You’ve heard it before, but we’ll say it again: The number on the scale does not matter. Fitness influencer Christina Basil is helping women everywhere see the truth in those words with her latest before and after photo.

“I’ve reached the same weight I was when I first started training almost 2 yrs ago!” Basil wrote alongside a post earlier this year. “Kinda seems like my fitness journey has come full circle in a way, doesn’t it???” The photo shows Basil at 140 pounds before she got serious about self-care and again at 140 pounds after nearly two years of weight training.

In the caption, Basil explains that when she first started setting fitness goals for herself, all she wanted was to shrink down to 120 pounds. She would religiously count down each and every pound, and if the number on the scale wasn’t what she wanted it to be, she would restrict calories and feel exhausted.

“Why do we as women keep doing this to ourselves???” she wrote. “Men are generally so PROUD when they’ve put on weight when working out – meanwhile many women are determined to forever shrink themselves down to nothing.”

RELATED: These 5 Social Media Influencers Want You to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Wake up call: The scale doesn’t define you, and it can’t tell you how much fat you’ve lost versus how much muscle mass you’ve built. “I’m here to remind you, love, that YOU DON’T NEED to constantly weigh less and less to prove you’re healthy or fit,” Basil wrote.

What’s way more important than the number staring back at you is the fact that you’re sticking to reasonable goals, and you’re giving your body the time it needs to transform, both on the inside and out.

“I’m rooting for your success,” Basil wrote. “Whatever your health and fitness goals may be. You got this.”

To get our top stories delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

At the end of a long day, it’s tempting to dive into your social feeds or Netflix queue the minute you’ve finished eating. But back before screens bogarted all our free time, an after-dinner stroll was a popular activity and one associated with improved health and digestion. “Italians have been walking after meals for centuries,” says Loretta DiPietro, a professor of exercise science at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, “so it must be good.”

Research backs this up. One small study co-authored by DiPietro found that when older adults at risk for type-2 diabetes walked on a treadmill for 15 minutes after a meal, they had smaller blood sugar spikes in the hours afterwards. In fact, the researchers found that these short post-meal walks were even more effective at lowering blood sugar after dinner than a single 45-minute walk taken at mid-morning or late in the afternoon.

To get our top stories delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

The human digestive system converts food into the sugar glucose, which is one of the body’s primary energy sources—so after a meal, glucose floods a person’s bloodstream. Hormones like insulin help pull that glucose into cells, either to be used immediately or stored away for later use. But for people with diabetes and impaired insulin activity, too much glucose can remain in the blood, which can cause or contribute to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and other health problems.

“Insulin secretion in response to a meal tends to wane later in the day, and this is especially so in older people,” DiPietro says. She points out that many of us eat our largest meal of the day in the evening, and we also tend to sit around afterward. As a result, “blood glucose levels will rise very high and will stay elevated for hours,” she says.

What good does walking do? “The muscles we use to walk use glucose as energy, drawing it out of circulation and therefore reducing how much is floating around,” says Andrew Reynolds, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Reynolds coauthored a 2016 study of people with type-2 diabetes and found that just 10 minutes of walking after a meal helped control their blood sugar levels. “We saw the biggest differences with walking after dinner time,” compared to other times of the day, Reynolds says. Like DiPietro, he says many people just sit around in the evenings, and this may be especially bad because the body’s ability to manage blood sugar at that time of day is weakest. “Getting up and moving around at that time was very effective,” he says.

Along with combatting surges in blood sugar, a little post-meal movement may also aid digestion. “Exercise stimulates peristalsis, which is the process of moving digested food through the GI tract,” says Sheri Colberg-Ochs, a diabetes and exercise researcher at Old Dominion University. Her research has found that a post-meal walk is much more effective than a pre-meal walk for controlling blood sugar.

More research has found that walking helps speed up the time it takes food to move from the stomach into the small intestines. This could help improve satiety after eating. There’s also evidence that links this type of faster digestion with lower rates of heartburn and other reflux symptoms.

Walking isn’t the only type of post-meal exercise that provides these benefits. “Whether it is resistance exercise or aerobic exercise, both have a similar impact on lowering blood glucose levels,” says Jill Kanaley, a professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. One small study by Kanaley and others found that for people with obesity and type-2 diabetes, doing a weight training session with leg presses, calf raises, chest flies and back extensions 45 minutes after dinner lowered their triglycerides and blood sugar for a short time—and improved their wellbeing.

