How to Build Muscle with Diabetes

If you have diabetes and want to build muscle but aren’t sure where to start or aren’t seeing the results you want, this guide is for you. 

Wherever you’re starting in your journey, know that you can achieve your fitness goals and feel strong and healthy with diabetes. In this guide, we share practical tips to help you improve your workouts and stick with your plan, no matter your current fitness level. 

The basics of building muscle

Let’s start with the basics of muscle-building.

Generally speaking, you can build muscle through:

• Lifting weights to activate your muscles: start small and work your way up
• Consuming enough protein to fuel your muscles: The Cleveland Clinic generally recommends eating 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. Talk to your doctor to determine what’s right for you.
• Getting enough hydration to support muscle recovery: General guidelines recommend eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, but your needs may vary based on the exercise you’re getting, your age or the environment you’re in.
• Getting enough rest to let your body heal: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends seven hours of good sleep per night for the average U.S. adult.

These behaviors fall into two major categories:

• Stimulus: The physical and mental work you do to make changes in your muscle growth
• Recovery: The physical and mental repair you do between muscle growth challenges to improve overall health and to ensure you can keep moving your body regularly

Key factors that impact muscle growth

Like many things in life with diabetes, there’s a science behind building muscle. 

Muscle growth depends on a few things: 

• How much you move each day: Staying active is super important because it helps you build and keep your muscle mass. Whether it’s playing sports, riding a bike, walking your dog or just having fun outside, moving your body helps you stay healthy and strong. Being active daily also helps you age well. The earlier you start in life, the better for longevity!
• Your genetics (the traits you get from your parents): Studies show that your genes play a big role in how strong your muscles are and how they look. In fact, they can explain more than half of the differences in muscle size, strength and the types of muscle fibers you have.
• Important hormones in your body: Hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, estrogen, cortisol and insulin all play a role in how much muscle you have. For people with diabetes (PWD), insulin is particularly important. Insulin helps the body build new muscle proteins, which are needed to repair and grow muscles. The repair process is best supported when someone with diabetes is well-nourished through a balanced diet.
• Aging: As you grow, your muscles become larger and stronger. This generally happens until you reach a certain age. Age-related muscle loss can begin as early as age 35 and typically happens at a rate of 1-2% annually.

Building muscle for performance + sport

Everyone can build muscle. Some people want more muscle than others, often for appearances or to perform better at sports.

To help your muscles grow, you need to challenge them. Weight training is a great way to do this. When you do exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses and pulls, your muscles get worked hard. However, if you don’t lift enough weight or do these exercises often enough, you might not see the big muscle gains you want. That’s why having a regular weight training routine is important.

When you train regularly, your body learns to handle heavier weights. This means you can get stronger and build more muscle. To really make the most of your training, you also need to consider other important factors, like rest and nutrition, which help your body recover and grow. 

With the right approach, you can reach your muscle-building goals. Start small and gradually increase to prevent overtraining. Work with a fitness instructor or health coach to stay accountable and develop a consistent pace.

Recovery tips for building muscle mass

Recovery is a vital part of the muscle-building process. Muscle growth starts in the kitchen. You can work out at the gym all day, but if you aren’t treating your body right at home, you won’t get the results you want.

But food isn’t the only factor to consider in muscle growth and recovery.

To get adequate recovery between muscle-building challenges, remember to:

• Rest between training sessions: take days off
• Eat the right amount of calories for your weight and goals
• Get the right macronutrients (fats, proteins and carbs)
• Get a good night’s rest: seven hours per night is just right for most people

If you’re stressed out, you might need to adjust your recovery plan. Always pay attention to your body’s mental and physical signals, especially when you live with a chronic illness like diabetes. Hold yourself accountable, but don’t push too hard.

As your training load and frequency go up, your recovery needs increase as well. When you add something new to your training, you need to add something new to your recovery, too. Keep in mind that additional life stressors will hinder recovery and muscle growth—diabetes is one of those stressors! 

How diabetes impacts muscle growth

While all the above may sound familiar for general wellness, it’s easy to overlook the effect of diabetes on the muscle-building process. Many PWD struggle to build muscle mass and increase their physical strength. This can leave you feeling disheartened or jeopardize your own well-being, which is the opposite of what you want to do!

