The goal of this article is to give you simple strategies that will help you create a diet that supports your athletic endeavors without bogging you down and making you feel like food is a full-time job that takes away from your real goal – to be good at your sport.

You can’t out-eat a shitty work ethic. You can eat the perfect diet, but you still need to train hard.

The Key Ingredient Is Balance

Most people I’ve seen who are super strict with their diet have no energy left for performance and don’t have the will power left to train hard in the gym. Maybe too much focus isn’t a good thing.

There is also a certain type of person who can focus too much on diet because he or she thinks it will substitute for genuine hard work. But you cannot out-eat a shitty work ethic. You just can’t. Not for performance anyway. So have a balance.

“Each one of us has a different genetic signature, athletic goal, upbringing, and training history. To think we can all eat the same because a book or television show tells us to is absurd.”

Everyone is looking for some kind of secret when it comes to nutrition and performance. There is always a new superfood people are trying to take advantage of or some new diet that people preach about. The reality is there is no secret, no magic pill, no special supplement. The best way to govern your eating is to make informed, well thought through decisions that relate to your individual needs and goals.

Diet and nutrition need to be as individualized as training. Each one of us has a different genetic signature, athletic goal, upbringing, and training history. To think we can all eat the same because a book or television show tells us to is absurd.

We all want to make things so complicated, but we often lack the simple resources or will power to follow through. And often, the simplest solution is the best solution. There’s nothing overly complicated in what I’m about to share. Just six pieces of real, simple, sound advice.

1. Eat to Support Your Goal

Your daily caloric intake should be adjusted to suit your goals. This should be a relatively simple rule to follow. If you want to gain weight, eat more food. If you want to lose weight, eat less food. It’s not rocket science, though people tend to overcomplicate this one. They want to know exactly how many calories to eat in order to attain a goal.

Each one of us has different genetics and a different history when it comes to training and nutrition. Some of us have slower metabolisms and some have faster. Some of us have different training volumes and need more or less food. Rather than letting a book or website tell you how much you should eat, why don’t you do some research?

“It may take you a few months to figure out how many calories you need to ingest, but personally, I’d rather invest the time and do things the right way to suit my individual needs then take the easy way out and set myself up for failure.”

Track your calories for two weeks. Don’t eat any differently than how you eat now. Record what you put in your mouth and when. After two weeks, look at your logs and make note of your daily caloric average.

From there, make changes, but don’t do anything extreme. Intensity is the inverse of duration. Do too much too soon and you will set yourself up for failure because your behavior won’t last. Start slow. If your goal is to lose weight, cut calories by 100-200 per day. Do that for a few weeks and see what happens. Conversely, if your goal is to gain weight add 100-200 calories and note what happens over two weeks.

If you aren’t losing enough weight, cut another 100-200 calories. If you aren’t gaining enough weight, add 100-200 more per day. Follow this pattern until you find your optimal intake. It may take you a few months to figure out how many calories you need to ingest, but personally, I’d rather invest the time and do things the right way to suit my individual needs then take the easy way out and set myself up for failure.

If you want to be strong, you need to fuel your muscles.

2. Eat Real Food

Ask yourself one question: would you put junk fuel into your brand new sports car? So how about keeping your engine clean so you can perform well, especially when it counts.

Food today isn’t real food. It is genetically modified, filled with preservatives and chemicals, covered in pesticides, and injected with hormones. The bread you eat isn’t the same as the bread people ate 200 years ago. The milk you drink isn’t the same either.

“Ask yourself one question: would you put junk fuel into your brand new sports car? So how about keeping your engine clean so you can perform well, especially when it counts.”

If there were only one rule I could tell people to follow, it would be to simply eat real food. Look at ingredients and make better choices. I would strongly advise you to read labels, stay away from chemicals, and buy organic when you can.

