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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Does time of day influence your workout results?

• Supplements don’t change your life — but this does

• Why worrying about insulin is misleading

• How to get “unstuck” and accomplish more

Fitness
Fact or Fiction: The Best Time to Work Out Is in the Morning

You've heard the pitch. Get up before the world does. Hit the gym in the dark. Build discipline that compounds. It's a compelling story, and it's made a lot of people feel like night owls are somehow losing before they even start.

But science tells a much different story. 

Studies consistently find that morning and evening training produce similar gains in muscle, strength, and metabolic health.

The most recent evidence comes from a 2025 randomized controlled trial where researchers divided healthy adults into three groups: a control group, a morning training group (6–10 AM), and an evening training group (4–8 PM). All participants followed the same resistance training program: eight exercises, three times per week, for six weeks. 

At the end of the study, both training groups showed meaningful improvements in insulin sensitivity, muscle thickness, and lower body strength. When researchers directly compared morning and evening, the differences were statistically indistinguishable across all outcomes.

That's one study. But the pattern holds when you zoom out. 

A 2024 meta-analysis pooling five randomized trials found no meaningful difference in blood glucose or insulin responses between morning and evening exercisers. And another meta-analysis from an independent research group examined 11 studies on strength and hypertrophy specifically, finding that muscle growth was equivalent regardless of training time.

There is one nuance people will highlight, which is worth understanding. A 2016 study found that most people feel stronger in the late afternoon. This is a natural byproduct of body temperature and hormonal rhythms. 

Evening trainers tend to feel a slight performance edge. However, morning trainers adapt: within weeks, their body learns to perform at that time, closing the gap. What this means for your results, though, is almost nothing. 

These studies were conducted primarily in healthy young adults, so older populations may respond somewhat differently. 

The big lesson: Adaptation — and results — follows consistency, not the clock.

So to answer the original statement: “The best time to work out in the morning” is fiction. 

And the practical message is clear: the best time to train is whenever you'll actually do it. Not the time someone on the internet told you was optimal.

Together With Momentous
Supplements Don't Change Your Life. The Behavior Around Them Does.

Here's something a supplement company isn't supposed to admit: supplements are not magic.

Behaviors are.

The protein shake isn’t the foundation of building muscle. Showing up to train is most important, and then finding ways to recover supports the process.

But here's what's easy to miss: the product is often what starts the behavior. You buy the creatine, so you get back under the bar. You stock the Fiber+, so you finally pay attention to your gut. You keep the whey on the counter, so breakfast stops being an afterthought.

One good purchase can be the first domino — the small, concrete decision that tips the next one, and the one after that.

The catch is that the first domino only works if the product is worth building a habit around. Most aren't. 

Supplements are regulated differently than drugs, which means a company can put almost anything on a label without proving what's actually in the bottle. Independent labs routinely find contamination, missing doses, and cheap fillers padding the formula.

Momentous built the opposite of that, and it’s why it’s the one supplement we support. Because if you can’t trust what you’re putting in your body — and if a supplement brand isn’t willing to invest in that trust — what’s the point? 

Every product, every batch, is NSF Certified for Sport®, which means they are independently tested for label accuracy, banned substances, and contaminants. Certificates of Analysis are public. Products are routinely updated and improved to match the science. That's the Momentous Standard®: science-led, carefully sourced, rigorously tested. It's the rare line where you can build a stack around performance, recovery, sleep, and long-term health and trust every label on the shelf.

A discount doesn't make a supplement work. But it can remove the one thing that stops people from starting: the cost. 

Quality this clean isn't cheap, and Momentous almost never runs a sale. For a few days, that changes.

The Momentous Anniversary Sale: up to 40% off sitewide with code CELEBRATE, June 3 through June 8. 

Free shipping on orders $75+. Spend $100+ and add free Creatine Chews (50-count); spend $150+ and add a free Strawberry Whey (12-serve).

This is the rare window to restock your daily essentials like creatine or Vitamin D, finally try Fiber+ and see why thousands are raving about it, and make the one purchase that starts the next good habit — without paying full price for the highest level of purity and certification on the market.

Take advantage of the sale here. 

Supplements aren't magic. But the right one, at the right moment, can be the domino that starts everything else.

Instant Health Boost
No Single Food Is Running Your Insulin

Diet culture loves a villain. Recently, insulin has become a villain and a source of fear. But if you haven’t seen those clips on social media, you’re no doubt familiar with the claims about sugar, or fruit, or white carbs, or protein, or gluten. 

The pitch never changes: find the one food ruining you, cut it, and you're fixed. With insulin, the idea is that any food that spikes your blood sugar causes insulin disruption that causes you to store more body fat. 

This is not how it works. And, a large Harvard study — using insulin as an example — says that's the wrong question.

Your eating pattern shapes your insulin far more than any single food. But it’s not just about insulin. Your overall behavior matters just as much as what was on your plate.

