Fat Loss Lifestyle Blog

What Should I Eat After My Work Out?

One of my mentors, Jack La Lane once said, “Exercise is your king, and nutrition is your queen.  Together they create your fat loss / fitness kingdom.

I believe there is a lot of truth to that statement.  You see,  the exercise is the spark, and  nutrition is the fuel to really get your metabolism burning. 

You can exercise till you are blue in the face, but until you master what you put in your pie hole, you will never reach your true fitness potential.   What you eat reight after an intense work out is crucial.  I will give you a specific

strategy in a bit.  But for now a couple of fat loss  nutrition 101 principles.

Eating Higher Quality Foods is Not Enough

On the surface it seems that not eating junk food and eating only healthy unprocessed foods would do the trick. 

If it rots, it’s good for you and If it comes from a plant eat it, if it is made in a plant, stay away are two good mantra’s.

But in order to fuel your fat burning engine you have to take it another step further.  You must eat smaller meals more often.  You must eventually eat 5-6 small meals per day with protein and carbs combined together.

In order to get the most results from your fitness routine you must;

• Learn about the timing of your meals in reference to your wake up and bed time, and your work out time.
• Learn about your macro-nutrient totals.   That’s just a fancy word for what percentage of carbs, proteins, and fats in each meal.
• Good sources of acceptable proteins and carbohydrates.
• More calories in the form of starchy carbs on weight training days (aka carb cycling)

Good sources of protein -  Chicken (dark meat), fish,  tuna, eggs, lean red meat, whey protein, healthy nuts

Good sources of carbohydrates (fibrous veggie type)  - any vegetable (the more color the better), green beans, salads (preferably spinach not ice burg lettuce), apples, grape-fruit

Good sources of carbohydrates (starchy) – brown or wild rice, oatmeal, whole wheat pasta, yams, sweet potatoes, wholesome 7 grain bread, banana’s

 A Typical Work-Out Plan

An effective, time efficient work out plan should  include two cardio sessions per week and two resistance (weight lifting) sessions per week.  The cardio sessions are for fat burning.  The resistance training sessions are for building muscle.

Your body has different requirements because of the different types of demands and goals depending on your activity level on that day.

No matter what day it is you should consume a protein and carbohydrate (fibrous veggie type) together in every meal.  You should follow this rule of thumb on cardio day and or non-workout days.

Here is the trick.  It is called carbohydrate (starchy) cycling.  It works very well to build muscle and lose fat.

On the day that you do intense resistance training, include some starchy carbs  in two to four  meals that day;  preferably in the middle of the day.  Not the first or last meal of the day.

You see,  it is really cool to know that you get to eat carbs two to three times per week.  And if you time the meals correctly, you will actually get leaner and more muscular the more starchy carbs you include.

What Should I Eat After My Work-Outs

Out of all the meals through out the day, I believe that the first meal of the day

and the meal you eat after your work out are the most important.

After a cardio vascular work out (fat loss day)  you should wait 45-60 minutes and then consume a quality source of protein (whole food) and carbohydrates (fibrous veggie type).  An example would be a spinach salad and some fish.

The reason why we wait an hour after the session to eat is so we can ride the fat burning wave of the cardio session.  Waiting more than an hour typically is too long and starts to slow down the metabolism because the body senses a starvation is coming.

After a resistance work out (build muscle day) you need a different approach.  The meal after a resistance work out is the only meal that we ever want to be absorbed rapidly.  You see, typically if a meal is absorbed fast because of high glycemic or simple carbs, there is a pretty good chance that your blood sugar will rise too fast and the carbohydrates will be stored as body fat.

But in this case we just primed the pump with an intense work out (with weights) and we have a one hour window of opportunity to shuttle in nutrients, amino acids, glycogen, and other anabolic nutrients to help repair the damaged muscles. 

If we miss this one hour window after the intense work-out, the chances that the muscles will be able to repair themselves and become bigger and stronger diminish significantly. 

After a work out, your stomach and digestive tract do not work efficiently.  The reason is that your digestive tract is incredibly vascular and uses a lot of blood to do its job.  The problem arises because much of your blood is in the muscles that you just got done training.  So an adequate amount of blood is not available to digest food eaten after a work out.

For this reason the best post work out meal on resistance training days is whey protein and a higher glycemic (fast released, starchy) carbohydrate.   You can use a banana as your carb.  The potassium in the banana seems to help with recovery.  The whey protein is already pre-digested so it is absorbed rapidly.

Consume your fast released post work-out meal 15-30 minutes after an intense weight training session.

Start to implement these rules of proper fitness nutrition, and you will start to feel your clothes fit better within a   couple of weeks.

One last area that a lot of people seem to need help in is eating at night.  You see,  during the day most

of us have a strict schedule.  With that strict schedule, we really do not have time to think about what

we are eating.  And if we have a little bit of a game plan on nutrition,  it is relatively easy to stay consistent

with good choices.

But when we have more time on our hands between 6 p.m. and bed time, it is much more challenging to eat

properly.  Plus a lot of times we are watching tv and getting slammed with all the adds for bad foods.

One of the best ways to not eat bad at night is to not watch tv and to go to bed early.  Instead of watching tv

go out for a walk.  Staying busy will help to make better choices before bed. 

Most of us who are not gentetic freaks can sabatoge six days of making great choices on food and exercise with a couple bad evenings.  So stay disciplined and stay aware of tools that will help you make better choices in the evenings.

If 5 or more of you comment below on this post;  I will post more info on this topic next week.

Train hard and expect success,

Your Healthy Lifestyle Coach,

Darin Steen