It's long been common wisdom that a bit of a stroll after a meal feels good.  It's easy to feel sleepy after a meal, when your body goes into digestion mode.  But some new research even shows how moving for only a few minutes can be good for you. 

From an August, 2022 NY Times article:

"Walking after a meal, conventional wisdom says, helps clear your mind and aids in digestion. Scientists have also found that going for a 15-minute walk after a meal can reduce blood sugar levels, which can help ward off complications such as Type 2 diabetes. But, as it turns out, even just a few minutes of walking can activate these benefits.

In a meta-analysis, recently published in the journal Sports Medicine, researchers looked at the results of seven studies that compared the effects of sitting versus standing or walking on measures of heart health, including insulin and blood sugar levels. They found that light walking after a meal, in increments of as little as two to five minutes, had a significant impact in moderating blood sugar levels.
“Each small thing you do will have benefits, even if it is a small step,” said Dr. Kershaw Patel, a preventive cardiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital who was not involved in the study."

In addition to the benefit in managing blood sugar, it would also be helpful to move to help with nutrient absorption from the food you've eaten.

Practical tips:

• Every time you eat, get up and move gently and lightly for at least 5 minutes, but up to 30 minutes.
• This is a perfect time to take the dog for a walk.
• If you don't have time to walk, at least try to stand up instead of sitting down.
• Eat your bedtime meal at least an hour and preferably 2-3 hours before bed.

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Scott

If you want to improve or change in some area of your life, one of the most effective and powerful things you can do is alter your structure.  What this means is that we need to change the way we organize things, the structure or design, in order for change to happen automatically. 
 
Automatic is the key with positive structure.
 
Here are some examples of using structure to change:

• Your goal is to lose weight, so you create the structure of keeping a dietary log daily, and it forces you to eat better.
• Your goal is to exercise daily, so you make a commitment to meet a friend in a structured way every morning at 6 to work out together.  You improve your fitness automatically.
• You want to pray more, so you commit to saying the Lord’s prayer every morning and evening on the way to and from work.  You get in the habit of doing this automatically.
• You want to learn to play an instrument, so you sign up and pay in advance for 6 months of lessons every Wednesday at 6pm.  You automatically get better.
• You want to improve your career options, so you sign up for 3 continuing education classes, and gain news skills automatically.
• You want to be less stressed, so you commit to not buying anything for one year, and not drinking during the week, and you automatically spend less money and are less stressed.
• You want to get out and do more things, so you sign up for a dance class that automatically forces you to socialize.
• You want to save more money, so you create a budget, and every time you get a paycheck you automatically pay yourself first. 

 
Put the structure in place for success.  One reason the military is a great option for a lot of directionless young people is that It at least forces them to be in a structured environment.   Left to our own devices, we are not good at getting things done.  We are products of our environment, structure your environment so that it helps you instead of hurting you.
 
P.S. One structure that I’ve done to write more blog posts is putting a physical piece of paper out in early 2023 with my list of posts for me to see every day.  This is positive structure. 

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Scott

2022 was a great year for reading.
I learned a ton, and really grew as a person.  Some key things I learned this year:

• The way Americans eat is totally backward, unhealthy, and not good for the environment.
• The people running America (often called the "elites") have long given up on trying to do what's right for Americans, the people they ostensibly represent and should be leading.  Instead, they are actually profiting from the decline and demoralization of the populace through the spreading of vice and disenfranchisement in many arenas.  Consider the growing profligacy of drugs, gambling, prostitution, anti-family policies, collapse of institutional trust and authority, the normalization of sexual grooming, and the efforts to keep wages down through open borders and more. They are benefiting from society's decline. 
• For the USA to ever move forward as a nation, we will need a new elite of virtue, which we currently don't have.  If people can't look up, they look down.
• The good news is that a new and small but more virtuous Vanguard is emerging centered around local communities of faith and work.
• I'm fascinated by the synthesis that the early Church fathers did with the work of Plato, I read several books about this and I think it's a missing piece of culture and theology today. 
• Christian Platonism, with it's stress on the "highest goodness, truth, and beauty" has ultimate importance even for health reasons and as such should be re-emphasized. 

My Favorite Health Book of 2022- Folks this Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, a true genius

2022

2022 Books
-(They are all worth reading but my favorites are in BOLD)
- FYI some of these are re-reads.

Culture, History, Novels, Politics, Religion

The Southern Essays of Richard Weaver
Tales from Shakespeare by Mary Lamb
Plain folk of the Old South by Frank Loyd Owsley
Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature and culture by Allen Mendenhall
A Southern Vanguard 1942 by Various Authors
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
An English Christmas by Julian Norwich
A Gentleman’s Guide by Stephen Baskerville
The Reactionary Mind: Why Conservative is not Enough by Michael Warren Davis
The Next Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Truman
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch
From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith by Louis Markos
Patriarch Mindset: Christian Masculinity for the 21st Century by Mathew Sebastian
No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men by Anthony Esolen
Sex and The Unreal City: the Demolition of the Western Mind by Anthony Esolen
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Why We Drive: Towards a Philosophy of the Open Road by Mathew Crawford
A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
Predictive analytics by Eric Seigel
Nathan Bedford Forest by Jack Hurst
Folks this Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin
Paul by NT Wright
In Defense of Tradition by Richard Weaver
Resisting Amazon: How to Do it and Why
Augustine: Philosopher and Saint by The Great Courses
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
The Machiavellians by James Burnham
On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine
The 15 Most Critical Moments of the Civil War by Robert C. Jones
A Wake for the Living by Andrew Lytle
Song of the South (A Book of Poems) Intro by Joel Chandler Harris published 1912

Health / Fitness / Nutrition / Motivation / Continuing Education Podcasts:

Wise Traditions
Jocko Podcast
The Uberman Lab
The Art of Manliness

If you like my blog, pass it on or send me an email.  I'd love to hear from you. 
Scott

P.S. Here are some other various Free E-Books I made. Enjoy:
https://www.scottgodwin.net/free-e-books.html

Grapes, or Grape Juice?  That is the question.

I get asked a lot about fruits and juices.
Picking between them, or refusing both, is an important discussion.

Overall though, rule 1 is this: Choose the food which will cause the lowest blood sugar response, so choose fruits over fruit juices, grapes over grape juice. Fruit juice is much better than soda, because it at least has vitamins and some phytonutrients.   But it also has a lot of simple sugar, which is not good. 

Always consider a) the Glycemic Response (how high it raises your blood sugar) of a certain food and b) the ratio of fiber to carbohydrate.  Both of these factors will affect your energy and your weight control.

You may actually get more vitamins and minerals by cooking fruits and vegetables, so I'm not saying to not ever do that.  But fruit has a good bit of sugar to begin with, and by cooking a fruit or making it a juice it will raise the sugar response even more.  Eating a whole fruit causes a lower insulin spike and is much better for you metabolically, and with better control of insulin, your whole health will be so much better. 

Higher insulin responses lead to greater fat storage.  So more juice will usually lead to more insulin and more fat. 

Vegetables are different because they're starchy to an extent and have much less, if any sugar.

If the choice comes down to grapes or grape juice, always choose grapes!
-----

I enjoy writing and helping people, and write on all sorts of health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness topics.  
 
Read Next: 8 Simple Cardio Workouts
 
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