After you eat, your body releases insulin to help move energy from your food into your cells, and in a healthy person, that rise happens fast. Insulin usually peaks around 30 to 60 minutes after a meal, then returns to normal within about two to three hours. 

How big and how quickly that rise is depends largely on what's on your plate: a meal heavy in fast-digesting carbs creates a sharper, faster spike, while adding protein, fat, and fiber smooths it out and slows it down. 

Not to mention, having more muscle can change your responsiveness to insulin, so your body needs less. Carrying less body fat also eases the strain. 

The takeaway? You have more control over your body's response than you might think, and it often comes down to what you pair your carbs with.

To prove this point even more, Harvard researchers built scoring tools to measure how strongly your whole diet and daily habits push your insulin up over months and years, not minutes, which is what really matters. They tested them in nearly 6,000 women, then confirmed the results in a separate group of men. 

Instead of chasing one nutrient, they tracked which foods and habits best predicted two blood markers tied to how much insulin your body makes over time and how well it responds to it.

The food list that led to an increase in insulin surprises people. Social media insists carbs are to blame. But the research found that red meat, processed meat, fries, and sugary drinks lined up with higher insulin markers. On the other hand, coffee, full-fat dairy, leafy greens, and whole fruit lined up with lower ones. 

The glycemic index, which only clocks how fast a carb raises blood sugar, misses most of this, because protein and fat can shape your insulin too.

In other words, if you’re judging or removing everything that triggers an insulin response, you’ll very quickly find yourself with an extremely limited diet.

Diet alone accounted for 29% of the gap between the highest and lowest scorers. Add in physical activity and body weight, and that gap jumped to 78%. 

No single food moves a number that big. Your pattern does.

So you can stop white-knuckling around a single ingredient or every food that triggers a response. Blood sugar and insulin can rise after a meal, and you’re fine as long as it regulates not too long after. 

Better Questions, Better Solutions 
You Already Know Enough. But Here's Why You Feel Stuck

Old Question: What do I need to know to change this behavior?
Better Question: What's stopping me from doing what I already know I should do?

You know you should sleep more. You know the second glass of wine doesn't help. You also know that workouts are good for you, that vegetables matter, and that doomscrolling isn't great for your head. None of this is news.

So why does knowing rarely turn into doing?

Because we've been sold a story: that change is an information problem. Find the missing fact, learn the right protocol, and the behavior will follow. It feels true. It's also mostly wrong.

Researchers recently reviewed all the available evidence on what actually changes behavior and ranked it. At the bottom, barely registering, were the moves we reach for first: handing people facts, correcting their beliefs, hoping a better argument lands. The researchers called those effects negligible.

What worked sat at the other end: building specific behavioral skills, shaping habits, and clearing the practical obstacles in someone's way. Not the part of you that thinks about the behavior. The part that runs it.

That reframes the whole project.

You don't have a knowledge gap. You have a friction problem.

The gym clothes aren't packed. The vegetables aren't cut. The plan assumes a version of you who isn't tired, stressed, or out of time — and that version rarely shows up. More information won't close that gap. Most of the time it just adds guilt.

So for one day, don't change anything. Just notice. Every time you skip something you know is good for you, write down four things:

1. When it happened

2. What was going on

3. Why you didn't act

4. How it made you feel

The next day, sit down and read it back. Odds are, you'll see the same snag tripping you again and again. That's your leverage point.

Now pull it. The research is clear on what actually works. You don’t have to do them all, just pick one:

Pre-decide the moment. Not "I'll work out more," but "When I close my laptop at 6, my shoes go on before I sit down." Deciding the exact when and where in advance is one of the most reliable tools there is.

Change the setup, not your willpower. Cut the vegetables Sunday. Pack the bag the night before. Keep the wine off the counter. Make the good choice the easy one, and the friction does the work for you.

Bring in a person. Tell someone. Better yet, do it with them. The same research found that other people are one of the strongest levers we have, stronger than almost anything you'll manage alone.

You already know enough. Now you know where the gap actually is, and what to pull when you find it.

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

1. The Content: All APC emails are researched, written, and fact-checked by the APC editors (see bottom of the email), with written contributions from Arnold (noted with “Arnold’s Corner”). Links take you to original studies (not second-hand sources).

2. Does AI play a role? Not for the primary content, but it is used in two ways. The main items are original content written by the APC team. The summaries at the end are AI-generated based on the human-written content above. We also use an AI tool to review our interpretations of the research and ensure scientific accuracy. We don’t assume AI is right, but we use technology to hold ourselves accountable.

3. Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted by “Together With”). Why? Because it allows us to keep the APC emails free. We first test products, and then reach out to potential partners who offer ways to help you improve every day. The bar is set high, and to date, we have turned down millions in ad deals. (Example: we will not partner with any non-certified supplements or those without evidence in human trials). If we won’t buy the product, we won’t recommend it to you. And if there’s no evidence it works, then there’s no place for it here.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell