The best snacks before working out

Foods high in complex carbohydrates — such as fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain bread, rice, or pasta — are excellent pre-exercise snacks. The complex carbohydrates enter your bloodstream slowly and help you avoid sugar crashes, which can occur when you eat snacks that are made with simple sugars, such as candy. Many energy bars are loaded with complex carbs, but some might find the energy bars to be much too filling for a pre-exercise snack. In that case cut an energy bar in half so can eat one piece before workout, the other piece the next day.

Exactly how much you should eat before working out is really a personal thing. Some people can consume a large meal just before exercising and not experience any problems, while others can barely eat half an apple without getting sick during their workout. This is really something you need to experiment with to find out what, when, and how much of a snack works best for you.

Your post-workout meal may very well be your most important meal of the day.

The reason is that when you’re finished with an intense workout, you’re entering a catabolic state where your muscle glycogen is depleted and increased cortisol levels are beginning to excessively break down muscle tissue. These conditions are not good and the only way to reverse this catabolic state (and promote an anabolic state) is to consume a quickly digestible post-workout meal (can be a shake or smoothie) as soon as you can after training.

The goal is to choose a meal with easily digestible quick carbs to replenish muscle glycogen as well as quickly digestible protein to provide the amino acids needed to jump start muscular repair. The surge of carbohydrates and amino acids from this quickly digested meal promotes an insulin spike from the pancreas, which shuttles nutrients into the muscle cells.

The post-workout meal should generally contain between 300-500 calories to get the best response. For example, a 60 kg. female may only need a 300-calorie meal, whereas a 100-kg male may need a 500-calorie post-workout meal. 

Your post-workout meal should also contain anywhere from a 2:1 ratio of carbs: protein to a 4:1 ratio of carbs: protein. 

While most of your other daily meals should contain a source of healthy fats, keep the fat content of your post-workout meal to a bare minimum, since fat slows the absorption of the meal, which is the opposite of what you want after a workout.

When choosing what to make for your post-workout meal, the first thing to realize is that you DON’T need any of these expensive post-workout supplement formulations that all of the fancy ads you see everywhere! Can make your own post-workout shakes from natural ingredients instead of using a commercial mixture, since many of them are low quality.

For the shakes, here are some suggestions to try..

A good source of quickly digestible natural carbs such as bananas, pineapples are perfect to elicit an insulin response that will promote muscle glycogen replenishment and a general anabolic (muscle building) effect. The more you can assist the muscle repair process, the more you increase your metabolic rate and can help your fat loss as well.The best source of quickly digestible protein is a quality non-denatured whey protein isolate and/or some fat-free or low-fat yogurt. Here are a couple ideas for delicious post-workout smoothies that will kick start your recovery process:

  • Chocolate Banana – blend together 1 cup water or ice, ½ cup skim milk, one frozen banana and 30 grams chocolate whey protein powder – 30 g prot, 16 g carb, 0.5 g fat, 200 calories.
  • Pineapple Vanilla - blend together 1 cup water Or ice, ½ cup vanilla yogurt, ½ cup frozen pineapples, and 30 grams vanilla whey protein powder – 30 g prot, 17 g carb, 0.5 g fat, 225 calories.

When looking to lose body fat, keep in mind that post-workout meals should have the opposite characteristics of all of your other meals throughout each day. While post-workout meals should have quick high glycemic index carbs and quickly digested proteins, all of your other meals throughout the day should be comprised of low glycemic index, slowly digested carbs and slow release proteins.

These are powerful strategies towards developing a lean muscular body with a low body fat percentage. Another great thing about post-workout meals is that you can satisfy even the worst sweet tooth, since this is the one time of the day where you can get away with eating some extra sugar without adding to your gut. Instead, it all goes straight to the muscles! But ONLY if your workout was super-high intensity and involved resistance training for large portions of the body. If all you did was some low intensity cardio, avoid doing this type of post-workout shake.