Here are a few simple rules to follow to help guide you to make better choices:

• The closer to nature your food is the better.
• The fewer hands that touch your food the better.
• If you can’t pronounce the ingredients don’t put it in your mouth.
• If you can kill it or pluck it from the ground, it is fair game.
• If it was made in a lab, it is off limits.
• If it wasn’t food 100 years ago it isn’t food today.
• If you can visualize the ingredients, the food is okay to eat it, but if not, then it doesn’t go in your mouth (i.e. I know what a tomato or garlic looks like, but have no clue what a soy lecithin looks like).

3. Eat a Good Balance of Carbs, Proteins, and Fats

Protein is a building block. You need it for numerous bodily functions. Make sure you eat enough good quality protein. You can’t do without it.

Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, the more fat you give your body, the more efficient it becomes using fat as a fuel source. Fat also helps make you feel full. Mono and poly unsaturated fats are necessary in many bodily processes.

You do not want to be on a no-carbohydrate diet. You will be constantly flat and low on muscle glycogen, so make sure you eat enough carbs. Choose from fruit and vegetable sources when you can and eat sources high in fiber. Potatoes and rice are also fine choices. And as long as you don’t have a gluten issue, don’t be scared of a piece of bread or a bowl of pasta. Remember, you need to keep your glycogen stores at full capacity.

“Each meal, just make sure that protein, fat, and carbohydrates are well represented from high-quality sources. As a staring point, I’d recommend about a third of your calories from each source.”

When it comes to assigning percentages for macronutrients, people often get into weighing, measuring, and calculating. While this can be valuable for some, it ends up being a burden for others. Also, until you have a handle on eating real food and your calories are on point, then you don’t have any business worrying about the difference between 25 and 30 grams of protein.

Each meal, just make sure that protein, fat, and carbohydrates are well represented from high-quality sources. As a staring point, I’d recommend about a third of your calories from each source. A simple rule of thumb (assuming you have consumed enough calories) is if you are hungry two hours after eating, then your meal was too high in carbohydrates. If you are hungry three or four hours after eating, then your ratios were about right.

4. Eat Frequently

People often overeat at a single sitting. They go too long without eating and then, when they do eat, make poor choices and overindulge. A good way to manage how you eat is to eat small meals throughout the day. This will boost your metabolism, remind your body that food is plentiful, and help you make better eating decisions. Many bad food decisions are made when you are starving.

Some people complain it is difficult to have food ready at all times, but really how hard is it to throw a good meal replacement bar, a snack like an apple, or a little container in your purse, backpack, or briefcase? It just takes a little bit of planning. If you find this to be too much work, then perhaps you aren’t as dedicated as you think.

It isn’t that difficult to make good choices when you are hungry – it just takes planning.

5. Allow Yourself the Freedom to Enjoy Yourself

The more restrictive the diet, the harder someone eventually falls off the wagon. Weighing, measuring, and only eating certain types of food that your dislike or eliminating food you love will lead to eventual failure. People will follow diets religiously for months and then when they come off them, find they have no self control left, eat everything in sight, and end up in worse shape than when they started.

“All I am saying is that you should have the freedom once in a while to eat something you enjoy. Who wants to be miserable?”

I don’t think you need to completely restrict yourself to have a good diet. You should feel free to enjoy the odd drink, dessert, or other food you enjoy. That said, I’m not giving you free license to eat whatever you want. Remember, your talk should be consistent with your actions. All I am saying is that you should have the freedom once in a while to eat something you enjoy. Who wants to be miserable?

Some will assign a day of the week as a cheat day, others will have a favorite cheat meal they eat when they have earned it, and others will just indulge when an opportunity to eat really good food comes along. Manage yourself. You know the right thing to do.

6. Individualize and Listen to Your Body

Just like you shouldn’t follow someone else’s training program, you shouldn’t follow someone else’s diet. Each and every one of us has individual needs. Some of us can’t tolerate gluten. Others are fine with it. Some of us have an issue with dairy, and for some of us it causes no issues at all. Some of us need to go to bed on an empty stomach and some of us sleep better on a full belly.

“The best judge of whether something works or not is you. Educate yourself, make your own decisions, and be your own person. Just make sure you have high standards.”

