We all know that what you eat is important. But what about when you eat? Especially if you’re active?
In this article, we’ll review the evidence on workout
nutrition and give you practical recommendations for what to eat before,
during, and after exercise.
Quick summary
By eating a healthy, well-considered meal 1-2 hours
before exercise, and another healthy, well-considered meal within 1-2
hours after exercise, most people can meet their workout nutrition needs
without anything else.
In other words:
If you’re a healthy person who exercises regularly, you probably don’t need special workout nutrition strategies.
Athletes have special needs
Of course, if you’re…
- An endurance athlete. You train for high-level
competition. You log a lot of high intensity miles each week. For you,
carbohydrate and calorie needs are likely higher. You could add a
protein + carbohydrate (P+C) drink during your training.
- Training as a bodybuilder. You lift weights with
serious muscle growth in mind. You want to gain weight. Your protein and
calorie needs are likely higher. You could also add a protein +
carbohydrate (P+C) drink during your training.
- Getting ready for a fitness competition. You
accumulate a lot of exercise hours. You’re trying to drop to a
single-digit body fat percentage. For you, carb intake should be lower.
You’d benefit from the performance-enhancing, muscle-preserving
branched-chain-amino acids (BCAA) during your training.
Here’s a handy table that outlines our recommendations by goal and by body type.
Workout nutrition guidelines by goal and body type
| Body type |
General goal |
Pre-workout |
During workout |
Post-workout |
| Ectomorph |
Muscle gain or endurance support |
Eat normally 1-2h prior |
1 P+C drink, BCAA drink, or water during |
Eat normally 1-2h after |
| Mesomorph |
Physique optimization or intermittent sport support |
Eat normally 1-2h prior |
1 P+C drink, BCAA drink, or water during |
Eat normally 1-2h after |
| Endomorph |
Fat loss or strength sport support |
Eat normally 1-2h prior |
1 BCAA drink or water during |
Eat normally 1-2h after |
Average people: Focus on food quality & quantity
Remember:
- if you’re exercising for general health and fitness;
- if your goals are more modest; and/or
- you don’t have unique physiological needs…
…then
you probably don’t need any particular workout nutrition strategies.
Focus on:
- eliminating nutrient deficiencies;
- ensuring your portions are the right size; and
- starting to eating right for your body type.
Not everyone needs nutrient timing
These days, even women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan recommend exercise drinks to help with hydration and recovery. Nutrient timing, they say, is important for every exerciser.
Well, we hesitate to disagree with the eminent sports
nutrition pros staffing lifestyle magazines, but most people don’t need
to worry about nutrient timing. Ever.
For most people trying to look and feel their best, nutrient timing is not a main priority.
Indeed, for a lot of people, stressing out about:
- when to eat their carbs;
- when to eat their fats; and
- what to eat in and around their workouts…
…can be distracting, even self-sabotaging.
(For other people, nutrient timing actually gives them a
framework for making good food decisions. Of course, if that’s you, rock
on with the nutrient timing!)
Context matters
Remember, we’re not saying nutrient timing is good or bad here.
It certainly can, and often does, work.
But nutrient timing is just one tool. Like every tool, it has to be used skillfully, in the right way and in the right situation.
What’s true for the pre-diabetic office worker who’s never
exercised is certainly not true for the serious endurance runner or the
long-time bodybuilder. In fact, the people who stand to benefit most
from specific nutritional strategies around their workouts are athletes.
So, in the end, if you’re reading this as an athlete, or a
serious exerciser – or a trainer/coach who works with these populations –
know that these strategies could help make a difference.
Nutrient timing isn’t magic
Nutrient timing won’t suddenly transform your physique or
performance. This is especially true if you aren’t yet doing basic good
habits consistently.
If you’re a recreational exerciser who just wants to look and feel better,
this is the article to read.
Workout nutrition in detail
For those of you interested in learning more, let’s dig in.
First we’ll cover what’s happening during the pre-exercise, during-exercise, and post-exercise time periods.
Then we’ll share what to eat to get the most out of them.
Pre-exercise nutrition needs
What and when you eat
before exercise can make a big difference to your performance and recovery.
In the three hours before your workout, you’ll want to eat something that helps you:
- sustain energy;
- boost performance;
- hydrate;
- preserve muscle mass; and
- speed recovery.
Here are a few ways to ensure you’re meeting your requirements.
Protein before exercise
Eating some protein in the few hours before exercise:
- Can help you maintain or even increase your muscle size. That’s important for anyone who wants to improve health, body composition, or performance.
