Take Charge of Your Health: Session 7

Exercise is one of the most powerful tools for managing blood sugar – and it does not have to mean an hour at the gym. In this free class, Megan Ellison, RDN, CDCES of Sound Dietitians, LLC covers Chapters 8 and 9 of Prediabetes: A Complete Guide by Jill Weisenberger, breaking down the three modes of exercise, how movement directly affects blood sugar, and practical strategies for building activity into real daily life. This is the seventh session in the Take Charge of Your Health series, offered through Stilly Valley Health Connections – explore more in our free class recordings library.

What’s covered in this class:

• Why exercise matters so much for blood sugar – how muscles are the only tissue in the body that can take up glucose without insulin, why moving after a meal directly reduces post-meal blood sugar spikes, and how building muscle mass over time improves your body’s glucose utilization for the long term
• The three modes of exercise and the guidelines – cardio (150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, and how to gauge intensity using the talk/sing test), strength training (at least twice weekly, shown to reduce T2D risk significantly even in people starting as late as age 75), and stretching (newer research shows it also builds bone density and muscle mass when done after muscles are warm)
• The active couch potato problem and NEAT – why doing one big workout but sitting the rest of the day is not enough, what non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is and why lean individuals burn up to 350 more calories daily through everyday movement, and why physical activity is the most controllable piece of your total calorie burn
• Building movement into your actual day – the 3-minutes-of-movement-per-30-minutes-of-sitting rule, habit stacking strategies (squats while brushing teeth, counter push-ups while the coffee brews, stretching during TV), walking after meals, taking breaks, and how to use a fitness tracker or smartphone health app to build awareness
• Making it stick: mindset and strategy – shifting from “I should exercise” to “I get to move my body,” why starting with a two-minute goal builds the habit more reliably than aiming for an hour, how to use the FIT framework (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type) to write a realistic exercise plan, and free resources including Yoga with Adriene, Fitness with PJ, and Walking with Rick on YouTube