Iron Fit Personal Training

Eating is an issue for most of us, maybe 90% if I was to guess. I may even be too low in my estimation. However, let’s try to focus on your workout eating here. When to eat before and after your workout.

Before Your Workout

Here, we will look at an early morning workout, as well as eating before a workout at anytime.

When we talk about an early morning workout, we talk about one before work. Maybe before school, but something you do to start your day.

Your body needs food to fuel it. If you want to put your best effort forward, you need to eat. The morning is the toughest time of day for many to eat. Ideally, you want to be eating a balanced meal at least an hour before your workout. Consisting of 60% carbohydrates, you need to give your digestive system enough time to process the food. Eat too late, and you may end up re seeing that food. And it’s never as tasty the second time.

However, sometimes you can’t wake up earlier. If you workout at 5am, do you have the willpower to wake up at 330am to make breakfast? Heck no, we won’t go! So, eating before bed may be your best option.

Overall, you want to eat 60-90 minutes before your workout if you can. To help give you the energy you need to not feel dizzy, lightheaded or to not perform at your best.

Post Workout

You want to try to avoid eating anything big in the first 30 minutes. Just to give yourself time to settle, and your body to return to its resting state. But, you want to eat working 2 hours of working out. Even within that 30-60 minute time frame if possible.

You want to replace your glycogen stores, and help with the muscle recovery. Therefore, you want to have a meal that consists of protein and carbohydrates.

Protein helps repair your muscles. As you know, each time you workout you tear your muscles. So it’s just as important to help repair them after. We always want to repair things that are broken, your body should be the same.

The body uses the glycogen stores you have to fuel your workout. If you’re using up fuel, you need to replace that fuel again. Similar to your car. It won’t run without fuel, and neither will you.

Don’t starve yourself after or before a workout, thinking it’ll help “lose fat”. There’s always something out there telling you to not eat. It’s by far the worst advice you could take, and won’t help.