct — C. Avoid is followed by a gerund, so in the printed sentence 'eating sweets and doing exercise' are both objects of avoid. Read literally, the doctor tells him to avoid exercise.

Repeating to fixes the attachment: 'to avoid eating sweets and to exercise regularly' makes exercise a second instruction under advised him, parallel with 'to avoid'.

'To exercise' is also the base form an infinitive needs → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  avoiding sweets and doing regular exercise — With an object, advise takes a to-infinitive — 'advised him to avoid'. 'Advised him avoiding' breaks that pattern, even though the two gerunds are parallel with each other.
• (b)
  to avoid sweets and to exercises regularly — To exercises is not a verb form: after the infinitive marker to, a verb stays in its base form, 'to exercise'. The structure is right and the verb is wrong.
• (d)
  to not eat sweets and do exercises — Drops regularly, so the advice changes, and 'not' before 'eat sweets and do exercises' can be read as ruling out the exercise too — the misreading the original invites.

Items joined by and must attach to the same head word. In 'advised him to avoid eating sweets and doing exercise', the second -ing form lines up with 'eating', so both hang from avoid — the opposite of the intended advice.

To make exercise a separate instruction, give it the same form as 'to avoid' and hang it from advised: 'to avoid …, and to exercise …'.

The repeated 'to' shows the reader where the second item attaches.

Key facts

• Avoid takes a gerund: avoid eating, not avoid to eat.
• Advise + object takes a to-infinitive: advised him to exercise.
• After the infinitive marker to, a verb takes its base form: to exercise, never to exercises.
• Items joined by and should share one form and one governing word.

Common traps

• Reading 'avoid eating sweets and doing exercise' as two separate instructions — grammatically both -ing forms belong to avoid.
• Choosing 'avoiding sweets and doing regular exercise' because its two gerunds match — they are parallel with each other but wrong after 'advised him'.

No directly related past PYQ was found.