The big point here is – do what works for you. Pay attention to your body. Note how it responds to certain food choices. Note how you feel. No book can tell you how you should feel and yet there will always be some pencil neck with a pocket protector and a calculator to saying you are doing things wrong or that they know a better way.

Don’t forget to have a little fun.

The best judge of whether something works or not is you. Educate yourself, make your own decisions, and be your own person. Just make sure you have high standards, make your talk consistent with your actions, and make choices that influence your goal in a positive way.

Summary

That is it. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing complicated. Just straightforward real advice. So go train hard, eat, and enjoy.

More Like This:

• Want to Be Healthier? Pick One of These Simple Tips
• Eating to Recover: How and What to Eat Post-Workout
• The Progress Puzzle: 5 Pieces You Might Be Missing
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Gym Jones.

The post Eat to Perform: Simple Dietary Advice for the Athlete appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Pass the Protein Shake: Digging Into Pre- and Post Workout Nutrition (Peter Curcio)

Are you confused about what to eat before and after a workout? Frustrated by what and when to eat? Read on for some best practices when it comes to fueling your body before and after training.

Science Says Alcohol Not the Best Post Workout Drink (Joshua Wortman)

No joke. Researchers followed rugby players, of all people, and took a look at the effect of post-workout alcohol consumption on their strength, power, and recovery abilities.

Unless you’re training multiple times per day and not eating proper meals, your post-workout meal isn’t critical. Time to turn your attention to your pre-workout food if you’re not seeing results.

Fermented Milk Shown More Effective Than Milk Post-Workout (Doug Dupont)

In the search for the perfect post-workout beverage, researchers compared regular old milk to fermented milk. They found it might actually do a better job of preventing soreness and inflammation.

An Idiot’s Guide to Post Workout Recovery Drinks (Andrew Read)

What’s the Best Recovery Drink for Multiple Workouts? (Doug Dupont)

There’s been a lot of research done on post-workout drinks after one workout, but what if you have two or more workouts in a day? A new study answers that question.

Eating to Recover: How and What to Eat Post Workout (Brad Sly)

I believe your post-workout meal is one of the most important meals of your day. Let’s look at why it’s so important and what you can do to promote the best possible recovery nutrition.

Post-Workout Nutrition: Carbs Only? Or Carbs + Protein? (Joshua Wortman)

The always continuing post workout nutrition debate rages on. New research says adding protein to your post workout food/drink doesn’t make a difference. What do you think?

What Makes the Best Post-Workout Recovery Drink? (Becca Borawski)

A recent review published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research looked through numerous studies to determine what might be the best recovery drink for endurance and team-sport athletes.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Post-Workout Nutrition: 10 Articles To Help You Fuel Your Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The reason I believe this is because in a hard workout, you can use up all your stored glycogen, easily sweat over two liters of water, and break down both muscle and red blood cells. This is why what you as an athlete consume in the minutes and hours after your training or competition is so crucial to both performance and recovery. This week I will look at nutrition recovery and explain it’s importance and the best ways to use it to maximize your results.

Recovery is defined in the Webster dictionary as “the act of regaining or returning toward a normal or healthy state.” In recovery nutrition the foods we choose to consume have been shown to positively affect recovery and an athlete’s future performance.

The Goals and Timeframe of Post Exercise Nutrition

“Recovery” covers a range of processes that include:

• Replenishing the muscle and liver glycogen stores
• Consuming protein to assist with muscle repair
• Restoring fluid and electrolytes lost in sweat
• Supporting the immune system to handle the damage

It has been determined that the body’s cells are most receptive to replenishment, particularly glycogen stores, within the first thirty minutes after intense training. Essentially the clock starts ticking for an athlete as soon as they enter their cool down. This is just one part of the equation as recovery nutrition can be broken into two stages – stage one occurs within thirty minutes of the workout and stage two occurs one to two hours after exercise.

