Easy Training, Radical Results: LISS Workouts for Diabetes Care

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body deals with carbohydrates and turns food into energy. With diabetes, either your body doesn't make enough insulin (type 1 diabetes) or can't effectively use the insulin it produces (type 2 diabetes). When there isn't enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream, leading to serious long-term health problems like heart disease, vision loss, kidney disease, and other complications.

While diabetes is a serious condition, the good news is that simple lifestyle measures like engaging in regular exercise can dramatically reduce symptoms and diabetes-related health risks. One particularly effective type of workout for diabetes management is LISS, or low-intensity steady-state cardio.

What Exactly Are LISS Workouts?

LISS stands for low-intensity steady state. This type of training involves exercising continuously for an extended period at a low to moderate intensity level where you can still hold a conversation. Some examples of low-impact LISS workouts include:

• Walking

• Light jogging

• Easy cycling

• Low-intensity swimming

• Low-impact aerobics/dance classes

A hallmark of LISS training is that it keeps your heart rate between 50-70% of your maximum heart rate for an uninterrupted period. While high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has grown in popularity for its metabolism and fitness-boosting benefits, LISS offers unique advantages, especially for individuals with diabetes.

The Challenges with HIIT for Diabetics

While high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has become a hugely popular workout method for its ability to torch calories and accelerate fitness, it poses unique challenges for people with diabetes. The very intense bursts of activity during HIIT can dramatically increase the uptake of blood sugar by muscles, leading to precipitous drops in blood glucose levels. If blood sugar declines too rapidly, it can quickly lead to hypoglycemia, resulting in shakiness, disorientation, loss of consciousness, and even seizures or death if left untreated. The sudden surges and plummets in blood sugar from HIIT can make diabetes exceptionally hard to control. Thus, many diabetes health professionals recommend steady low or moderate-intensity exercise like LISS instead of intense HIIT intervals due to less fluctuations in blood glucose. The less extreme nature of LISS makes it easier to manage nutrition and medication to keep blood sugar balanced during and after training sessions. Let’s look at the benefits in more detail.

Benefits of LISS for Diabetes Management

Research has shown that LISS workouts provide impressive health perks for diabetes management, including:

• Enhanced Insulin Sensitivity

Insulin resistance is central to the development of type 2 diabetes. It makes it difficult for insulin to transport blood glucose out of circulation and into cells to be used for energy. Over time, insulin resistance progresses to lower insulin production and eventually type 2 diabetes.

Studies demonstrate that LISS markedly improves insulin sensitivity and reduces insulin resistance - even just a single session of LISS can boost your body's ability to clear blood glucose through enhanced insulin sensitivity that lasts up to 16 hours after exercise. I personally feel the positive effect for up to 48 hours.

• Decreased Blood Sugar Levels

LISS workouts pull sugar out of circulation so muscles can use it as fuel during training. The end result is lowered hemoglobin A1C levels (a measure of long-term blood sugar control). This leads to reductions in daily blood glucose concentrations and less glucose variability day-to-day.

• Weight Loss

Carrying excess weight significantly raises diabetes risk, and managing a healthy body weight is key for diabetes prevention and care. LISS is extremely effective at creating a calorie deficit and burning stored fat for energy. Over time, this results in considerable weight loss and reductions in dangerous visceral fat wrapped around abdominal organs. To give you an example, I recently increased my LISS workouts to four times a week (two hours in total) and lost three pounds in three weeks while keeping the same diet. A step-by-step weight loss also increases the probability that you keep the weight loss and avoid the ups and downs that come with many diets.

• Reduced Diabetes Complications

The combination of enhanced blood sugar control, insulin function, inflammation levels, and weight loss LISS provides translates into significantly fewer diabetes-related health complications. Studies demonstrate LISS lowers rates of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, nerve damage, blindness, and more troublesome issues.

• Increased Cardiovascular Fitness

Many individuals with diabetes have impaired heart health for a variety of reasons. LISS delivers measurable improvements in cardiovascular fitness markers like VO2 max (maximal oxygen consumption). It also reduces blood pressure and collateral damage high blood pressure causes to organs like the heart, kidneys and eyes.

Getting Started with LISS for Diabetes Management

Convinced of the merits of adopting LISS workouts to boost your diabetes health? Here’s how to get started:

• Get physician clearance, especially if new to exercising or have complications

• Begin with as little as 5-10 minutes of LISS at 50% max heart rate. To keep it simple: When you can still hold a conversation, then you are at the right intensity level.

• Gradually build up duration and intensity as fitness improves

• Aim for 30-45 minutes 3-4 days, or 120 minutes/week

• Add resistance/weight training 2-3x/week for more metabolic benefits

The great thing about LISS is that it is appropriate for almost all fitness levels and incredibly time efficient. Just 30 minutes can lead to radical diabetes health gains. Select any cardio activity you enjoy, from walking to cycling, and get moving!

LISS is an easy yet potent way for individuals with diabetes to gain dramatically better health. Just small amounts of low-intensity steady-state training lead to outsized benefits like lower/healthier hemoglobin A1C levels, enhanced insulin sensitivity, better weight management, reduced risk for diabetes complications, and more! Adding regular LISS workouts is a simple step with massive potential to overcome diabetes or at least reduce related challenges.