Q & A: Are body weight squats better than walking for blood sugar?
A: One word answer: No.
Six word answer: are we allowed to do both?
Squats vs Walking
The full meme text I’ve seen is “When you tell women that 15 body weight squats every hour during a work day can be better than a single 30 minute walk for blood sugar” to a cheering crowd.
Checking the math: Are body weight squats better than walking for blood sugar?
The impact of any activity on glucose levels will be proportionate to the calories burned by that activity… in other words, when comparing activities or protocols, the one that burns the most calories is the winner.
One body weight squat burns 0.32 calories. 15 x 8 x 0.32 = 38.4 calories burned. If I generously add the “afterburn” or EPOC calories (which is 4%) to this total we get 40 calories.
Walking for 30 min at a decent pace (3.0 mph @ 150lbs) = 150 calories burned (without the EPOC). In other words, walking burns 3.75x more calories, so it will have a 3.75x greater impact on glucose control. (You can scroll to the bottom of this post for more on the mechanics of the loss of glucose control – type 2 diabetes, and how we now know that it is excess fat accumulated in the liver, then the pancreas that creates and sustains the disease…)
Furthermore, 30 min of walking at 3.0 mph = 1.5 miles, which is 3,000-4,000 steps (or reps); whereas the squats total just 120 repetitions.
Bottom Line: Are body weight squats better than walking for blood sugar?
You can’t replace walking with anything. We are all harmed (shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life) by walking less. Human locomotion (walking – with help or not, running, skipping, wheeling, etc.) is an essential part of being a healthy human.
Squatting is also important (it was even more important before indoor plumbing), and walking can’t replace squatting (or strength training). Just as you can’t replace your left hand with your right hand, we need both.
Nerdy note tangent
Fair warning: this is a tangent… If you wanted to see what the meme is supposed to be based on, here is the study. You’ll note that the protocol was 1 min of squats every 30 minutes or 2 min of walking every 30 minutes, and if you scroll down to the graph (figure 1 – graph B & C) the error bars on SQUAT and WALK cross over each other… in other words, there was no difference between the 2.
While we’re in our nerdy note section, you’ll notice that graph A (the glucose graph) in figure 1 shows all 3 lines being the same – meaning the folks who sat all day, walked or squatted all had nearly identical blood sugar levels all day long. How could this be? Because the body – especially the brain – needs a steady amount of glucose to stay alive – too low and you are dead. (Too high is bad, but over a long period of time vs too low which can kill you fast.)
This is similar to alkaline water altering the pH of your blood. Luckily it can’t do so because it would be lethal water. Our bodies need our pH to stay in a very narrow window or we die.
Back to glucose levels and type 2 diabetes. The very old idea (that has zero evidence) about how it develops is that insulin resistance requires your pancreas to pump out more and more insulin, and the higher insulin levels create more insulin resistance which requires greater insulin production… eventually the pancreas “gets tired” and stops working.
This makes sense as long as you don’t think about how any other system responds to increased demands, and if you ignore the empirical data about what happens when insulin resistance increases. The facts are: as insulin resistance increases, the pancreas increases it’s insulin production to meet demand. This is the same way that memory (domain specific) improves with challenge, and vice versa; or how your muscles and tendons and bones get stronger and better in response to demand.
Our bodies aren’t frail, and (like our mind) are harmed by coddling.
New Around Here?
Welcome to True 180 Personal Training for Women—Charlotte, NC’s most effective and supportive personal training studio for women since 2016. We do things differently here.
You’ll work toward your personal goals with a customized plan, in small-group sessions alongside women just like you. Every session is around an hour long and designed to give you a full-body strength training workout—every time you walk through our doors.