- Can reduce markers of muscle damage (myoglobin,
creatine kinase, and myofibrillar protein degradation). Or at least
prevent them from getting worse. (Carbohydrates or a placebo eaten
before exercise don’t seem to do the same thing.) The less damage to
your muscles, the faster you recover, and the better you adapt to your
exercise over the long term.
- Floods your bloodstream with amino acids just when your body needs them most. This boosts your muscle-building capabilities. So not only are you preventing damage, you’re increasing muscle size.
Before you rush off to mix a protein shake: While
protein before a workout is a great idea, speed of digestion doesn’t
seem to matter much. So any protein source, eaten within a few hours of
the workout session, will do the trick.
Carbs before exercise
Eating carbs before exercise:
- Fuels your training and helps with recovery. It’s a
popular misconception that you only need carbs if you’re engaging in a
long (more than two hour) bout of endurance exercise. In reality, carbs
can also enhance shorter term (one hour) high-intensity training. So
unless you’re just going for a quiet stroll, ensuring that you have some
carbs in your system will improve high intensity performance.
- Preserves muscle and liver glycogen. This tells your brain that you are well fed, and helps increase muscle retention and growth.
- Stimulates the release of insulin. When combined
with protein, this improves protein synthesis and prevents protein
breakdown. Another reason why a mixed meal is a great idea. No sugary
carb drinks required.
Fats before exercise
Fats before exercise:
- Don’t appear to improve nor diminish sport performance. And they don’t seem to fuel performance — that’s what carbs are for.
- Do help to slow digestion, which maintains blood glucose and insulin levels and keeps you on an even keel.
- Provide some vitamins and minerals, and they’re important in everyone’s diet.
Pre-exercise nutrition in practice
With these things in mind, here are some practical recommendations for the pre-exercise period.
Depending on what suits your individual needs, you can simply have
normal meal in the few hours before exercise. Or you can have a smaller
meal just before your exercise session. (If you’re trying to put on
mass, you may even want to do both.)
Option 1: 2-3 hours before exercise
This far in advance of your workout, have a mixed meal and a low-calorie beverage like water.
If you’re a man, here’s what your meal might look like:
If you’re a woman, here’s what your meal might look like.
Note: Your actual needs will vary depending on your size, goals, genetics, and the duration and intensity of your activity.
For example, an endurance athlete preparing for a 20 mile run will
need more carbs than someone getting ready for a 45 minute gym session.
This article talks more about how you can individualize these meals for your own needs.
Option 2: 0-60 minutes before training
Rather than eating a larger meal 2-3 hours before exercise, some people like to eat a smaller meal closer to the session.
The only issue with that: the closer you get to your
workout, the less time there is to digest. That’s why we generally
recommend something liquid at this time, like a shake or a smoothie.
Yours might look like this:
- 1 scoop protein powder
- 1 fist of veggies (spinach works great in smoothies)
- 1-2 cupped handfuls of carbs (berries work great)
- 1 thumb of fats (like mixed nuts or olive oil)
- low-calorie beverage like water or unsweetened almond milk
Here’s a delicious example:
- 1 scoop chocolate protein powder
- 1 fist spinach
- 1 banana
- 1 thumb peanut butter
- 8 oz. chocolate, unsweetened almond milk
It probably goes without saying, but with pre-training nutrition,
choose foods that don’t bother your stomach. Because… er… you know what
happens if you don’t.
During-exercise nutrition needs
What you eat or drink during exercise is only important
under specific circumstances. But if you are going to eat during
exercise, your goals will be similar to those for pre-workout nutrition.
Above all, you’ll want to maintain hydration.
Goals of nutrition during exercise:
- stay hydrated;
- provide immediate fuel;
- boost performance;
- preserve muscle; and
- improve recovery.
Protein during exercise
Eating protein during exercise:
- Helps prevent muscle breakdown. This can lead to
improved recovery and greater adaptation to training over the longer
term. And this is especially true if it has been more than three hours
since your last meal. You only need a small amount of protein to control
protein breakdown — around 15 grams per hour. If you’re the type of
person who prefers to exercise on an empty stomach, then 10-15 grams of BCAAs during training can be helpful.
- Is really only necessary for some people: athletes doing long, intense training bouts, multiple daily training sessions, and/or people trying to gain mass.
Carbs during exercise
For years we’ve known that eating carbs during exercise can boost performance and recovery.
This effect is greatest for endurance athletes, for people
who want to gain a lot of muscle, and for highly active people who need
every calorie they can get to increase size, strength, and/or
performance.
How much should you eat?
