This is the fourth and final part of our series on how you can spend less time working out and get better results. In parts one, two, and three we covered the benefits of increasing your intensity which were improving your fat burning metabolism, extending your fat burning metabolism and activating your hormones to burn more fat. By increasing your intensity you’ll be able to achieve all three of these amazing benefits. But there’s another benefit you’ll get from increasing your intensity: improving your insulin sensitivity.
When you eat any high sugar foods, particularly those high in glucose, your blood sugar rises. Now having continually high blood sugar is unhealthy, detrimental to your body, and will eventually lead to death...which is why you have insulin. When your blood sugar rises, your pancreas secretes insulin which helps to bring your blood sugar back to a normal level.
If you have chronically high blood sugar, your body starts to become insulin-resistant. Your blood sugar is consistently high and your body starts to see it as a norm and in turn becomes insensitive to the effects of the insulin. This is called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the first step in developing type 2 diabetes, and since type 2 diabetics are insulin resistant, a typical prescription is to take exogenous insulin, typically in the form of shots, after meals which cause their blood glucose levels to get too high.
So to lower your risk for developing type 2 diabetes you can integrate two main strategies: refrain from eating high carb/high sugar meals and increase the intensity of your workouts. The first strategy is obvious after reading through this blog post thus far but the second strategy may not be so obvious. Allow us to explain…
Increasing the intensity of your workouts forces your body to use stored muscle glycogen for energy (see part II). The storage spots in your muscles have insulin receptors on them also and when you deplete your muscle glycogen, you increase the insulin sensitivity of these insulin receptor sites. If you increase your insulin sensitivity then you inherently decrease your insulin resistance, thereby decreasing your risk for type 2 diabetes.
This is a major reason why a high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet is so beneficial for not only your long term health but also your ability to get better physical results. If there are few carbs present in your diet then your insulin resistance is less likely to be high. When you couple this with increasing your workout intensity it’s a winning combination.
These principles are what THE PLATFORM was founded on and why we created a comprehensive diet and exercise program for you to succeed. Join now so you can get the results you want and hit us up in the comments for other benefits you know from spending less time working out and getting better results!