Replenishing the Body’s Glycogen Stores

Ingesting carbohydrates after training is critical in replenishing glycogen stores and initiating muscle glycogen synthesis. If we don’t replenish these stores an athlete’s training performance can be compromised in future sessions.

It is recommended that 1.2g per kilogram of bodyweight of carbohydrates be consumed post exercise. Sometimes it is not practical for an athlete to consume such a large quantity of carbohydrates straight after exercise, as they may have difficulties tolerating food or drink. There is a way to combat this, though. Research in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism has shown that ingesting protein (0.2-0.4g/kg) and a smaller amount of carbohydrates together (around 0.8g/kg) can result in a similar effect, stimulating an endogenous insulin release that actually replenishes glycogen stores at a similar rate as ingesting 1.2g/kg of bodyweight of carbohydrates does.

Building and Repairing Muscle

Muscle protein is broken down due to high intensity or prolonged exercise. This makes recovery nutrition important in helping to rebuild. Once the recovery phase begins the catabolic processes reduce while anabolic processes increase and continue on for at least 24 hours after training. The ingestion of essential amino acids from quality protein sources has been shown to help with the muscle-building process. Even though research continues into the type, amount, and timing of protein consumption to obtain the maximum results, most agree that athletes who do either endurance or resistance type training will get the desired benefit by consuming 20-30g of high quality protein within the first hour post exercise.

Rehydrating the Body

Most athletes will finish a competition or training session in some kind of fluid deficit. If this deficit is not corrected it can have a significant impact on future training sessions. In order to rectify this deficit an athlete should aim to consume 125-150% of the estimated fluid lost over a four to six hour period post exercise.

Including sodium into recovery fluid can assist in replacing the electrolytes lost through excessive sweating. Rather than just losing the fluid through excessive urination, the addition of electrolytes can help the body retain the water consumed. In order to rehydrate effectively, 50-80mmol of sodium should be added. This can be achieved by adding extra electrolytes to commercial sports drinks or consuming fluids created with this ratio. Another alternative is consuming foods that contain sodium along with recovery fluids to achieve this required amount.

Supporting the Immune System

Intensive training can suppress the immune system. This suppression occurs while training is in progress and can continue to affect the efficiency of the immune system for hours afterward. This is obviously a concern for athletes as these hours of decreased immune function could allow an athlete to pick up an infection. Vitamins C and E, zinc, glutamine, and probiotics have all been touted to aid in the protection and support of the immune system. None have been proven to provide a bulletproof defense. There has been research, though, stating that if adequate glycogen stores are maintained pre and post exercise that this can reduce the disturbance of immune system markers as the consumption of carbohydrates can help reduce the bodies stress hormone response to exercise.

Using Supplements or Whole Foods to Meet Your Goals

These days there is a supplement for everything and for some athletes this means that they can get lazy and become totally reliant on sports supplements to meet their recovery goals. Unfortunately this can mean that some athletes end up doubling up on specific nutrients. While inherently this not a bad thing, some minerals taken in excess can cause toxic symptoms, so an athlete needs to be aware of what is in his or her supplements.

Athletes are generally advised to obtain real food options to aid in recovery unless constrained for time. This is because it also allows an athlete to meet the daily nutritional needs of essential vitamins and minerals, and also stock up on much needed antioxidants like vitamins C and E that help reduce oxidization caused from the stress of exercise.

Practical considerations of recovery nutrition also need to be taken into account. Issues like a lack of appetite, unavailability of food, and being unprepared can all play a part in an athlete failing to meet recovery goals. With a little planning these challenges can be nothing more than bumps in the road. Once an athlete notices the benefits, these bumps should be even further minimized, making for a consistent and competitive athlete through something as simple as eating the right foods at the right time.

References:

1. M. Beelen, Burke, L.M., Gibala, M.J., and van Loon, L.J.C. Nutritional strategies to promote postexercise recovery. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 2010; 20:515-532.

