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.