But more isn’t necessarily better when it comes to post-eating exercise. There’s some evidence that vigorous forms of training may delay digestion after a meal. “Exercising muscles pull more of the blood flow their way during activity, and the GI tract gets relatively less,” Colberg-Ochs says. “That actually slows down the digestion of food in your stomach during the activity.” Most of the research on post-meal physical activity suggests that moderate intensities—think fast walking or biking—are best. “Anything but really intense exercise would probably work equally well,” she adds.

As far as timing goes, try to move your body within an hour of eating—and the sooner the better. Colberg-Ochs says glucose tends to peak 72 minutes after food intake, so you’d want to get moving well before then.

Even if you can only fit in a quick 10-minute walk, it’ll be worth it. Apart from the perks mentioned here, more research has linked short bouts of walking with benefits like lower blood pressure and a reduced risk for depression.

So make like the Italians and head out for a walk after your next meal. Your TV and the Internet will still be there when you get home.

Carbs get a bad rap. People seem to believe that eating them equals weight gain—and followers of low-carb, high-fat plans like keto seem content to do away with them all together. But there’s a new diet in town, and it’s a bread lover’s answer to this rise in carb phobia: the super carb diet.

No, the diet doesn’t recommend you eat only carbs (we wish). Created by former Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper, super carb prioritizes balance across all macronutrients—proteins, fats, and carbs. Harper says each meal or snack you consume should be made up of 40% proteins, 30% fats, and 30% carbs.

RELATED: 7 Dangers of Going Keto

According to that ratio, you’re not actually eating a crazy amount of carbs. But the carbs you are eating should be “super” in the sense that they’re fiber-dense, so they fuel the body and are digested slowly. That includes things like 100% whole grain bread and pasta or fresh fruit.

“I didn’t want to live a life that was going to be so deprived that I wasn’t able to incorporate complex carbohydrates into my diet,” Harper tells Health. After he had a heart attack in February 2017, he created the super carb diet to make sure he was getting the nutrients he needed to maintain his weight and recover, he explains.

For Harper, a typical day on the diet consists of three standard meals and one snack, or as he calls it, a “floater meal.” For breakfast, he’ll make an egg sandwich with Ezekiel bread, and when lunch rolls around, he’ll whip up a grilled chicken breast with a quarter of an avocado, steamed veggies, and brown rice. For the last meal of the day, Harper will choose a lean red meat or fish along with brown rice or quinoa pasta and more veggies.

RELATED: The 50 Best Weight Loss Foods of All Time

Sometimes, if his sweet tooth is calling his name, Harper says he’ll leave fat off his dinner plate and have peanut butter for dessert instead. Overall, his number one guideline is sticking to foods that are processed as little as possible. “It’s a way to get people to start thinking about what they’re eating, so they’re not just eating mindlessly,” Harper says. 

Turns out, Harper’s method isn’t as new as it seems. Health contributing nutrition editor Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, says “Dietitians have been recommending this balanced approach for decades.” Sass says Harper is right, carbs are not inherently fattening. The way they impact weight is determined by quality, portion size, and timing.

So why do people lose so much weight on low-carb diets? Those who see serious results were likely overeating highly processed carbs prior to completely cutting them out, she says. “The solution isn’t to remove carbs completely, but rather to choose nutrient-rich, unprocessed carbs, in amounts that will be burned and used by the body, based on your activity level and fuel demand,” Sass explains.

RELATED: You Asked: Can You Lose Weight Just from Your Stomach?

Though this eating plan might not be revolutionary in the world of nutrition, Sass says it’s encouraging people to look at their diets in a balanced way, and that is definitely beneficial. If the portions are appropriate based on a person’s needs, super carb could promote weight loss, she believes.

Sass recommends reaching for healthy carbs like sweet potatoes, quinoa, beans, lentils, and chickpeas. And if you’re intrigued by the diet, pick up Harper’s book, The Super Carb Diet: Shed Pounds, Build Strength, Eat Real Food ($18, amazon.com).

“Again, the idea is balance, with a goal of hitting just the right amount to allow for weight loss, but without robbing your body of key nutrients,” Sass says. “So it’s not a high carb diet or a low carb diet, but rather a just right carb diet.”

“I was walking on the beach and again I was pointed at and laughed and made fun of.”