What’s the best thing you can do after a meal?

Question

Abby Langer, RD · Answer

Hi, there. Thank you for your question. So the question is, what's the best thing that we can do after a meal? And the answer is to get up and have a look because studies have shown that when we go for a walk or are active in some way versus lying on the couch after eating, it helps to control our blood sugars. Of course, it's not realistic to expect that you're going to be active after every single meal you eat in your lifetime. But doing your best to even go for a short walk after having especially a larger meal is a great idea.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD · Answer

Okay, so I love this question. The question is, what is the best thing to do after a meal? So studies show that if we take a walk after a meal, we have much more benefit to blood sugar control. So, we have, especially seen this in type 2 diabetics or individuals that are insulin resistant. And I think the key here is that we don't have to finish our meal, walk outside, and go run the marathon. That's not necessary. Simply taking a walk around the block, simply just walking to the stop sign. Whatever you can do to get out and be a little bit more active, even if that's just 10 minutes as opposed to having our meal sitting on the couch, putting our feet up and just kind of vegging. So let's try and avoid the veg and again, do something simple. Like, take a walk around the block, the study showed that it can be a huge benefit. So, great question. I hope we all can try and do that. I know it's not possible everyday, but maybe at least twice a week, that would be a great goal.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS · Answer

What's the best thing you can do after a meal? What an easy answer? Take a walk, seriously. The biggest return on investment metabolically, mentally. Every way that you can think of is to take a 20-minute walk after a meal, it's great to do after dinner. It creates a demand for sugar for the muscle cells so that brings your blood sugar down, brings your insulin down and it's just rejuvenating, it's good for everything. And I recommended very, very highly great thing to do after a meal.

JJ Virgin, CNS · Answer

So this is such an important and simple thing that you can do after meal that is going to lower your blood sugar response to me on that is go take a walk and it doesn't have to be a big deal. It's a simple, easy walk, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, even 10, makes a difference, but I'd love to see 20 or 30. So this can become especially in the evening, just part of your evening routine. After dinner, go take a walk. It's a fantastic way to lower that blood sugar response to a meal and not have that like longer time under the curve that you don't want to have.

Sebastian Zorn, MS, RD, CSSD · Answer

The three. The best thing that you can do after a meal kind of starts during the meal, which is take your time, really enjoy and kind of savor what you're eating, kind of listen to your hunger cues. As you're eating, it's easy to get caught up especially if you're in front of a TV or doing something having a really good conversation while you're eating to ignore those hunger cues and either continue eating kind of overfill and try to just eat until you're stuffed so to speak and feel that physical discomfort versus just waiting until you're not hungry anymore. So that's something that we do kind of during while you're eating best, you can do after you eating in my opinion is go outside. Going to walk walk around in nature just kind of be with yourself or be with a friend or partner. You can have a conversation with and just get moving just a little bit, nothing intense.

Kitty Broihier, MS, RD · Answer

What's the best thing you can do after a meal? Well, lots of the answers here have been about moving after a meal, which of course is wonderful advice and I highly recommend it. But as far as what else you can do, I suggest that right after a meal, you sit for a minute and register your fullness and evaluate how you ate that meal. Did you overeat? Did you eat past your fullness? Are you still hungry? Just popping up and running to the next thing without learning about how that food is feeling in your body and evaluating how you ate that meal and what the results of the way you ate that meal are , means you're missing a chance to learn from the way you ate that meal. It could be evaluating how the specific foods feel for you. The portion sizes, how that feels for you, the pace that you ate, the things you may or may not have been doing while you were eating. Hopefully you weren't doing a bunch of things and just instead focusing on eating mindfully. But in any case, I would suggest that you before you get up, sit take a minute with yourself and just sort of evaluate how that meal feels for you in your body and how you feel as far as satisfaction. Are you still feeling the need for something else  Because you didn't quite eat the things that would satisfy you or are you feeling totally great and ready to rock and roll with your walk? Those would be my suggestions.

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What’s the best thing you can do after a meal?

Abby Langer, RD

Abby Langer, RD

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

JJ Virgin, CNS

Sebastian Zorn, MS, RD, CSSD

Kitty Broihier, MS, RD