Let’s look at that dirty word exercise a little closer. Exercise is something that almost all of us got as kids and didn’t even realize that we were doing it. Our days were filled with activity and movement, something that most of us cubicle farmers don’t get at all. Exercise makes a normal blood sugar level easier to maintain because you are burning off the food that you eat as fuel to keep your body moving.

Usually a challenge or making exercise some type of game can help keep someone motivated to keep at it. Step programs that utilize pedometers to measure how many steps a person takes in a day can be a real motivator to keep walking until your goal for steps in the day is reached. Many programs suggest 10,000 steps a day to help get people in better shape and burn off excess calories. A normal blood sugar level can also help you in maintaining an exercise program because a high blood sugar level can lead to sluggishness, sleepiness after eating, and a general feeling of malaise.

Another type of exercise that most people got as children was bicycling. Riding a bike filled many of our days and could easily come into play again as an adult. Many of us live within riding or walking distance of the grocery store, hair-cut place, bank, etc. But, riding a bike to those places doesn’t enter into our minds. It’s a habit to hop in the car and drive everywhere. Start riding your bike again and relive that youthful joy of the wind in your face (and hair if you have any) and the burn in your knees from pedaling up hills. Just that small change in riding a bike a few times a week will help in reducing that visceral adiposity many of us have gained over the years as well as the general adiposity on the rest of our bodies. It will also help even out glucose levels by burning glucose as fuel to keep pedaling.

Walking with a pedometer and riding a bike are two fairly low-impact easily implemented ways of increasing your exercise levels and changing habits that have accumulated over a life time. Many experts say that it takes generally a month to change a habit, my father-in-law always said that 3 days was the start and if you could do that, then 3 weeks was the next goal and that if you could keep at it for 3 months then you had changed that habit for good. 3 days is usually the hardest for me. So what are normal blood sugar levels? It takes exercise to find out.