PRE / POST Work Out Advice

If I workout first thing in the morning I HAVE to eat or else I start getting light headed during my workout. I eat a banana and 1 cup of low fat chocolate milk, which was recommended to me by my trainer. It totally works! After a workout you have about 20 minutes to capatalize on all the work you've done and feed your muscles. So find a high protein, low calorie food if possible. I drink a scoop of whey protein powder....20 grams of protein and less than 100 calories! It really keeps my metabolism up all day!

I usually have a clif bar before workout. If I am doing a moderate cardio workout (1-1.5 hrs, 600-1000 cal), then I eat a regular clif bar. If I am doing a weight training workout (1 hr, usu. 250-500 cal), I will eat a clif mini (only 100 cal). BTW, I workout first thing in the AM.

For longer workouts, like outdoor cycling, I will fuel up differently. Distance/time matters:

25 mi -- clif bar, banana, coconut water or water
50 + mi-- protein smoothie (650 cal) OR clif bar, banana (1 or 2), dried fruit, water with electrolyte capsules (Hammer Enduralytes)

For endurance training, you also need to eat during your ride/run, etc. You have not asked about this, so I will bypass it. If you want to know more, hit me back.

Post workout:

Shorter workout (1.5 hrs or less): Usually just have my regular protein smoothie breakfast (650 cal)

Longer workout (2 hours or more): Recoverite, followed by more water, and a meal with good carbs, protein and fat within 2 hours of finishing workout. Chocolate milk is the easy answer to a recovery drink--you are trying to replenish your body's store of glycogen, which will help prevent soreness and leave you ready to rock the next day. Glycogen is glucose (sugar) and water. Especially after a long 2+ hour workout, you need to get sugar into your body. The counter-intuitive part is that foods we consider "junk" are ok at this stage. Bananas are always a great & healthy answer for refueling, but they do not provide protein. Recoverite is a more sophisticated recovery drink with a specific mix of carbs, fats, proteins and amino acids.

Hope this helps. Sports nutrition is much more complicated than you might think. I have learned some of my lessons the hard way.

My actual recommendation as a sports nutritionist. Before your workout you need a mix of carbs (both simple and complex) and protein prior to exercise, usually at least an hour before. The timing of eating before depends on how your body responds to food on the stomach while exercising. Some of my clients have to eat at least 2 hours before exercise or they get sick. Others can eat on the treadmill and be fine. The simple carbs will give you more immediate energy while the complex carbs will be there to help fuel the end of your workout. The protein is to be on board for recovery after exercise. After your workout, again, a mix of carbs and protein. This time the simple carbs will keep you from feeling an energy slump right after working out. The complex carbs will replace the glycogen you used, and the protein will provide the building blocks for recovery and repair of the muscles used.

As a personal trainer, I'd also recommend you switch up your workout so that you are warming up with cardio (5-10 minutes), then doing your weights, following them with your longer cardio session (30 minutes), and finishing up with stretching. This will help you get more fat burning from less cardio. Basically, weight training uses primarily glycogen or other available carbs for fuel. The process of converting carbs to ATP produces pyruvate (which can be converted to lactic acid if not used). The pyruvate is then used when we do cardio for the chemical process of fat burning. If we don't have enough pyruvate on board, then the body will continue burning carbs during cardio to make it so that it can burn fat. Weights first provides for plenty of pyruvate to be able to burn more fat with less glycogen use during cardio. Also, doing weights last means that the pyruvate that is made from the glycogen burn during weights isn't used so it is converted to lactic acid, which causes fatigue and some muscle soreness at the time of exercise. So, not only will this plan burn more fat, it will also result in less discomfort during exercise.