That depends. The maximum amount of carbohydrates that can be digested/absorbed during exercise is 60-70 grams per hour.
However, if you include protein in the mix, you can achieve
the same endurance benefits with only 30-45 grams of carbohydrate per
hour. Note: the protein also protects against muscle breakdown so it’s
typically a good idea to add some in.
Fats during exercise
Eating a bit of fat before and after exercise can be a great idea. (And tasty, too!)
But you should try to avoid eating fats during exercise.
That’s because fats can be more difficult to digest. And during
training, you don’t want to give your stomach more work than it can
handle.
During-exercise nutrition in practice
Do you need to eat during your workout?
That depends on how long it’s been since your last meal and the length/type of exercise you’re planning on.
Exercise lasting less than two hours
For training that’s less than two hours long, the main
focus should be hydration. This is especially true if you’re using good
pre- and post-training nutrition. So make sure you bring plenty of
water.
But what about sports drinks? They don’t offer much benefit
for events less than two hours long. Especially if you ate a good
pre-exercise meal.
There are some exceptions, though.
- If you’re exercising in the heat and sweating a lot, sports drinks may be useful since they have electrolytes that help speed hydration and recovery.
- Also, if you’re going to be competing or training again in less than eight hours, sports drinks may jumpstart recovery before the next session.
- If you’re trying to gain muscle, then including a protein and carbohydrate drink or some BCAAs during training could provide a small advantage.
- Finally, at the highest end of sport or competition,
while it may not help, it certainly won’t hurt to sip on a sports drink
during competition to ensure maximal hydration and energy supply.
Exercise lasting more than two hours
For training that is longer than two hours, sports drinks can be a huge help. Every hour you’ll want to consume:
- 15 grams protein
- 30-45 grams carbs
This can come in the form of liquids, gels, or even some solid food.
Many endurance athletes prefer to drink water and eat fruit
and other foods to supply their energy even on really long runs. Either
approach is fine, as long as you ensure you’re getting enough protein,
carbohydrates and electrolytes, especially sodium.
If you are exercising intensely for longer than two hours, especially in the heat, do not rely on water alone.
This will decrease your performance and your recovery. And it could
also lead to hyponatremia, a condition in which the sodium levels in
your blood become too low. Hyponatremia causes your muscles and heart to
contract erratically, and can even lead to death.
Under these conditions, when you’re sweating a lot, go with sports drinks.
Post-exercise nutrition needs
Now let’s take a look at post-exercise nutrition.
Post-workout nutrition can help you:
- recover;
- rehydrate;
- refuel;
- build muscle; and
- improve future performance.
Protein after exercise
Eating protein after exercise prevents protein breakdown
and stimulates synthesis, leading to improved muscle tissue. So it’s a
great strategy for better recovery, adaptation, and performance.
In the past, most fitness experts recommended fast acting
proteins like whey or casein hydrolysate. This is because early research
indicated that the more quickly amino acids get to your muscles, the
better the result.
However, new research shows that hydrolyzed, fast-digesting
proteins may get into our systems too fast. Because they’re in and out
of the bloodstream so quickly, they might not maximize protein synthesis
or maximally inhibit protein breakdown after all.
What’s more, hydrolyzed casein is preferentially taken up
by the splanchnic bed (i.e. our internal organs). Which means it isn’t
maximally effective for improve protein synthesis elsewhere.
In other words, there’s no real evidence that
protein powders, especially the fast-digesting kind, are any better for
us than whole food protein after training.
They’re probably not worse either. Which means you can choose whichever type of protein you want for your post-workout meal.
Want fast and convenient? Make an awesome post-workout protein shake.
Want real food? Then make an awesome high-protein meal.
Any high quality complete protein should do the job, as
long as you eat enough. That means about 40-60 grams for men (or 2
palms) and 20-30 grams for women (1 palm).
Carbs after exercise
Contrary to popular belief, it’s unnecessary — and probably
a bad idea — to stuff yourself with refined carbohydrates and sugars to
“spike” insulin and restore muscle and liver glycogen as rapidly as
possible after your workout.
In fact, a blend of minimally processed whole food
carbohydrates, along with some fruit (to better restore or maintain
liver glycogen) is actually a better choice, because:
- it’s better tolerated;
- it restores glycogen equally over a 24-hour time period; and
- it might lead to better next-day performance.
Endurance athletes who perform two glycogen-depleting
sessions within eight hours of one another might be an exception to this
guideline, as speed of glycogen replenishment is critical in that
situation. But for most healthy exercisers, whole food with some fruit
is a better way to go.
