Is it better to walk before or after eating?
Any walk is better than none, whenever you take it. But if you can choose, the research on blood sugar points one way: a short walk after a meal does more than the same walking at another time of day.
The short answer
After eating, if blood sugar is what you care about. In a trial of 41 adults with type 2 diabetes, walking for 10 minutes after each main meal lowered the rise in blood sugar after meals by about 12% compared with one 30-minute walk a day, the same total time. After the evening meal, the difference was about 22%. Short walks breaking up long sitting also lowered blood sugar after meals in a 2022 review of trials in adults, most of them with overweight or obesity. For most people, a gentle 10 to 15 minute walk after a meal is easy to fit in and worth doing.
What the research found
Walking after meals, in type 2 diabetes. A 2016 trial in Diabetologia (Reynolds and colleagues) compared two kinds of advice over two weeks each in 41 adults with type 2 diabetes: walk for 30 minutes a day, or walk for 10 minutes after each main meal. Both added up to the same time. Blood sugar after meals, measured with continuous glucose monitors, was about 12% lower with the after-meal walks. The effect was largest after the evening meal, about 22% lower, when people ate the most carbohydrate and sat the most. The authors suggested that guidelines should specify walking after meals, particularly carbohydrate-heavy ones.
Short walks instead of long sitting. A 2022 review and meta-analysis (Buffey and colleagues) pooled seven trials, mostly in adults with overweight or obesity, that broke up a day of sitting with short bouts of standing or light walking. Standing breaks lowered blood sugar after meals compared with sitting straight through, and light walking breaks did better than standing.
These are short trials, measuring blood sugar over days or weeks, not long-term health. They show that the timing of a walk changes what it does to blood sugar after a meal.
What about walking before eating?
There is less research comparing a walk before a meal with one after, and the trials above weren’t designed to test it. A walk before a meal is still a walk, with all the usual benefits of walking. The specific effect on the blood sugar rise after that meal comes from walking after it.
How to fit it in
- Keep it short. The trial used 10 minutes after each main meal.
- Go soon after eating. The trial measured blood sugar over the three hours after each meal.
- Pick the evening meal if you can only do one. It made the biggest difference in the trial.
- Make it a habit with others: a walk after dinner is easy to share with family or a neighbour.
If you have diabetes or take medication that lowers blood sugar, talk to your doctor or diabetes team before changing your routine.
A reason to walk today
Most of us know we should walk more and still skip it, because “go for a walk” has no finish line. reTrek gives you one: pick a famous route, like the Camino de Santiago or the Inca Trail, and every walk moves you further along it, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. Instead of fitting in a walk for its own sake, you walk to reach the next milestone.
Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.