After a hard, short workout, your body releases more sugar and insulin into the blood, which helps your muscles refill their energy faster.

After a short, super-hard workout, your muscles refill their energy stores way faster than after a long, slow one—even if you eat the same amount of carbs.

Mice that had two specific liver genes turned off couldn't keep their blood sugar stable after exercise, and their sugar levels dropped a lot compared to normal mice.

When muscle that has recently been exercised is exposed to high levels of glucose and insulin in a controlled lab environment, its ability to take up glucose in response to insulin is reduced, suggesting that nutrients present after exercise can directly reduce insulin sensitivity without involving glycogen stores or whole-body signals.

If untrained guys eat a high-fat diet for 7 weeks, their muscles use less stored sugar during medium-intensity exercise compared to eating a high-carb diet — it’s like saving their fuel — but their legs still take up the same amount of glucose from the blood.

In endurance athletes, the intensity of exercise—measured relative to their individual performance threshold—is the main factor that causes glucose levels in the tissue fluid to rise during training, regardless of how many carbohydrates they eat.