Eating for Exercise

By Team Beachbody

We have all heard about eating smaller and more frequent meals. It's simple in concept; you just space out a series of small snacks throughout the day. The trick comes with planning all this eating around exercising. Eating enough to sustain you through your workout, eating a post-workout snack, no eating 3 hours before bed, and trying to squeeze in breakfast, lunch, and dinner - it can become a logistical nightmare! Here we will address each of these issues to help you with your planning.

1. Eating enough to sustain your workout - What to eat pre-workout should depend upon the type of workout that you plan on doing. high, moderate, or low intensity, cardio or resistance; it makes a difference. Here are some guidelines for eating before exercise:
   
• Three or four hours before exercising, a large meal is fine (600 calories or more).
• Two or three hours beforehand, a smaller meal is suitable (400 - 500 calories).
• One or two hours before, a liquid meal is appropriate (300 - 400 calories).
• With less than one hour, a small snack will do. (200 - 300 calories).
• We recommend not eating for at least 45 minutes before a workout.
  
You want to follow this for any moderate to high intensity workouts, whether they are cardio or resistance, because you will need some carbohydrates in your system if you want to perform your best. For low or low-moderate cardio workouts it is better to go on an empty stomach, so you will want to avoid eating for at least 3 hours beforehand. This will force your body to use its stored body fat as fuel. However, for low-to-moderate resistance workouts, you will want to fuel yourself if there is any chance that you'll do any sets to failure because if you try and push that far using fat stores you can "bonk." Bonking is what athletes refer to when they run out of blood sugar during a competition, and basically run out of energy. This is not a serious condition if you then slow down and eat something. But if you continue to push through a "bonk", you will risk serious injury. Also keep in mind that people tolerate foods differently, and the composition of the food matters. Fats stay in the stomach longest, followed by protein and high fiber carbohydrates, then low fiber complex carbohydrates, and finally simple sugars, which are absorbed fastest. Avoid sugary foods, including juice, an hour before exercise. The body absorbs the sugar in these foods quickly, and you may feel lightheaded and tired during your exercise as a result. If you feel you absolutely must have juice or some sugary snack before exercise, have it only five or ten minutes before you begin. This way, there isn't enough time for your body to secrete insulin (a hormone that lowers blood sugar and can cause fatiguing symptoms). Since everyone reacts a little differently, try various strategies to determine what helps you the most. No matter what, drink water before, during, and after exercise.
2. The Post-Workout Snack - Within a one-hour window of finishing exercise, you want to take in some easily digestible carbohydrates and some protein. This varies depending on your size and the intensity of your session, but your body uses nutrients approximately four times better during this window so you won't want to miss it. What you'll want is between 40 and 60 grams of carbohydrates and 10 to 20 grams of protein, depending on your body weight and length of the session.
3. No eating 3 hours before bed - This concept is simple. You don't need much fuel to sleep; don't eat so you can use your stored body fat. Any nighttime eating, especially carb consumption, will greatly add to your fat stores. Because you will use less fuel, nighttime calories are worth 40 - 50% more than calories consumed at breakfast and lunch. This becomes a problem for those who workout at night because they are hungry and should eat something. For these people we would recommend a small post-workout snack and nothing else. The trick is to consume enough to replenish your glycogen stores and no extra. For a one-hour intense workout, about 250 calories, with 45 grams of carbs and 14 grams of protein should be about perfect (more or less depending on the above variables).
4. Breakfast - The "most important meal of the day" is still that. Any calories consumed will most likely get used up. Plus, a well-fueled body performs better; no matter the tasks it's asked to perform. For morning exercisers, this meal will also be a post-workout snack and should follow the same guidelines.
5. Lunch - This meal should depend entirely on your afternoon schedule. Heavy carbs should only be consumed if your workout is still ahead. If it's 4 more hours at the office, try to make lunch high in protein and get your carbs from veggies instead of starches.
6. Dinner - Dinner's a tough one because in America, it is traditionally our big meal. The earlier you eat dinner the better (or rather, the further from bedtime). Like we stated before, calories consumed at night are worth up to 40 - 50% more than those consumed earlier in the day. For this reason, dinner should be as light as you can tolerate it. Also, because carbohydrates not burned up are stored by the body as fat, you should not consume too many unless you plan on exercising that evening.