Bryan Johnson's Squats After Meals Claim: What the Study Tested

The useful idea behind the headline

There is a sensible question behind the interest in squats after meals: could breaking up a seated day make a difference to the body's response to eating? That is worth exploring. It also deserves more detail than a comparison between a handful of squats and a long walk.

Read Bryan Johnson's original post and his follow-up comment on LinkedIn. His headline was: “10 squats beats a 30 min walk.” He described an advantage of 14% for repeated squat breaks. In a subsequent comment, he clarified that walking breaks performed similarly and that the pattern of interrupting sitting mattered. This is a discussion of his public statement, not an endorsement of SquatQuest by Johnson.

What the researchers actually compared

The relevant 2024 randomized crossover trial by Gao and colleagues included 18 young men with overweight or obesity. Across an 8.5-hour sitting period, the conditions were:

Condition	Activity
Sitting	No scheduled activity breaks
One walk	One 30-minute walk
Walking breaks	Three minutes every 45 minutes, ten times
Squat breaks	Three minutes every 45 minutes, ten times

The repeated-break groups therefore accumulated 30 minutes of activity. This was not a test of ten total squats replacing half an hour of walking.

The reported glucose net incremental area under the curve was 9.2 for the single-walk condition and 7.9 for both repeated-break conditions. Calculating (9.2 − 7.9) ÷ 9.2 gives approximately 14%. That comparison describes an integrated glucose response during the experiment, not a 14% reduction in everyone's blood sugar reading or diabetes risk. The trial was small and short-term; it did not establish long-term clinical outcomes or a universal prescription.

Read the comparison before copying the routine

A headline can lose three pieces of information: the total activity, the comparison group, and the outcome being measured. Those omissions change the practical meaning.

If a routine is repeated across the day, count all the repetitions or minutes before comparing it with a single session. If the comparison is with uninterrupted sitting, it does not answer which of two active routines is better. And if the outcome is a glucose response over several hours, it does not by itself tell us what happens to fitness, body weight, or health over years.

This is also why “better” needs a stated goal. A walk can be transport, time outdoors, or a way to meet a friend. A squat session can be a chance to practice a movement. One laboratory outcome cannot rank every reason someone might choose either activity.

What to take into everyday life

The practical question is how to avoid letting a meal lead directly into hours of uninterrupted sitting. A repeatable movement opportunity is a more useful planning target than chasing a headline number. Choose an activity you can do comfortably and fit around your day.

For a broader look at the evidence, read walking versus squats after meals. For a simple way to make room for movement, see our post-meal movement-break guide.

SquatQuest can give bodyweight squats a game objective through camera-counted boss battles. It does not measure glucose, and the research discussed here did not test the app. Treat the game as a way to engage with movement, not as a medical protocol.