Balancing Your Life Through Movement

We’re going to dive in with a question that is commonly asked: Is exercise actually important for me? 

The answer? Hells yes! Movement is critical to our health and longevity!

Moving your body not only has amazing physical and health benefits, but it also helps balance all other parts of life. After all, the way we do one thing is the way we do everything – so if you’re feeding your body the physical nutrients it needs in terms of positive and inspiring movement (as well nourishing foods!), that inspiration and positivity inevitably trickles out into all other parts of our life – resulting in more positivity and inspiration in your career, your finances, your relationships and connections with others. 

How does this work?

The way movement affects your body is complicated – people have dedicated their entire lives to studying this! But here’s a synopsis of what happens on a cellular level with your blood sugar every time you choose movement… or not.

Blood sugar is the concentration of glucose in your blood. Glucose is a simple sugar and it’s your body’s main and preferred energy source. There are three main places sugar settles itself in your body:

1. Sugar starts your bloodstream as glucose
2. Then it heads into your liver and muscles as glycogen for short term storage
3. Then if it is not utilized along those two paths it finds its way to your fat cells for long term storage
   
   

Let’s dive deeper into each of these pathways:

• Your body’s ability to utilize glucose is largely determined by the hormone insulin. When your blood sugar levels increase, insulin is released to help restore glucose to a healthy balance. Insulin helps your cells release the glucose into your bloodstream where it will ideally be converted into energy. 

• You want your cells to convert the glucose in your bloodstream into energy right away because any excess glucose that is not needed at the time will be stored short term in your liver and muscles as glycogen. If there is room to store it here short term, then it can be utilized here as an energy source and get burned off.

• However, if those short term reserves are full, then the body looks to store the excess glucose long term as lipids or fatty acids. Once in this long term storage, it cannot be converted back to glucose to be used for energy consumption. The only way for the body to utilize this form of stored energy is to go through a process called ketogenesis, which turns fatty acids into ketone bodies. 
  
  
• In summary: The focus here is that when you move, moderate to high levels of energy are expended – which depletes the glycogen stores in your liver and creates space for the new glucose to go – so when you eat again and our glucose levels rise, lower levels of insulin are released because you don’t have as much glucose “build up”.

This is one reason that much of the research around health and longevity has been shifting to center around the critical importance of balancing our blood sugar and increasing our insulin sensitivity.