Research shows that muscle protein breakdown is most
inhibited and muscle protein synthesis happens best when insulin is at
15-30 mU/L. This is only about three times above fasting levels of 5-10
mU/L.
These levels are easily reached if you eat a mixed meal or
drink Super Shake a few hours before and after training. Plus, with
mixed meals, your levels should stay at this rate for about four hours
after consumption.
Fats after exercise
Dogma has it that we should avoid fats after exercise because they slow the digestion and absorption of nutrients.
While this is true, in most cases, it’s also irrelevant.
We’ve already seen that speed of digestion of protein and carbs is not
necessarily as important as we once thought. The same with fats.
In fact, one study compared what happens when people drink
skim milk rather than whole milk after training. Participants drank
either 14 oz. of skim milk or 8 oz. of whole milk (that equalized the
calories, for those of you who love calorie math).
The skim milk drinkers got the same number of calories
— along with six extra grams of protein. So you’d think they’d have the
advantage.
Yet the whole milk drinkers actually ended up with a higher
net protein balance! And the researchers had no explanation other than
the fat content of the whole milk.
Additional research shows that eating as much as 55 grams
of fat post-training, and another 55 grams in the two subsequent meals
did not get in the way of glycogen replenishment compared to lower fat
meals with the same amount of carbohydrates.
Clearly, fat doesn’t reduce the benefits of protein and
carbohydrate consumption around training. In fact, it actually might
provide some benefits of its own!
Post-exercise nutrition in practice
While you don’t have to rush in the door and straight to
the fridge the minute you finish at the gym, you shouldn’t dawdle and
poke around forever before eating. Failing to eat within a two-hour
window following training can slow recovery.
But this is context dependent; what you ate before your workout influences things.
If your pre-training meal was a small one or you ate it
several hours before training, then it’s probably more important for you
to get that post-workout meal into your system pretty quickly. Probably
within an hour.
If you trained in a fasted state (say, first thing in the
morning before breakfast) then it’s also a good idea to chow down as
soon after your workout as you can.
But if you ate a normal sized mixed meal a couple of hours
before training (or a small shake closer to training), then you have a
full one to two hours after training to eat your post-workout meal and
still maximize the benefits of workout nutrition.
So go ahead — spend an hour in the kitchen cooking up a feast.
0-2 hours after exercise
The approach to recover from training is the same as your preparation for a workout: have a mixed meal of real food.
Again, here’s how men might build it:
- 2 palms of protein;
- 2 fists of vegetables;
- 2 cupped handfuls of carbs;
- 2 thumbs of fats;
- low-calorie beverage like water.
And here’s how women might build it:
- 1 palm of protein;
- 1 fist of vegetables;
- 1 cupped handful of carbs;
- 1 thumb of fats;
- low-calorie beverage like water.
-
Sometimes after training you might not feel hungry. And
that’s okay. If you don’t feel like eating, you can go with liquid
nutrition.
Make a
Super Shake using the same hand-sized portion guidelines as discussed above.
Conclusion
In the end, there’s no perfect pre-and-post-training feeding regimen for everyone.
What to eat is always context specific.
The protein, carbohydrate, fat, and fluid requirements for a
155 lb. endurance athlete in the midst of marathon training vs. a 225
lb. bodybuilder recovering from a heavy resistance-training session are
quite different.
Times of your training year will also dictate different
needs in the post-exercise recovery period. That same bodybuilder will
need a different approach when he starts to diet in preparation for a
contest.
For most of us, people without athletic
competitions on the horizon, the best pre- and post-training meals will
contain some combination of high quality protein, high quality
carbohydrates, healthy fats, and some fruit and vegetables.
These whole foods provide an awesome blend of nutrients:
protein, carbohydrates, fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants,
and phytonutrients that build muscle, supply energy, decrease
inflammation, and boost recovery.
Of course, you can eat solid foods or drink smoothies. And
the amount of each macronutrient can vary depending on your needs as
well as personal preferences and tolerances.
In terms of timing, you have about one to two hours on both sides of your training to still get maximal benefit.
And, according to the most recent data, the total amount of
protein and carbohydrate consumed over the course of the day is far
more important to lean mass gain, fat loss, and performance improvements
than any specific nutrient timing strategy.
So enjoy your workout. And your meals.
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why can’t I STOP eating?!?”
I know it may sound hard to believe, but studies are now proving people who perform long bouts of chronic cardio suffer from decreased thyroid function, release more of the stress hormone cortisol, and increase their appetite – all at the same exact time.
