workout before/after dinner

I used to do it in the evenings, before eating but now I have started exercising in the morning first thing so that I don't talk myself out of it lol

I sometimes do my morning exercise and something else light in the evening too though.

I try to work out when I get home from work before I go to the studio and then again before I go to bed. It seems to help me sleep at night. I haven't noticed allot on the scale but my clothes are fitting better.

My work schedule changes by the day, so I work out when I can, and on my days off I try for "2 a days" something early, something later. The more often you can get your heart rate up, the sooner you'll see changes (espcially for women over 40, the first thing that goes is our metabolism).

I agree with the above poster who said the time doesn't matter as far as weight loss goes. I am NOT a morning person at all so if I try to force a morning workout, I'm way less energized, give less effort and don't burn as many cals. (I've measured.) I do most of my workouts at night. I can work out, shower and go right to bed. For some people - it's harder to sleep after a workout. But if that isn't a problem for you, make sure you wait a while after your meal then go for it. The best time for a workout is whenever you'll do it.

All other things being equal, it should not matter whether you exercise before or after you eat. If you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight; if you consume more than you burn, you gain weight. The order doesn't matter...in theory.

But comparing exercise before and after eating, all things are probably not equal. Two factors are at play: (1) the amount of available energy your body has, and (2) how your stomach responds when you exercise after eating.

If you are working out for relatively short periods (say, 1.5 hours or less), your body should have enough stored energy for the entire workout. If that's the case, you can workout before you eat without any problems, and you don't have to worry about your stomach getting upset.

But if you are doing endurance workouts, you will be able to workout longer and with more intensity if you eat first. Your body only has so much stored energy, in the form of glycogen. Exercise too long (about 1.5 hours is typical), and you will burn through your stored glycogen. After you use that up, your body starts to convert protein and fat into glucose. You cannot sustain intensity once that begins, because your body cannot convert protein and fat into energy nearly as quickly as it can glycogen. Think of glycogen as gasoline, whereas fat and muscle are more like crude oil. Your body has to refine the "crude" - protein and fat - into a form of energy (glucose) your engine can actually use, which takes a long time.

So if you eat something first (a couple of hours before you exercise), that starts the digestion process in time to replenish your glycogen at about the time your body would otherwise begin running out.

The flip side of this coin is whether your stomach can handle exercise after you eat. If you exercise too soon after eating, you may end up feeling sick, and, of course, that will limit or stop your exercise. You'll have to experiment to determine how much time your body requires after eating before you can exercise without any stomach problems. Every body is different, but for me, two hours before a long workout seems to be enough time for my stomach to empty and thus avoid that issue.

The other option for endurance workouts is to consume calories while you exercise. A lot of athletes drink Gatorade or eat gels or solid food. If you are doing really long endurance workouts, a combination of eating something before you start, and then continuing to add fuel as you exercise, gives you the best opportunity to have a great workout over an extended period.

I never work out on an empty stomach. With that said, I have learned what I can and cannot eat if I am going immediately to the gym afterwards. Some foods make me more lethargic than others. Some give energy, some sustain my appetite, and some don't do anything making me more hungry later.

Rule of thumb...listen to your body. If its eating time, and you opt to go to the gym, to your body it is still eating time. Going to the gym may put you in starvation mode and you wont get the gains (or loss, depending on how you look at it) you are hoping for.