Your muscles need a special door (GLUT4) to let glucose in for energy. When you need energy right now, your body quickly moves these doors to the surface. But if you exercise regularly, your muscles build more of these doors as a long-term change.

After losing weight, muscles get better at using sugar not because they make more GLUT4 proteins, but because the existing proteins move to the right place or work better.

When you exercise, your muscles make more of a protein called GLUT4 that helps pull sugar from your blood. This is the strongest known way to increase this protein, and it helps your body use sugar better and store more energy in your muscles, whether you're healthy or have a disease.

Eating carbs while you walk helps your muscles learn to grab sugar from your blood without needing insulin, which over time makes your body better at handling blood sugar.

When muscles contract during exercise, special sugar transporters called GLUT4 move from inside the muscle cells to the outer surface, helping sugar get inside to provide energy.

When you exercise, your muscles need to take in sugar from your blood. This happens through a series of chemical signals that act like a relay race - some signals start the process near the muscle surface, and others finish the job inside the muscle cells.