Energy Consumption Around Your Workouts

Photo Credit: LDHNY

I would venture to say some of the most frequently asked questions are those regarding pre and post workout nutrition. Everyone has their opinion on what makes a perfect meal, the right and wrong way to mix your protein, the precise way to insert a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into your pie hole and exactly what kind of macro ratio to ingest for optimal results.

Some are religiously against any kind of fat consumption in the “post workout window” and some even opt for liquids only. Some only allow starchy carbs during the 30 minutes post workout while others refuse to consume any carbs at all. If you are like me, you eat carbs all day long.

Who is right? Is there only one way? Is there a perfect pre and post workout solution?

Alan Aragon is a very smart and trustworthy dude. In this scattered mess of a fitness world, he is one of the few I trust to provide up to date information backed by research and practical application. There are only a handful of gurus worth their salt and Alan is one of them. I really appreciate his work and since I have no interest in studying the scientific intricacies of training and nutrition, it’s important to have someone like him to break it all down for the rest of us.

Below are his thoughts from the long winded thread on www.bodybuilding.com. In particular, this is the famous post where he shares his guidelines on pre and post workout nutrition.

Pre Workout

A general rule of thumb is to just eat something. That’s what I do anyhow.

All of this is highly variable on the time of day and when you last ate, if you are working out in the morning, your training program and schedule etc.

As per Alan’s guidelines:

60-90 minutes pre workout, have a solid, balanced meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25g/lb TBW
Adding fat at this point is fine, use your discretion as long as it fits into your macro goals. Note that this meal is skipped if you train 1st thing in the morning.

[OR]

30-0 minutes pre workout – (and/or sipped throughout the workout), have a liquid or easily digested meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25g/lb TBW
If you were going to train for close to or more than 2 hours continuously, it would definitely benefit you to have this extra preworkout meal either immediately prior to, or sipped during training. Keep the fats here incidental & not added if you’re prone to gastric distress during training.

As you can see Alan bases his methods off of Target Body Weight. So this is all adjustable whether or not you are dieting, bulking or maintaining.

Quick example:

bodyweight = 180lbs and the goal is to maintain.

45g protein

45g carbs

whatever trace fat or fat you wish to add

This is easily put into liquid form as I use TrueProtein’s unflavored recession whey. 2 scoops contains 46g protein, 4g carbs and 5g fat. I then would add some powdered gatorade to the mix, shake it up and drink it before my workout(usually in the AM).

If I had a little more time I would drink a whey shake and eat a bowl of oats or cereal. Now I have eaten a lot more than this pre workout so just remember there is no special guidelines or rules written in stone, just make sure you eat something.

So what about fasted workouts? If you are training for more than an hour at high intensities it may not be a great idea but it’s not going to make your muscles melt off. I have experimented with fasted workouts with no adverse side effects. This was probably due to the fact that I was eating meals upwards of 1000-1200 kcals before I went to sleep, so my energy during the AM workout was from being well fed the night before.

Post Workout

Now if you are new here, you may not know how I get down post workout. In a previous article I covered the size of your post workout meal and how I normally shove down 1000+ kcals. I do this merely out of convenience and scheduling. If I had time to devote to eating more often I might do it, actually, no I wouldn’t as eating can be a chore sometimes.

Alan’s guidelines are not as energy dense as mine are, however I think we are both in agreement that due to the rate of digestion, it doesn’t make a difference in the end. It’s only important that you insert food into your mouth, chew and swallow.

His words:

Within 30 minutes post workout, have either a liquid or solid meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25-0.5g/lb TBW, depending on how carb-restricted your diet is.
Amount of fat here doesn’t matter as long as your daily target is hit.

Post-post workout is simply your next scheduled meal, whether it’s 1, 2, or 3 hrs later simply doesn’t matter – especially if your immediate post workout meal was designed as above.

NOTE: The small differences are mainly geared toward simplifying the guidelines. The rest of the recommendations about food types are pretty much the same. Also note that I no longer give a damn about GI, it doesn’t really make a difference one way or another. If you want high GI carbs pre and/or during training, go for it. As time has passed, GI has proven itself to be a worthless, irrelevant index. Insulinogenesis is a separate issue, and slight elevations during & post workout is a great idea. This accomplished by both food type & food amount, the latter being more important. To boot, the necessary insulin elevations for maximal net gains in protein balance are easily met without specific attempts at spiking it up. There’s obviously a lot more to this, but that’s the important basics. The rest is fringe.

As you can tell Alan is not worried about the minutiae of GI or the amount of fat post workout. Many bodybuilders and fitness pro’s were once worried that consuming any amount of fat post workout would slow glycogen replenishment, inhibit protein synthesis and put them at risk of the fat being stored in their fat cells from the insulin spike. However Alan wrote an entire piece on this for all of the lab coats out there. Here is the PDF(opens in new window) of his Research Review. This basically explains that digestion is a lot more complicated than we once believed and we can finally dismiss the post workout nutritional dogma.

What If I’m On A Diet?

The rules still apply, however , when hypocaloric, it’s even more important to make sure you are placing calories around your training. Many folks are afraid to eat carbs post cardio or weight training on a diet for fear of spiking their insulin and blunting the fat burning that was taking place. However many fail to remember that high intensity training such as sprints or weight training uses carbs/glycogen for fuel as opposed to fat. Therefore most of the fat burning you do on a diet is when at rest or doing boring steady state cardio.

Lyle McDonald wrote a great article on this very topic called Around Workout Nutrition While Dieting. The main thing you need to remember is that while you are dieting, the pre and post workout meal becomes more important due to your body being in a negative energy balance. Your ability to recover and recuperate is somewhat impaired, therefore the more nutrients you can fit around your training, the better.

Now I know there are probably some folks who follow Alan’s recommendations to the tee and others who stuff their face like me post workout. What works for you?

Tagged as: Diet