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Pre-Workout Eating

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Pre-Workout Food
How much you should eat before your workout depends on the type of workout that you plan on doing: high, moderate, or low intensity. If you’re going to do a low-intensity workout, don’t eat before your workout because it will just make you feel sluggish. On the other hand, for moderate to high-intensity workouts, you’ll want to have some reserve carbs in your system to perform the best.

Here are some caloric guidelines:

If it’s 3 or 4 hours before your exercise, eating a large meal is OK (600 calories or more).
If it’s 2 or 3 hours beforehand, a smaller meal is better (400 to 500 calories).
If it’s 1 or 2 hours before, a liquid meal is a good choice (300 to 400 calories).
If it’s an hour beforehand, a small snack will do (200 to 300 calories).

Try not to eat during the last hour before you begin a workout because it floods your system with too much blood sugar during those initial stages of your workout.

What To Eat Before The Gym

(Full Spike) The pre-workout meal is probably one of the most important meals of the day. The pre workout meal is the fuel your muscles need to get through your exercise. Eating before working out also provides energy and can help increase performance.

If you want to get better workout gains then you should definitely add pre-exercise food to your daily workout plan.

Pre-Workout Energy

Glucose is the preferred energy source for most training routines and the pre-exercise meal should include foods that are highest in carbs and easiest to digest. High carb foods might include:

  • Pasta
  • Bread
  • Energy Bars
  • Pre-Workout Energy Drinks / Shakes

When to eat before a workout

It’s not recommended to work out on a full stomach. Working out with food in your belly can cause cramping, nausea, and an upset stomach / stomach aches. No one wants to be hurting during their workout so give it time to digest. Typically it takes 1 – 4 hours for food to digest, depending on what, and how much you eat. Digestion also varies from person to person, so a little trial and error will be required to figure out how much time it takes for your food to digest. Regardless, the minimum waiting time after a meal is one hour.

Building Muscle Mass

If your goal is to build muscle, then you should eat foods high in carbs and protein before workout. High protein / high carb foods include:

  • Chicken pasta
  • Tuna sandwich
  • Peanut butter sandwich (PB without the J)
  • Turkey sandwich
  • Chicken & potato
  • Weight gain protein shake

Fat Loss
The pre-workout meal of choice for people trying to lose fat, would be a small carb meal. This will supply you with the energy you need to get through your fat burning exercise routine, such as cardio and anerobic activity (hard sprints for 30 seconds – 1 minute). Remember, the body can continue to burn fat up to 6- 8 hours after cardio or workout.

The worst thing you could possibly do is workout on an empty stomach. While the body will in fact use fat stores to supply energy to the body if on an empty stomach, thus burning fat, this is not the preferred method to lose weight. This only ensures you of maximum muscle loss, and short term gain; No bueno.

What you do want, is to eat more small meals per day, which will speed up your metabolism and help you shed those calories. Eating too few calories per day will deprive yourself of energy, and your body will start hoarding calories that you do take in as fat so that it can survive these starvation episodes that you put yourself through. This also makes it harder for your body to use these calories.

Regardless of what your doctor told you, or what you have read, if they said to workout on an empty stomach, then they are 100% wrong. Working out on an empty stomach sends your body into a panic state, and you will, I repeat, you will…store…fat.

7 Common Factors of Successful Weight Management

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Weight Management
These days, the topic of what’s in food is probably less important than what youYou’re working hard to lose the weight and get in shape. You bought a Beachbody® workout program. For some people, the results they’ve worked so hard for slowly disappear as bad habits return. Some wonder how “those thin people” can stay that way all the time.

In 1993, the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) was founded to study the behaviors of “successful losers.” Those studied lost an average of 72 pounds, with a minimum weight loss of 30 pounds, and were able to keep the weight off for at least 5 years. Looking at various studies on obesity, the researchers found 7 common factors among those who were successful in maintaining their weight loss.

1. Eating a low-calorie, low-fat diet
Those studied ate an average of 1,385 calories per day (plus or minus 557), with an average of 26.6 percent coming from fat. Although 26.6 percent from fat may seem high to you, it is lower than the typical American’s diet, which consists of simple carbs and ready-to-eat, low-cost processed food. Also, the researchers found that fast food visits were limited to less than ONE per month (step away from the fries!).

2. Participating in a high level of physical activity
Those studied burned an average of over 2,600 calories per day. This calorie burn came from doing normal, everyday physical activity, including a lot of walking. In fact, over 75 percent of the participants included walking as a form of exercise, with 48 percent of the total participants adding walking to other forms of exercise. Think it can’t be done? The next time you go somewhere, try parking a little farther away and walking, take the stairs instead of the elevator, get off the bus or subway one stop sooner, or walk the dog around the block the next time you want to reach for a snack. It’s a great way to get in a little more exercise time.

3. Limiting TV viewing
I heard something great the other day. Someone said that they had always made excuses about not having enough time to exercise. Yet, they always fit in 3 hours of TV viewing every night. Instead of plopping down in front of the TV at night, try to find other things to do. Why not take this time to pop in your favorite exercise DVD? Take a walk with your kids, read a book, or take a class. Not only will it get you moving, it also stimulates your brain in a way that TV viewing can’t. It can also kill that urge for mindless snacking while watching TV.

4. Eating breakfast
Those studied rarely skipped breakfast. After “fasting” all night, your body actually needs the energy that a healthy breakfast can provide. Eating breakfast makes you less likely to grab that pastry in the kitchen at work or run out for fast food at lunchtime. It also keeps your metabolism going, so that your body doesn’t shift into the “protect and conserve all fat” mode.

5. Maintaining dietary consistency
To the successful weight losers (or winners!), “diet” is not a bad word. They are always consistent with how many calories they are eating. There is no “cheat” day or falling off of the wagon during holidays or vacations.

6. Maintaining a high level of dietary restraint
This goes along with factor #5. Those who are successful at weight loss are always conscious about the types of foods that go in their mouths. When you are trying to maintain your hard-deserved weight loss, be conscious of the types of foods you are eating. One hundred calories of your favorite candy treat are not the same as 100 calories of a protein shake. But, if you “mess up,” don’t beat yourself up. Those who are successful at keeping the weight off jump right back in where they left off, which leads us to the last common factor . . .

7. Frequent self-weighing
Seventy-five percent of those looked at by the NWCR weighed themselves at least once a week, with almost half (44 percent) weighing in every day. This allowed them to keep track of any weight gain (or loss) and to address it before it became a “big” problem. Also included in this self-monitoring behavior was the continued counting of calories and fat grams. This continued “reinforcement” goes a long way toward keeping you on track for a slimmer today and healthier tomorrow.