How to exercise as a diabetic
How many times has diabetes impacted, interrupted or blocked us before exercising?
How many people avoid physical activity due to fears that originate from diabetes?
And how much psychological terror comes from hearing stories of people collapsing due to hypoglycaemias?
The answers: A lot, a lot, a lot. And a lot more than it should be.
Exercise as a treatment
In truth, regular exercise is a powerful treatment for diabetes, just as much as insulin is, I dare say. As a type 1 diabetic who practices endurance sport, has been working out for at least one hour every single day since 2015, and is still alive and safe (yup!), I feel I can give my two cents to the discussion and share what I have learned so far.
In this post I cover some concerns that I’ve often stumbled across while talking with fellow diabetics:
Should a diabetic avoid exercise?
How can a diabetic exercise safely?
Can exercise even cure diabetes?
Should a diabetic avoid exercise?
Let’s start with the basics: no, of course not, a diabetic should not avoid exercise.
There are plenty of myths and understandable concerns around this (the most absurd one being running should automatically cause a hypoglycaemia, for some reason).
Bad things can happen of course, but in my experience developing awareness around eating habits and the quality of the food - in other terms: work your way to a diet that reduces your insulin resistance! - drastically decreases the chances of any extreme event occurring.
Diabetics should not avoid exercise, the very opposite is true! Working out at the gym or going for long runs may not be everyone’s vibe, but simpler habits like a short walk after a meal can already have a big impact when it comes to controlling blood glucose spikes.
Now, a walk will never tame the detriment of a diet that is high in fat and processed food, vegan or not. Nor will running a marathon, for that matter.
In front of the typical blood glucose levels on an insulin resistant diet.
I have first hand experience here: many times in the past I went out for some strenuous cardio training to reduce a hyperglycaemia, came home in a pile of swat only to find an even worse situation.
How was that even possible? And how many times have I gone to the gym with a level of, say 112, and by the end of the workout it got up to a 200 or even 300?
This stuff is not trivial at all: a “corrective” injection that is reactive (rather than proactive) and fear-induced (rather than well reasoned and planned), like the ones I used to take, easily leads to severe hypoglycaemias. Et voilà, super unstable blood glucose, and fear every time I had to approach some physical exercise.
But there are plenty of diabetic athletes out there, so there must be a safer way to go about it!
How can a diabetic exercise safely?
Now that any doubts that a diabetic should stay away from exercise is cleared (once again, go out and exercise!) I can discuss how I came to practice my favorite activities stress free, and with optimal glucose levels 90% of the time.
There are several factors that come into play, the main ones I have encountered so far are
sleep,
stress levels,
lifestyle factors like unbalanced workloads, overtraining, irregular meal times.
But if I really had to name the ONE to start with, I’d say that the laser focus should be on the stability of blood glucose. The less variable it is, the better control you’ll have on it. We can avoid the blood glucose rollercoaster by becoming less insulin resistant.
I will stress this point: the most important factor to exercise safely is how insulin resistant you are. And you control insulin resistance by eating the right food. Period.
A stock image example of a perfect food. One that the author loves a bit too much.
Once I started to develop some understanding of this whole low insulin resistance diet thing, and actually eat the “green light” foods (high carb, low fat, whole plant based food), I witnessed my insulin resistance drop in a matter of days. The average values and the stability of my blood glucose improved dramatically.
As a consequence, I was far less concerned with those “unexpected and unexplainable” spikes I experienced in the past, simply because they were just not happening anymore! Even more so, no additional injections were needed, which further stabilised my glucose since I was not going to hypoglycaemia.
I can’t stress enough how important this diet shift has been! If I could make some gestures or use my body to remar this point, believe me I would!
Physical exercise of any kind went back to being an enjoyable activity, not impaired by the fear or concern that I may have to stop it or avoid it due to an extreme blood glucose event.
Sometimes I still begin an activity with an ideal glucose and see it rise, but I came to understand that this has a lot to do with cortisol.
I have also observed that this phenomenon regularly occurs when I’ve had a poor night of sleep. But that’s a topic for another time.
Here’s your take away here:
YES, diabetics can exercise safely as long as they eat properly.
“Eating properly” means consuming whole foods that are high in carbohydrates and low in fats. You can check a full list here: just pick some of these foods and aim to have them on your plate 90% of the time.
As a runner: running is good, you won’t die of hypoglycaemia. You can be a type 1 diabetic and run long distances. In fact, go run now!🏃🏻♂️💨
If you don’t know where to go, lace up your shoes and go here. 😁
Can exercise cure diabetes?
When I discovered I had type 1 diabetes, I was surely scared. I was also hopeful that there could be some kind of treatment or definitive cure for it. Unfortunately, that is not true at the moment: type 1 diabetes has no cure, one simply has to accept it and live with it.
However, provided that we’ve made peace with it, previous paragraphs hopefully persuaded you that there are a lot of levers we can pull and things in our control to make it suck less…perhaps even to a point where our blood glucose levels resemble those of a diabetic person without diabetes!
Diet and exercise go hand in hand here. They will not cure you, but they will make everything MUCH MUCH easier to handle. No more blood sugar “rollercoaster” and no more fear of physical exercise, not to mention the dramatically lower risk of long term consequences induced by both insulin resistance and lack of exercise.
If you only remember one bit from this post, let it be this one:
Physical exercise is a type 1 diabetic’s best friend. Together witha whole food, high carb plant based diet that reduces your insulin resistance and unlocks the door to better control over your diabetes.
You will gain the confidence to exercise more, and you will enjoy doing so.
I surely do. I love to move, to eat good food and to be in good health for the rest of my life. And I want to continue doing that!
Hopefully, by now I at least hooked you to some ideas that you can start ruminate on. There are small choices and habits that you can control on a daily basis at the dining table and at the gym, or wherever you love to go to move your body. These choices can compound very rapidly (weeks, if not days) to immense benefits.
Why shouldn’t you give it a try?
