Walking for 15 minutes after eating has an ‘immediate effect’ and can protect your health long-term, expert says
Health conditions can accumulate slowly over a long period of time, ‘but if you exercise you can reverse them before they become a problem’, says Dr Elroy Aguiar
The key to gaining and maintaining fitness is finding healthy habits that stick. For most people, this time-savvy 15-minute trick will fit the bill nicely, and it’s not overly strenuous either.
The advice, quite simply, is to “move after meals”. And the easiest way to do this is to go for a brisk walk, according to Dr Elroy Aguiar, an assistant professor of exercise science at The University of Alabama who specialises in all things step-related.
A (admittedly very small) study published in the International Journal of General Medicine suggested that walking immediately after a meal was more effective for weight loss than strolling for the same amount of time later in the day. This could have something to do with its ability to regulate blood glucose (aka blood sugar) levels.
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Why should you walk after meals?
“We know that even a short amount of exercise has an immediate effect,” says Dr Aguiar. “Straight away, you get lower blood pressure and lower blood glucose.”
“This ties in with another study on postprandial walking [walking after a meal]. It looked at whether it was better to exercise for 15 minutes straight after meals, three times per day, or to get the same amount of exercise in the morning or evening, so there were three different groups.” he adds.
The study focussed on “older persons at risk for glucose intolerance”, and found that those who walked immediately after meals had the lowest blood glucose response – shallower peaks and troughs – across the whole day.
This is because, during exercise, glucose is pulled into the cells of the working muscles to be used as energy. As a result, your blood glucose lowers, which can help you maintain more consistent energy levels and lessen the load on your pancreas as it aims to regulate blood sugar.
“The idea is that you eat a meal, you do 15 minutes of postprandial exercise, and that’s going to reduce your blood glucose spike and maintain your blood glucose in a better range for up to 24 or 48 hours,” Dr Aguiar explains.
“It’s exercise snacking. You’re breaking down a larger volume of exercise, so you don’t have to run for an hour and sweat buckets. Just 15 minutes of walking after each main meal is going to be beneficial for your health on its own.”
Who can benefit from walking after meals?
This advice is particularly prevalent for people who are insulin resistant, have pre-diabetes or have elevated blood pressure. But Dr Aguiar stresses that it shouldn’t be exclusive to these groups, and pretty much anyone can benefit.
“It’s helpful for everyone because you’re decreasing the amount of work your pancreas has to do to deal with that extra amount of glucose in your bloodstream,” says Dr Aguiar. “We refer to things like diabetes and metabolic syndrome [a combination of five cardiovascular risk factors; elevated waist circumference, high triglycerides, low high-density lipoproteins or ‘good cholesterol’, high blood pressure and high blood sugar] as silent killers because their effects accumulate over years and decades.”
“Immediately after exercise, you get lower blood pressure and lower blood glucose.” he explains. “That effect over years and decades is what prevents you from getting metabolic syndrome, diabetes and hypertension [high blood pressure]. All of these things accumulate slowly over a long period of time, but if you exercise you can reverse them before they become a problem.”
Read more: Is the 12-3-30 treadmill workout better than walking 10,000 steps a day? I tried both to find out
How to get the most out of walking after meals
If postprandial walking sounds like something you can get behind, Dr Aguiar has a few suggestions for maximising the many benefits. Firstly, he recommends holding a higher cadence or step frequency (130 steps per minute or more) than you would during a casual saunter.
“You want to hold a brisk pace where you feel slightly breathless or you have a light sweat on the surface of your skin. You can even simplify it down to the talk-sing test – walk at a pace where you can just about hold a conversation but you can’t sing. That’s moderate-intensity.”
This aligns with the World Health Organisation and NHS’s physical activity guidelines for adults: at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week.
“Exercising every day, or at least every other day, at a moderate-intensity, is going to improve your blood pressure and blood glucose levels,” adds Dr Aguiar.
“Over time, that’s going to improve things like HDL cholesterol, the good cholesterol, reduce your LDLs or bad cholesterol, then also result in weight change and a reduction in waist circumference. This means it covers all of the five risk factors for metabolic syndrome.”
Dr Aguiar explains that, “you can target all of them with exercise in the short-term, and also make a difference in the long-term, spanning years and decades, as well.”
In other words, if you want to take steps to future-proof your health, a 15-minute post-meal stroll is an excellent place to start.