Post-Workout Meal Woes: When, How Much, And What Should You Eat?
A very interesting topic I deal with ALL the time is what you should be eating after you workout.
What’s funny is that, yet again, the consensus of bodybuilders vs. people who know to manipulate hormone levels positively (we’ll call them “hormoneys”) seems to differ on this a lot.
Bodybuilders say you need to eat immediately after you workout, hormoneys say you should wait a little bit after working out to let your growth hormone and testosterone levels peak, THEN eat.
But instead of blabbering on, I’m going to seperate the when, how much and what’s so it’s a bit easier to understand.
WHEN Should You Eat?
To me, I think both sides make sense. Bodybuilders say you should eat right after working out because it allows your muscles to suck up everything you throw at it…hormoney’s say you should wait because (and this is true) your muscle-building and fat loss hormones don’t peak and start to come down until about 1.5-2 hours after an intense workout session.
Personally, I try to wait about an hour after I workout to eat on the days I’m not fasting. But when I’m fasting, I figure my body’s been without food long enough and probably wants some – so I give it some.
This is pretty much up to you. If you don’t have access to food right after working out, don’t worry about it. And don’t even bother taking your protein shakes to the gym either. Just wait until you get home.
Your muscles aren’t going to wither away like many bodybuilders trying to sell protein powder will tell you.
How Much Should You Eat?
This is where A LOT of people screw up. They listen to the idiots saying “you can eat whatever you want becuase your body soaks it all up anywhere and uses it right away”.
Let me show you just how stupid that idea is.
Pretend you just worked out for an hour and burned off 700 calories.
After the meal, you either eat A) a meal with 1,000 calories (because hey, it’ll be burnt off anyway right?) or B) a meal with 500 calories.
Even if the saying is true and your body is going to burn off those 1,000 calories…if you kept yourself at 500 calories, that’s 500 EXTRA calories you’d burn!
Do that 6 days a week, and that’s nearly an extra pound per week.
At the end of the month, that’s about 3.5 EXTRA pounds you could
lose…just by changing your post-workout meal.
WHAT Should You Eat?
For the longest time people thought you could only eat carbs and protein after a workout because the fat would “blunt” the insulin response and cause a decrease in glycogen re-synthesis.
However, a bunch of research has actually proven that to be false.
So false in fact, that they actually kind of “made fun” of that theory by doing an experiment where the person at 175g of fat after a workout, and found that 165g of fat didn’t prevent the re-synthesis of glycogen the next day.
What this is saying is that unless you’ve trained those muscles to exhaustion and will be doing the same tomorrow…there’s nothing to worry about.
So I hope that help you. All you really have to do is simply eat a bit of protein, carbs and fat and you’ll be fine. If you can’t get enough protein one day, no biggie. If you can’t get a bunch of carbs, no biggie. If you can’t get fat, no biggie.
The growth of muscles on a daily basis is so small it really doesn’t make much of a difference if you don’t get the “optimal” post-workout meal everyday.
And like everything, it all depends on your goals. If you’re trying to slim down, obviously eat less of a post-workout meal. If you’re trying to bulk up, then you might want to add extra calories.
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- Johnine Bailey: You could mix it with water to make it less caloric. Or possibly substitute a cherry powder or herbal instead. There’s a Cherry Blossom herbal that is available, I’m not sure it would do the same, but maybe it would help.
- Darlene Siddons: great post and great 10 ways to attack those last few pounds….loosing weight is about attitude and feelings, when they are aligned right it is really easy…i use Vision Map Videos to keep my goal of correct body weight in a positive realm… darlene http://visionmapvideo.blogspot .com/
- Megan: great story, and so true! And i laughed a few times during this. keep up the good work!
- What Happens When You Stop Being “Healthy”: important if you’re doing workouts that are very intense and demanding on your body, such as High Intensity Interval Training or things like Tabata
- Weight Loss Excercise: You can also check out his post on weight loss goals here – http://hasslefreefatloss.com/b log/weight-loss-goals-getting- crazy/
- Johnine Bailey: You could mix it with water to make it less caloric. Or possibly substitute a cherry powder or herbal instead. There’s a Cherry Blossom herbal that is available, I’m not sure it would do the same, but maybe it would help.
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