The After-Dinner Ten
Meet Neil's walking partner: Cora, a 5.9-pound senior Morkie whose hips don't lie and whose top speed is best described as eventually. Every evening, Neil, his wife Gina, and Cora take the after-dinner walk, and that slow, unimpressive, dog-paced...
The episode, word for word
I want to tell you about my walking partner. She weighs five-point-nine pounds. Count it: five... point nine. She's getting up there in years. And her top speed is best described as "eventually."
Her name is Cora. She's our Morkie, and every evening once it cools off, Gina and I take her out for the after-dinner walk. And I need to be honest with you about the pace, okay? Cora is a senior dog. Her hips don't lie, and what her hips are saying is, "We'll get there when we get there." This is not a training walk. Nobody's heart rate is impressed. It is ten, fifteen easy minutes of the three of us easing down the street while Gina and I actually talk to each other about our day for the first time since 7am.
And that slow, unimpressive, dog-paced walk is the single most valuable thing I do for my blood sugar most days. Today I'm showing you exactly how to run yours.
I'm Neil Greathouse, this is Your Best T1D Year.
Why after dinner? Three reasons, stacked. One: dinner's usually your biggest carb load of the day, so it's got the most spike to blunt. Two: the research says post-meal walking beats other timing, and dinner's walk beats them all. Remember, that was DiPietro's headline, the dinner walk was the MVP of the three. Three: you already own that time slot. You spent all summer pre-bolusing dinner. The habit's built. We're just adding a caboose to a train that's already running.
And the numbers are real. A 2022 review in Sports Medicine pooled the post-meal walking trials. Even a short, easy walk after eating meaningfully blunts the glucose rise compared to sitting, in the range of 15 to 20 points off the peak. And a researcher named Reynolds found ten minutes after each meal beat one 30-minute daily walk in people with type 2. Mostly type 2 and prediabetes data, your number will be your own, but the direction is about as settled as this stuff ever gets. The walk beats the couch. Every time they check, the walk beats the couch.
Okay, here's the whole protocol, and I made it stupid simple because simple is the only thing that survives a Tuesday. Step one: finish dinner. Step two, and people, this is the entire ballgame: do NOT sit down on the couch first. Do not do it. The couch is not furniture at 7pm. The couch is a Venus flytrap with throw pillows. The couch has never once released a person for a walk. There is no recorded case. You sit down "for a minute," and the next thing you know it's 9:40, you're three episodes deep, and the Netflix countdown, remember, our villain's little henchman, is going "next episode in five, four, three..." Go straight from the table to your shoes. Table. Shoes. Door. That's the play.
Step three: walk easy for ten minutes. Conversation pace. Bring a person, bring a dog, bring a podcast, this one's fine, I hear the host is very humble. Step four: peek at your CGM around the two-hour mark and wave at your line.
That's it. No gear. No sweat. No changing clothes. If a five-point-nine-pound elderly Morkie can set the pace for the most evidence-based habit in this entire challenge, people, you can keep up.
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Your challenge: the after-dinner ten, most nights this week. Compare your two-hour numbers to that before picture from week one. Then hit reply on the newsletter and tell me what you saw, because those replies are becoming the best part of my week.
yourbestt1dyear.com. Free tracker. About 2,000 of us walking off dinner around the world every night. Cora says hi. Slowly. She'll finish saying it by Friday.
We are the ones. Living with it, loving somebody who has it, walking the dog about it. We are the ones. My name is Neil. Friday, the fancy version. See you then.
This is the episode script as read on the mic. It's education and encouragement, not medical advice. Talk to your care team before changing anything about your management.
