By: Ty Cardwell
Eating a carbohydrate-rich snack within an hour before their training will fuel us up.That way we don’t find ourselves falling flat during a workout.I personally love oatmeal and peanut butter or scrambled eggs and toast.These are perfect combinations of protein and carbs with probably the least amount of calories that you will find in a breakfast. A piece of fruit, an energy bar, or even some crackers should be easy to digest. Some can tolerate anything they eat. Others find that drinking a carbohydrate drink such as juice is easier than eating. All of this depends wholly on the individual. Whatever you choose as your pre training meal is as long as it is anything but nothing.You guys cant continue to come to training after going all night with no nutrition.Some of us probably even still have a little wine in our system after some nights,but that’s another story.
What you eat within the first few minutes after a workout is our “recovery meal.” This small meal is the most important and underrated part of training. It sets the stage for how we feels for the rest of the day and affects the next day’s training.
Recovery eating is essentially reloading the muscles with glycogen. Fifteen to 30 minutes after exercising, the muscles are like sponges, waiting to refill the glycogen stores that have just been exhausted. If we refill within this time range, they’ll be revved to go. If they miss their window of opportunity, they’ll feel sluggish and lazy for the day and following day to come..
Carbohydrate plus protein is in my opinion the most effective combination for restoring glycogen.A carb before and a combination of a carb and protein after is ideal. Eating a snack (such as a banana with yogurt) within 15 minutes of the end of a workout and then eating a regular meal 2 hours later maximizes muscle receptivity.
Many of us just can’t or don’t want to eat before or directly after exercise. In such cases, drinking a sports drink or diluted fruit juice is a good first step to refueling.For those of us who want to lose weight,we often choose not to eat right after exercising; we rationalize that we just burned a bunch of calories and shouldn’t replace them right away. In fact, recovery eating will help you refrain from bingeing later in the day. Remember that the recovery meal is just a small eating episode—-it’s not breakfast, lunch, or dinner.So if getting leaner is our goal we ultimately have no choice.
Preparation as always is the key to nutrition!
