When to exercise around eating

aprildh

Is there a general rule of thumb of when to exercise or not in relationship to when you eat a meal. It seems like my chances to exercise always seem to be either right after breakfast or lunch when my two little ones are happy or asleep for a little while. Is that okay to exercise on a full stomach or eat a meal right after exercising?

Chenoachem

If really varies based on the person. I only have to waite 30 minutes after a meal to workout. My husband has to wait at least 3 hours. I get up in the morning, have a small snack and then workout before my little one gets up.

You might have to play around with it a bit. If you feel sick or dizzy then stop and try another way.

Dom_m

If you're doing intense exercise right after eating you might feel sick (all the food getting thrown around in your stomach), but if you haven't eaten anything you might feel too hungry and weak. These are just comfort issues though - I think you want to know about body chemistry.

The best thing to do if you're going to be burning a lot of calories (say >500) is to eat a carb dense meal about 2 hours before your workout. Within an hour after your work out, you should eat a nutrient and protein rich meal.

The reason for this is that the carbs give you the energy to work out extra hard. It may seem futile to eat then exercise (why not do neither?) but it works if your meal is part of your total daily calories. You might eat half as much as you intend to burn, so your body gets going really well.

After, your body is begging for nutrients. Its burned up a lot, you've sweated, damaged blood cells through impact (eg if you were running) damaged muscle tissue through stress (eg if you lifted weights or did cardio) and you need repair. Protein is needed for the muscle repair. You need iron (which is best in combination with vitamin C) because your body will be producing new blood cells, and since you're body is receptive, its a pretty good time to give it as many micronutrients as you can stuff in.

You shouldn't eat until you're bloated of course, nor should you go over your calorie target in order to eat "at the right time". You don't need large quantities, so snacks are fine if that's all you've got time for.

Don't forget to drink extra water when you work out, before, during and after. This is important for everything your body does.

Of course you'll still get benefits if you don't do all this - if your schedule makes this impossible, its still worth your time to work out. I would suggest if you have to chose, eating after is more nutritionally important than eating before, as long as you've got the energy to do your work out. But that last is my own reasoning and I'm not an expert. Hope this helps some.

auntbliz

I sometimes exercise right when I get up, before eating. At lunch time I usually have lunch before I feed the kids, that way I can workout on a not so full belly by the time I get them down for naps. Otherwise, my workouts are rather late at night, after they've all been put to bed. One of my friends works out to PBS kids

aprildh

Thanks for the science. I did want to know how that worked and what difference it made to achieving my goals.

Dom_m

No problem. Science might be too weighty a word though