I am truly in awe of how exercise can drastically change one’s health.
This is why when I hear “You can’t out exercise a bad diet” it really ruffles my feathers.
It is not because I believe it to be false, I completely understand that if your diet is a trash bin fire that exercise isn’t going to be a bandaid for that.
The problem I have with the saying “You can’t out exercise a bad diet” is that it is black and white.
A less sexy way of saying “You can’t out exercise a bad diet” is “I might as well not exercise until I change my diet” or “Exercise is pointless if I am not eating healthy”.
In my opinion, EXERCISE IS NEVER POINTLESS!
It is simply not true that exercise has ZERO health benefits just because you ate cake and cookies all day. If anything those are the days you NEED to be exercising because at least it helps mitigate the effects of the all day binge on cakes and cookies!
I am always thinking about the person whose diet is a mess, they don’t exercise, they are sedentary, their sleep needs work, their stress is overwhelming, they have a couple of health concerns that they need to address, and here we are telling them “You can’t out exercise a bad diet”….WHO CARES ABOUT THEIR DIET, IF WE CAN GET THEM TO EXERCISE. ITS GOING TO HELP REGARDLESS!!!!
One of the reasons I believe so strongly about the importance of exercise in someone’s lifestyle is when we look at the impacts of exercise in people with chronic health conditions.
One good example is the impact of exercise on blood pressure. A recent high quality meta-analysis (Exercise Training and Resting Blood Pressure: A Large-Scale Pairwise and Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials, 2023) showed the potential impacts of various types of exercise on both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. These pretty graphs from Examine.com summarize the findings nicely.
https://examine.com/research-feed/study/0mbmR9/
What these graphs are showing are the effects of different modalities of exercise, high intensity interval training, aerobic training, combined training (both resistance of aerobic training), resistance training, and isometric exercise training, on blood pressure. The conclusion from the study was that isometric exercise training had the biggest effect on lowering blood pressure but ANY form of exercise also had a positive effect.
Side Note: If you are not familiar with isometric exercise training, the best example I can provide is a wall squat. With isometric training you essentially are holding your muscles in a contracted position for a long period of time. The side effect of this type of training is a large release of nitric oxide which is a natural compound that helps relax your blood vessels, therefore lowering blood pressure.
In addition, the researchers found that while everyone experienced a blood pressure lowering effect from any form of exercise, those with high blood pressure experienced the greatest blood pressure lowering effects. In addition, a previous meta-analysis found exercise to be just as effective as blood pressure lowering medications in people that have high blood pressure! (How Does Exercise Treatment Compare With Antihypertensive Medications? A Network Meta-Analysis of 391 Randomised Controlled Trials Assessing Exercise and Medication Effects on Systolic Blood Pressure, n.d.)
Another health condition where exercise shines is in type 2 diabetes. As you might know type 2 diabetes is a medical condition where the body can no longer maintain its blood sugar levels in a healthy range. Diet plays a HUGE role in type 2 diabetes because whenever we consume carbohydrates it raises our blood sugar.
In a healthy person the body can then lower the increase in blood sugar from food with the release of a hormone called insulin. In contrast, in someone who has type 2 diabetes the body is no longer responding to their body’s production of insulin so consuming carbohydrates can raise blood sugar to the point where it becomes a serious medical condition.
Insulin is not the only way to lower blood sugar though, exercise is an equally as powerful way of lowering blood sugar because muscle contractions are partially fueled by blood sugar. So if you move your muscles that causes your body to take whatever blood sugar is floating around in your blood stream and convert it to energy to power those muscle contractions and it does so without the need for insulin.
While all forms of exercise can help better manage blood sugar, whether you have type 2 diabetes or not, resistance training easily shines as one of the best modalities of exercise you can do for blood sugar management. Not only does it cause the greatest contraction of your muscles during exercise, it is the best form of exercise you can do in order to add muscle to your body.
Additional muscle is also important from a blood sugar management perspective because the biggest store of blood sugar in your body (that is not body fat) are your muscles. This means the more muscle you have the more places you can store excess blood sugar that is not used.
How much resistance training is necessary to see positive effects on blood sugar? Just about any amount will help! But new research (‘Dose-response relationships of resistance training in Type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials’, 2019) has found when looking at all the studies done on resistance training and blood sugar management in people with type 2 diabetes that the optimal resistance training protocol is:
- 2-3 resistance training sessions per week
- 3 set per exercise
- 8-10 reps per set
- 60 seconds or less of rest between sets
- Using weights that are 70-80% of someones 1 rep max
That’s very technical trainer speak, so at a high level all that is required for OPTIMAL blood sugar management if you have type 2 diabetes is that you pick 4 of your favorite resistance training movements, do 8-10 reps of each one for 3 sets each using a weight that feels challenging to you, and do that 2-3 times per week.
You could use your body weight, bands, dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell or machines, it does not matter!
However I want you to keep in mind 2 things:
- This is the optimal protocol, you can do much less and STILL BENEFIT from better blood sugar management!
- You could also run, swim, walk, jog, hike, ruck, do yoga, do pilates, play with your kids, play a sport, hop on one leg … and still get benefits!
I could go on and on about the benefits of exercise regardless of how bad someone’s overall lifestyle is, instead I will say this…
Exercise has been shown to regulate appetite, assists in better sleep, and relieves stress. SO IF YOU START EXERCISING YOUR ENTIRE LIFESTYLE CAN IMPROVE! You don’t even need to put any effort into your diet, sleep, or stress, the benefits just come along for the ride as part of exercise.
The main message I want to get across is everyone has to start somewhere. We should never discourage someone from starting a new health habit, no matter how big or small that may be. It doesn’t matter if the only change someone is willing to make is to go for a 5 minute walk in their day, or go to bed 5 minutes earlier than they normally do, or add a side of broccoli to their dinner, or do 1 minute of breathwork to ease some anxiety…however small the change may be does not matter because some change is better than no change at all!
If you think you need to completely overhaul your life to start doing something I am here to tell you that you don’t! All you need is to be willing to try to make the change and find a way to make it stick. Much of the content I am putting out is meant to take things that seem overwhelming on the surface and show you that they can be practically implemented in your life with little effort and yield massive benefits. If that sounds like something you are interested in then you can sign up for my newsletter below to receive all of this and more in your inbox each week.
References
‘;;’. (2019, March 9). ‘;;’ – YouTube. Retrieved October 16, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10561623/
Exercise training and resting blood pressure: a large-scale pairwise and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. (2023, July 25). PubMed. Retrieved October 16, 2023, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37491419/
How does exercise treatment compare with antihypertensive medications? A network meta-analysis of 391 randomised controlled trials assessing exercise and medication effects on systolic blood pressure. (n.d.). PubMed. Retrieved October 16, 2023, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30563873/
The use of nutrition in combination with a solid workout program are also very beneficial for anyone on the cancer continuum. As a thriver of metastatic breast cancer I have used low carb nutrition with exercise (including resistance training) to manage my condition. The result is that 4 years after my diagnosis (and 2 years beyond my life expectancy) I am in a state of no evident disease. In fact the scars left from lesions from metastasis in my spine have begun to disappear. My Oncologist says this indicates that the bones are healing from the inside, which doesn’t happen with the type of treatment given for the bone loss from cancer treatments.