How Your Notes App Can Help You Keep Your Blood Sugar in Check

If you have type 2 diabetes, reflecting on your day-to-day routine can be really motivating.

By Carolyn L. ToddMedically reviewed by Maria E. Peña, MD

September 27, 2023

How Diet Sleep and Exercise Can Affect Your Blood Sugar

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, you’re probably trying to wrap your head around what it means for you going forward. Learning how to take care of your diabetes and working on habits that keep your health steady—all while juggling the rest of your day-to-day life—is a lot. Keeping type 2 diabetes in check takes some time and experimentation—and there are methods to make it easier on yourself as you figure out how to understand your hemoglobin A1C (which is also called hBA1c) blood tests, which detect your average blood sugar over the previous two to three months.

Your A1C captures the arc of your progress with your diabetes management over time, Emily Nosova, MD, an endocrinologist and assistant professor at Mount Sinai in New York City, tells SELF. Daily blood sugar readings (like if you use a finger stick or continuous glucose monitor) offer a momentary snapshot of what your levels are, while your A1C is a bigger picture of how things are going.

One simple, but super-effective step toward better understanding your diabetes—including your A1C—is keeping a log of your routine. This is, essentially, a journal that details your exercise, sleep, and eating habits to share with your health care providers. Whatever that looks like for you—an app, a notebook, a Google Doc—is fine! You can make a note of these things as they happen, take a few minutes at the end of each day to write everything down, or make up your own system. As long as you find something that works for you and that you’ll stick with, there’s no wrong way to approach this.

The goal is to bridge the gap between your everyday life and the doctor’s office. “When someone tracks their habits and writes these things down, they’re really taking control of their diabetes and becoming a true partner” with their health care team, Michael A. Weintraub, MD, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone and clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, tells SELF.

Logging this information creates data that can help tie your daily actions over a few months to fluctuations in your A1C. As you go over it, you and your doctors can come up with tweaks to support your progress in the long term.

Journaling can also be “really motivating,” especially if you see how the positive choices you make have real, measurable effects on your health, Dr. Weintraub adds—which, hopefully, will energize you to keep it up and create momentum for even more positive changes. As for what to track, exactly? Let’s get into it.

Take stock of how you nourish yourself each day.

Food has a direct impact on your blood sugar, so “the number one thing to track is what you’re eating,” Dr. Weintraub says. “Having some type of food diary is incredibly helpful for not only the person, but also their provider or dietitian.” Do your best to keep track of what you eat and when you eat it. Include meals, snacks, and drinks, Dr. Nosova says. Ideally, you’ll do this every day, but it’s not the end of the world if you miss a few—remember, you’re ultimately looking for larger patterns here.

Why this matters: Certain eating plans (like those made up of minimally processed and whole foods, like fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean proteins) generally lead to steadier blood sugar levels, Dr. Weintraub says, while others (like those high in sugar, refined grains, and highly processed foods) can spike your blood sugar levels.

A food log that outlines what you eat gives your provider an idea of your diet’s macronutrient balance (protein, fat, and carbs), diversity (the variety of foods, and therefore micronutrients, you’re eating), and portion sizes (how much you’re eating in general), Dr. Nosova explains—all of which are important components of understanding your diabetes health. For example, you and your doctor might learn that your new habit of bringing a hearty salad to work three days a week has contributed to generally lower blood sugar, which can inspire you to keep this good thing going.

Pay attention to how much you move—and that doesn’t only have to include workouts.

Regular exercise can help lower your A1C by making your body more sensitive to insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), so jot down movement in your log too. A combination of cardio and strength training is a good bet, Dr. Weintraub says, because they support better blood sugars in different ways: Cardio helps lower your glucose levels (especially right after a meal),¹ while strength training builds lean muscle mass² —tissue that’s linked to regulating blood sugar, even when you’re not working out.

Dr. Weintraub recommends logging all types of movement—not just time spent in a gym. Taking the dog out, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, running around with kids, biking, walking to work—every little bit counts. If that sounds like a lot to keep track of, don’t sweat it: You can take a couple of minutes at the end of the day to mentally review all the ways you moved your body and roughly estimate it. And if you wear a fitness tracker (like a Garmin, FitBit, or Apple Watch) or have a pedometer on your smartphone, those tools can help you too.

With all of that in place: A movement log might, for example, show you and your doctor that your regular after-dinner neighborhood strolls or twice-weekly weightlifting sessions might have something to do with a dip in your A1C. Or, if you come in with a higher A1C than last time, you and your team may be able to pin that to your putting your usual Pilates classes on the back burner during a busy time at work. That could in turn lead to a conversation about how, for instance, a 20-minute walk after breakfast is both more realistic and effective for your schedule.

Keep an eye on sleep—not just how much of it you’re getting, but how it’s making you feel in the morning.

Getting solid rest is crucial for everybody’s health, but quality sleep is extra important for people with diabetes. Knowing whether or not you’re getting the recommended seven to nine hours each night is “incredibly helpful” for you and your doctor, Dr. Weintraub says, given that getting less sleep often has a negative ripple effect on diabetes health. (One 2017 meta-analysis of 15 studies found that poor sleep quality was associated with an increased A1C.³) Why? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sleep issues can lead to insulin resistance (this is when your cells don’t respond to insulin as well; it's the opposite of insulin sensitivity), the urge to reach for carb-y foods that can spike your blood sugar, and a dip in your mental health,⁴ among other things. It’s not a shocker that any of these things, on their own or together, can majorly play into how your type 2 diabetes affects you on a daily level: Stress, nutrition, and blood sugar levels are all big parts of feeling good with this condition (or, when they’re out of whack, less good). And, of course, helping your body respond well to insulin, eating well, and feeling steady mentally are all factors that majorly support your diabetes health over time too.

Noting when you go to bed and wake up, along with details like tossing and turning at night or not feeling rested in the morning, can offer a sense of how your sleep is potentially impacting your average blood sugar. (If you have a sleep tracker, like a smartwatch, that’s great—but you don’t need a fancy device that breaks down your sleep phases, Dr. Weintraub says.) If, for instance, a few months ago, you set a regular bedtime and avoided using screens before bed, and now you’re sleeping eight hours most nights instead of six, you could see that reflected in an improved A1C. On the flip side, consistent five-hour nights paired with a higher A1C indicates sleep might need to be more of a priority.

When you log all these lifestyle habits, you’re making a powerful choice in supporting your long-term diabetes health. You also might find that the act of simply bringing more awareness to how you nourish, move, and rest your body each day has its own benefits: learning about yourself, making thoughtful choices, and feeling connected to the body that you’re caring for.

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