There are three common problems PWD face when trying to build muscle:

1. When it’s not managed well, diabetes can cause the body to break down important tissues, such as muscles and fat. This is called a catabolic state, which can lead to weight loss, feeling weak and problems with how the body uses food for energy. 
2. There are side effects to injectable insulin.
3. Diabetes comes with a significant mental burden.

While these challenges are unavoidable and ones PWD must juggle daily, they are still manageable.

Closely monitor your blood sugar levels to support muscle growth

Having diabetes can make it tricky for your body to use the food you eat the right way. If your diabetes isn’t managed well, it can lead to not getting enough important nutrients. This can hold back your muscles from growing and recovering properly.

According to one study, protein has little effect on blood glucose levels with the right dose of insulin. But  with too little insulin, rapid sugar production in the liver leads to an increase in overall blood sugar levels. On the flip side, if your blood sugar is too low, you might feel tired and have a hard time focusing, which can make it tough to train.

To help with this, it’s important to keep a close eye on your blood sugar levels. Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) help a lot with this! You can work with your healthcare team to find a healthy range for your blood sugar. That means checking it regularly and paying attention to how food and medicine affect it.

Instead of just looking at the numbers, share what you find with your healthcare team. Look for patterns when your blood sugar goes too high or too low. By understanding how your body reacts, you can make better choices to support your muscle-building goals.

Navigating the side effects of injectable insulin

People who take injectable insulin run the risk of taking too much or too little. That’s just the way it goes! Even the best self-managers run into highs and lows.

• Too little insulin causes your blood sugar to rise, and you go high (hyperglycemia).
• Too much insulin causes your blood sugar to plummet, and you go low (hypoglycemia).

Your blood sugar levels can go high or low during cardio, depending on the intensity of your workout, how long you work out and your individual health. 

Examples of aerobic exercises include:

• Brisk walking
• Running
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Dancing
• Rowing

To understand how your body reacts to exercises like this while managing diabetes, look for patterns or trends in your data, through your CGM, blood glucose meter (BGM), insulin pump or smart pen. 

Making precise insulin dosing calculations can help keep your blood sugar levels stable during exercise. Work with your healthcare team to develop a plan to tackle exercise with confidence.

Pro tip: Be cautious when injecting insulin into muscles you’ve recently exercised. This can result in quicker absorption, increasing the risk of lows. Stay informed and empowered to manage your insulin effectively.

Managing the mental burden of diabetes + exercise

Living with diabetes can be incredibly challenging—it’s normal to feel stressed sometimes. Many PWD go through depression, anxiety and burnout because managing blood sugar levels and other complications can be tough. It’s important for you to recognize that these feelings are completely valid, but not to accept them as your way of being.

It’s important to work through these feelings so you can truly thrive with diabetes. That might feel chaotic or messy at first, but that’s okay—that’s often how it should feel as you heal. You’re going through something new.

When you’re stressed, it can be harder to focus on things like training or exercising. Stress can even affect your body, making you feel tired, ill or have stomach problems. That’s why it’s crucial to make stress management a priority.

Positive steps you can take to manage stress + diabetes

Here are some helpful ways you can work through the stress of life with diabetes as you work towards your muscle-building goals:

• Practice mindfulness: Taking time to meditate or relax can help clear your mind. Even a few minutes each day can make a big difference!
• Journaling: Writing down your thoughts and feelings can be a great way to understand your stress and process your emotions.
• Limit social media: Sometimes taking a break from it can help reduce anxiety. It allows you to focus on yourself instead of comparing yourself to others.
• Hang out with positive people: Surround yourself with friends and family who uplift you. Having a supportive network can make you feel more empowered.
• Practice self-awareness: Pay attention to how you’re feeling and how it affects your health. Understanding your body and mind is a powerful tool in managing stress.

Remember, your health is essential, and it’s all about taking small steps to feel better. You’re strong, and you can take control of your well-being!

Muscle-building is good for diabetes, even when it’s challenging

You can build muscle while living with diabetes—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! (Especially yourself.) Don’t let setbacks stop you from restarting. You can pick things back up anytime. Progress isn’t linear, but the effort will always be worth it.

When you learn to fine-tune your blood sugar management, stay proactive about stress, and be mindful of your nutrition, you’ll not only achieve your muscle-building goals but also improve your overall health. 

And you don’t have to do it alone! Work with your healthcare team along your journey, enlist the help of a fitness instructor and lean into the diabetes community for extra tips and support.

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