Walk after meals

What you need to do

After your biggest meal each day, walk for ten minutes. Around the block, up and down the driveway, on a treadmill, it does not matter. After dinner, before the couch.

Options that work

• Put shoes by the door before dinner so the decision is already made
• Take the phone call or the podcast for a walk
• Walk with whoever you ate with. Ten minutes of conversation is the point
• Raining? March in place through one song, or climb the stairs four times
• Add it to your step count. Seven thousand a day is the floor

Part of the fundamental Lift, and keep walking.

Why this works

Muscle contraction pulls sugar out of the blood without needing insulin, which is why a short walk after a meal blunts the blood-sugar rise. For a sore knee, every pound lost takes about four pounds of load off the joint with each step, and walking is part of how the pounds come off [85]. People who kept 30 or more pounds off for years move about an hour a day [96]. In older adults losing weight, exercise is what keeps the loss from being muscle [12].

Sources

85. Messier 2005, Arthritis Rheum. Each pound lost takes about four pounds of load off the knee with every step. Ten pounds is roughly 48,000 pounds less load per mile walked.
96. Wing and Phelan 2005, Am J Clin Nutr. People who kept 30 or more pounds off for years mostly eat breakfast, weigh themselves at least weekly, move about an hour a day, and eat the same way on weekends as weekdays.
12. Weinheimer 2010, Nutr Rev. In 52 studies of middle-aged and older adults, 81% of diet-only groups lost at least 15% of their weight as lean mass. With exercise added, only 39% did.

The fridge version

One line, seven boxes. Print it and put it where you eat.

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