82 | The Importance of Walking after Dinner

This week we are focusing on going for a walk each evening in our Moms Raising Healthy Humans Community as a family if at all possible.

Outline

Introduction to this episode.
0:05

Why we should walk as a family.
1:02

Walking after eating helps keep blood sugar stable.
2:52

Blood sugar control and exercise.
4:30

How exercise affects your gut microbiota.
6:37

Physical activity alters the gut microbiota by increasing short chain fatty acids.
8:23

Exercise increases short chain fatty acids.
9:31

Why it’s important to start practicing a healthy lifestyle.
10:57

Let me know how you’re doing.
12:15

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:05

Welcome to raising healthy humans, a podcast created for busy moms where you can easily find information on health and wellness for your family. Enjoy experts who share tips on how to raise children through each phase of life. Gather current information on nutrition and wellness. And listen to Courtney, a health coach, movement specialist and founder of form fit an active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more on raising healthy humans podcast, Courtney shares her personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts. So you can raise healthy humans. All right, so this week, we are focusing on going for a walk each evening in our moms raising healthy humans community, which many of you here on Facebook are in. And we want to walk as a family, if at all possible, just because the benefits, all the things that I'm going to mention to you today are not only going to help you, but are also going to help your family members as well. And it's never too early to start with our children. So there are a few reasons why I recommend you go for a walk after dinner. Obviously, this is the last chance for you to get some movement in as a family there are it will help you to relax at the end of the day, and de stress so that you can get a better night's sleep, it aids in digestion, by not allowing things to become stagnant. So if you think about remember our lymphatic system, how it runs in line with our circulatory system, and our digestive system is very similar. So the more that you are moving, the more you're getting that lymphatic system moving, the more you're getting your digestion moving. So it really does help the goal is to obviously make sure that we keep moving. And that's why you hear me all the time talking about move more throughout your day. I mentioned it's great for the lymphatic system, it's an opportunity for you to catch up with your children. So not only is it physically good for you, but it's also good for you for your mental emotional state with your children being able to talk to them. Sometimes when we're out for a walk, and we're not all facing each other. Like when you're at the dining room table. It's kind of the same concept as being in the car. So when you're facing your children, sometimes it's harder for everyone to talk. So being out and walking, where you're all looking at one thing and you're just kind of walking and moving. It allows for more conversations to occur naturally. And then the one that I want to kind of deep dive into today is that walking after eating helps to keep blood sugar stable. So if we think about our gut health, and this all the things that I mentioned, the low belly pooch, if you're dealing with low belly, pooch, all of these things have to do with our blood sugar. And if our blood sugar is on this constant, high and low, it is going to make us hungrier, it is going to add weight around the midsection. So we want to work on trying to keep our blood sugar stable throughout the day. And I'm going to talk more into this later. But the one of the quickest and easiest ways that you can work on making your keeping your blood sugar stable is making sure you're going for walks moving throughout your day. So at the end of the day, that's usually our largest meal for most of us. So it is important to make sure that within 30 minutes after going for our walk, I mean if after eating dinner, we want to go for a walk. And you only need about 15 minutes to make this effective for blood sugar. So this isn't getting into the information about like how long you need to walk for heart health and things like this. We are specifically talking about blood sugar with this one. So and you may know I am in my older 40s. So I will say that this is something I've really started to notice as we get older, it becomes harder to control our blood sugar. So we need to do as much as we can to help support it. And the earlier you can start getting control of the blood sugar, the less of the up and down roller coaster ride that you're going to deal with especially slowly with perimenopause, this is extremely important during these Peri menopausal leap years, when you become more insulin resistant, so you want to get your blood sugar under control so that you're not dealing with insulin resistance, okay, and you can walk in as little as 15 minutes to help control this, as your muscles need glucose to help power the walk. So as we go for a walk, our muscles need the glucose, which will help keep our blood sugar stable, it also helps the body to use the insulin more effectively as well. So when your blood sugar rises, say you've eaten, it doesn't matter what you've eaten, there are different things that create a blood sugar spike. So if you eat too much, we won't get into the exercise like high intensity exercise increases blood sugar as well. But we're thinking of you know, your carbs, eating more, that is all going to increase your blood sugar. So when your blood sugar rises, your insulin, I'm sorry, your pancreas will produce insulin, which is a hormone that absorbs the blood sugar for energy, or it stores it walking a will allow for the blood sugar to be used for energy rather than storing it. And what happens is, when you store this glucose, it