Nutrition Archives -

What to eat before a morning workout!

Posted on April 19, 2022August 10, 2022 by Frank Miller

A constant question that always seems to come up is “what should I eat before my morning workout?” It will follow up with, “does my type of workout depend on what I eat in the morning?” And will continue on with “do I have to eat before my morning workout?”

In my experience, there are a multitude of answers to these questions. However, right now I am going to break it down for you as simple as possible so you never have to ask these above questions ever again!

So to your FIRST question, “what should I eat before a morning workout?”. I have found that eating a small portion of protein with a combination of a small portion of carbs is going to be optimal to fuel you through an A.M workout session. I would say, and many fitness experts would agree, you need about 15-20 grams of protein with about 30-40 grams of carbs.

Now, before you go and start shoveling down steak, eggs, oatmeal, toast, & juice it depends on how soon after you have that meal you plan on working out.

If you are going to have a king size breakfast like the one I stated above, you will need atleast 2-3 hours of digestion time before you hit the workout or you risk being even more sluggish during your routine.

If you decide you will actually follow my advice of 15-20 grams of protein and 30-40 grams of carbs, you will need about an hour to digest as this will optimally fuel your workout.

You can still get away with slightly less protein and carbs needing only 25-40 minutes of digestion time.

So now you know your timing, I have to tell you what to eat. Your protein in the morning can come from eggs, chicken, steak, or a protein shake. And to keep it simple for your carbs, no pun intended for you nutrition nuts out there!; you can have fruits, whole wheat toast, oatmeal, grits, or juice. I suggest the fruit if you are working out sooner because it will digest fast and give your blood sugar a faster spike to get the energy you need RIGHT AWAY!

Now SECONDLY, I am sure you would like to know “does my style of working out depend on what I eat in the morning?” Well of course it does! I mean, just take a look at your goals. Are you trying to lose weight? gain weight? Build a lot of muscle? get shredded? Increase endurance? And also take into consideration, is your workout insanely intense? Is it slow and steady? Is it cardio based? Weight based?

If your routine is super intense and you are really pushing yourself, you may need even more protein and carbs to keep you lasting through the whole workout.

If your workout is weight based with moderate intensity, go with my recommend 2:1 ratio of protein to carbs, 15-20 grams of protein with 30-40 grams of carbs. Oh, by the way, I keep reverting back to my original ratio because this is optimally the best amount of nutrients your average man or women would need for an A.M. workout. I mean, you should be hitting your workouts with moderate to high intensity anyway if you plan on seeing results!

If your workout is light cardio, jogging, the elliptical machine, you can go with less than my recommended ratio as you may not need that many calories from the food to get through the workout. Which brings us to the last question…

“Do I have to eat before my morning workout?”. This is probably the most asked out of the 3 questions. What I want to tell you first is, go back through this entire article and find out who YOU ARE individually by asking yourself a few questions…

Do you wake up early? late? Are you tired in the morning or do you already have a ton of energy? Do you feel tired after eating in the morning? Are you insanely hungry when you wake up?

Do you workout as intensely as a spartan warrior going into battle? Are you just and average guy or gal burning some calories in the morning and trying to lose some body fat? Are you really serious about your goals?!

Now that you have answered all these questions, you should have a good idea of who you are individually and should have an idea if you need some nourishment before you hit your morning workout routine.

What I will tell you though, is that about 80% of people of I’ve known and trained have consumed some sort of nourishment prior to their morning workout and have seen more results because of that!

Just remember this, you may fall within a certain category I have described here that helps mold your decisions on your morning workout food choices, but you as the individual will always have your specific needs. It is a process and you just have to find out what works best for YOU!

Pre and Post Workout Nutrition

Posted on January 22, 2022August 10, 2022 by Frank Miller

Time your meals After being in the industry for quite some time, I have noticed that a lot of people miss out on a very critical part of nutrition in correlation to their workouts.

‘Nutrient Timing’.

This would refer to timing your meals with your workouts so that you get the most energy that you can going into your workout.

Have you ever had a big meal 30 min before your workout and just felt extremely exhausted? Or did you have an amazing workout and didn’t eat anything afterwards and just like you were going to collapse after about and hour or two?

You are most likely guilty of not timing your nutrients correctly. Proper Pre and Post workout meals are extremely important to ensure maximal energy going into the workout, and enhanced nutrients for fat loss coming out of the workout.

Try timing your workout so that it is in between meals with a high protein and higher than normal carbohydrate content. There is a key 90 minute period in which you want to work out after eating a meal. For some, this may be different depending on your own ability to digest food quickly. Remember, the point of your pre-workout meal or snack is to provide your body with the materials it needs to fuel your workout. Don’t be fooled by weight-loss theories that focus on how many calories you’ll burn exercising. Any time you are increasing strength and building up your body, you need to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to carry it through the workout– otherwise, your body will consume reserve resources in the body, which are much harder to replace.

Post workout, you should be having a protein shake to ensure no loss of hard earned muscle tissue. The point of eating after your workout is to provide your muscles with the materials that they need to build themselves back up. When you do any kind of weight training, your muscles actually break themselves down in the form of small tears in the muscle fibers and then rebuild themselves even stronger in the hours and days that follow your workout. In order to successfully rebuild themselves, your muscles must replenish their resources. Providing your body with the raw materials it needs to rebuild and refuel itself is the entire point of your post-nutrition meals.

Multi-vitamins are bad? So what should I do now?!

Posted on December 26, 2021August 10, 2022 by Frank Miller

In recent news, it has been claimed that multi vitamins may have no benefit to us. About 1 week ago, a few separate studies were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, concluding that, “supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful.” The studies determined that multivitamins had no effect on the prevention of heart disease or other chronic diseases.

Well, yes, this does make perfect sense. As a consumer of multi-vitamins, at no time did I ever believe that simply popping a few pills would ever prevent any chronic diseases. I mean, If I or you were to believe it really could prevent those diseases, wouldn’t we be calling them “cure pills” and not vitamin pills?

Even in the study they claimed that some vitamins even showed a decrease in certain health factors of “healthy” men. But how does this correlate to “us” as a whole? What defines “healthy men”? There are a plethora of lifestyle factors that go into studies like this that make it hard to determine true validity.

And in lieu of these negative claims, there are still some positive ones. Multi-vitamins are beneficial for those who lack certain vitamins or minerals and studies still give credence to women taking Folic acid during pregnancy to avoid birth defects as well as supported studies on the supplementation of Vitamin D.

What it all comes down to is being educated consumers. Don’t be duped by mass marketing who spend 100s of millions of dollars to get billions of your dollars. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that just by taking a few pills everyday (no matter what the claims) will reverse years of an unhealthy diet and zero exercise habits.