What to Eat Before, During and After Exercise

An essential part of ensuring that your workouts produce the maximum gains, is nutrition, and more specifically, timing. Whether you are working out to meet your own personal weight loss / bodybuilding goals, training for kickboxing competitions, or football, athletics or any other active sport, you need to get you nutrition right. So, lets break down the essentials of timing;

Fuel Your Body Before a Workout

Before exercising an athlete should consume some complex carbohydrates, such as bananas. The athlete should aim to eat this meal one to four hours before the exercise session starts – the timing of this meal depends on athletes preference really. With intensive activities such as sprinting, blood flow is diverted from the stomach to the working muscles. Therefore, the athlete should leave four hours between eating and the event as this is the time needed for a typical meal of 1200 calories to empty from the stomach. However, a snack of about 300 calories should only take around an hour to digest.

Nutrition During Exercise

During exercise, athletes will usually sweat in order to maintain their internal body temperature. Therefore, it is important to drink plenty of water. If the exercise lasts for over 90 minutes then drinking a sports drink or other drink with some sugar in it will help maintain blood glucose levels.

Post Workout Nutrition – What to Eat After Exercise

For many people, especially bodybuilders, the timing of the meal after a training session is vital. Research has shown that consuming a high protein snack, such as a protein shake, should be done within 30 minutes of finishing exercising. Later than this, and the benefits of the extra protein become less important. If the exercise was strenuous and lasted longer than 90 minutes, the body’s glycogen stores will also need refuelling. Consuming foods and drinks high in carbohydrates right after exercise will help to increase the refuelling glycogen stores. Research has found that a high-carbohydrate food or drink should be consumed within two hours after exercise in order to help glycogen resynthesis.

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Recommended Reading • Athletes and Martial Artists Diet • Smoothies: Best Energy Snack Before Running and Workouts? • Bodybuilding Nutrition – Feed the Muscle • Diet Advice for Vegetarian Athletes • Protein Timing for Maximum Muscle Growth

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Sports Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

2 Responses to “What to Eat Before, During and After Exercise”

1. nicola

   September 8, 2009 at 5:18 pm

   your program does not tell you anything.

   #287
2. MotleyHealth

   September 8, 2009 at 5:40 pm

   Hi Nicola, what sort of information are you looking for? I am happy to provide more details if you need.

   #288