stores in that midsection. So another reason to make sure that you are going for a walk. Last are your meal. The other thing that exercise does, which this is really cool. I think they started researching this in a while I don't know exactly when they researched it, but the information started coming out. I believe in like 2018. It's newer research that they've done on how exercise affects your gut microbiota. So this month, we are talking about gut health in our community, and how we can work on healing our gut. And one thing that they found is that exercise alone, exercise alone can change your gut microbiome. Now, one thing they also didn't notice is that you can't go out. So they did this study on the first digit of a mice, and then they did it on humans. And when they did the study on humans, they had them workout for six weeks. So it was they did three days a week from between 30 and 60 minutes for six weeks. And they did find I will tell you up front, they did find that during the time of working out, their microbiota changed, within six weeks after when they went back to a sedentary state, their microbiota changed back. So that should really kind of find help you to know that physical exercise is important. On a whole, we need to be doing it all the time. We don't need to you know, it's not like I'm going to work out in exercise because I'm on this diet or whatever. And I'm going to do it for six weeks, I'm gonna lose all my weight, and then I'm gonna go back to living my regular life. No, you have got to keep this consistent. So the more we can work on habit changing and creating these new habits, these healthier habits where we start to really like exercising, and working out and moving more, the better. And it will also change our micro biota for the better as well. So we will naturally heal our gut. Okay, so I've gotten sidetracked with everything I'm talking about. Okay, so physical activity alters the gut microbiota by increasing the production of short chain fatty acids. So what are short chain fatty acids, they are the main source of energy for the cells lining your colon. And they are involved in the metabolism of carbs and fat. So most of our short chain fatty acids come from eating fiber. And they help to reduce inflammation, type two diabetes, heart disease and obesity. So we really want to make sure that our colon has these short chain fatty acids. The really cool thing is, is that they always thought it was food that helped create these short chain fatty acids. They learned in this research, that exercise could do it as well. And I'm not going to get into the whole science of what they did with the research, but they took like a sterile group to be able to find out if it was the food they were eating or what it was that was creating these short chain fatty acids. So they were able Let's see how it was. It had a lot to do with the exercise. And I kind of already went through the research, the research did have 32 sedentary adults 18 were lean, 14 were obese. And they were all, you know, they all were sedentary, they did not do any activity. And then for the six weeks, they did practice exercises. And they found that all of them had an increase in short chain fatty acids, with the most noticeable noticeable being butyrate butyrate, supports your immune system reduces inflammation, and prevents disease like cancer. Once they went back to their sedentary lifestyle, like I mentioned, that then disappeared, their microbiome reverted back to the microbiome they had when they were initially sedentary. So this is why it's important to start working on practicing a healthy lifestyle, not only the foods that you are eating the fiber you are getting the exercise you are doing. So that is why this week we are focusing, we're going to hit to we're going to work on getting more movement in in our daily life. So if you're doing our five minute workouts this month with our monthly calendar, which you do get for free in the community, you can do those workouts, add some walking in with your walking being after dinner to help keep that blood sugar stable all throughout the day. And then you know, and then you're hitting both of them you're hitting not only am I exercising on a daily basis, which is going to help my gut health, but I'm also keeping my blood sugar stable. And that also is going to help my gut health. So that is why we are focusing on walking every day after dinner. Now one thing that I'm going to talk a little bit further with my membership community is going to be how can we create habits with this. So I want you to try this for the week and see how you do. And let me know in the comments below. If you're noticing a difference how it feels not only for you physically, but also emotionally how it's bringing you, you and your family together a little bit more that type of thing. And that is it. If I don't have any questions, I will let you all go. And I hope that you have a wonderful day. And I look forward to hearing back from you about your you know how this week goes with the focus. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast. I hope you found this information valuable and hope that you can immediately use some of the information that was provided. Make sure to check out the show notes for all the links that we discussed today. We would also love for you to come join us over on our moms raising healthy humans community on Facebook to provide us with information moving forward with the podcast. We also provide you with a monthly focus to help you and your family live a healthier and more fulfilling life. And if you're interested in diving deeper with us, we offer different memberships to participate in so that you can get to know us on a more personal level. We offer monthly challenges, live events on demand and live workouts, meal plans and so much more. Just head to form fit online.com to learn more. And as always make sure to keep moving