2. Hayes A and Cribb P. J. Effect of whey protein isolate on strength, body composition and muscle hypertrophy during resistance training. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care 2008, 11:40-44

3. Nieman DC. Influence of carbohydrate on the immune response to intensive, prolonged exercise. Exerc Immunol Rev. 1998;4:64-76.

4. “Recovery Nutrition.” Sports Dieticians Australia. June 2012

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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As a fan of paleo eating I always found this point to be a curious one. Did primitive man get just the right balance of carbs to protein after a hunt, which was his workout? Probably not. So why would we have evolved in a way that building optimal muscle and strength is dependent on a big insulin boost while we consume protein? That’s not to say that doing what is “natural” is the best for muscle building and athletics, but rather, if I want to be healthy and strong at the same time, maybe reason casts doubt on the hypothesis that spiking our insulin with carbs is necessary. A study published by Nutrition and Metabolism casts doubt on this hypothesis being important at all.

The study looked at older men specifically. Why older men? Because losing muscle as you age is one critical aspect to a decrease in overall health. So the researchers took our commonplace wisdom and compared two groups, one that consumed carbs and protein in a 2 to 1 ratio and the other that consumed only protein. The latter group consumed exactly the same amount of protein as the former.

After taking blood samples and muscle biopsies, the researchers discovered something that contradicts our present views on how we should eat post-workout. At first, the individuals who consumed the carbohydrates with their protein had an insulin spike along with their hyperglycemia (increase in blood sugar), which should be a surprise to no one. They also had a greater portion of the protein ingested incorporated into their muscle. However, just a few hours later, the differences between the two groups were gone. Those eating protein alone had just as much of it in their muscle as those who used the golden 2:1 ratio.

This has very interesting ramifications, particularly for those who want to avoid consuming high glycemic carbs in high quantities. Diabetics, health conscious athletes, and those losing weight can all breath a sign of relief. While experiencing no insulin spike, the protein only group absorbed and utilized just as much as the carb and protein group. Another important thing to note is that the latter group had taken in three times the calories that the protein only group had. Big difference right? And yet there was no difference in the potential for muscle building.

It’s possible that for athletes doing more than one workout in a day the extra speed of absorption featured by taking in a 2 to 1 ratio of carbs to protein post-workout is a good idea. For everyone else, focusing on protein and total calories is just as good for your muscles, and probably better for your health.

References:

1. Henrike Hamer, et. al., “Carbohydrate co-ingestion with protein does not further augment post-prandial muscle protein accretion in older men,” Nutrition & Metabolism 2013, 10:15

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Once I arrived back at my apartment, my post-workout meal consisted of a can of tuna fish and a can of green beans. EVERY DAY. For three months. The result? I lost 50 pounds. No big deal.

To this day I have no idea what I used to eat before my workouts, only that when I got home it was a can of tuna and a can of green beans. Considering the ungodly early hour, I would imagine that I trained fasted (how innovative, right?). I had unknowingly established a perfect storm for fat-burning, muscle-building mayhem. In other words, I had dialed in my nutrient timing.

Nutrient Timing: Pre- and Post-Workout Shenanigans

Like many, I was confused about what to eat before and after my workouts. I tried protein shakes, and even once made the mistake of eating a whole plate of pasta an hour before lifting (bad idea). I was completely ignorant of the intricacies of carbohydrate and protein metabolism, but tuna and green beans turned out to be an effective system. Obviously, I was doing some other things right in the diet department, like reducing my overall daily calories, but by incorporating protein after my workout I was also supporting muscle growth.

Are you like I was – a bit confused about what to eat before and after a workout? Are you frustrated by conflicting information regarding what and when to eat? Read on for some best practices when it comes to fueling your body before and after training.

What you may have heard:

• It’s important to eat immediately after you work out (and certainly within an hour).
• You must eat protein and carbohydrates before and after or suffer the consequences.

What’s really going on:

The immediacy of the post-workout window is only essential if you’re an endurance athlete (and/or are an athlete training several times per day). If that’s you, then carbohydrates are your friend. On other hand, for those of us engaging in more resistance-based training, it’s most important to make sure that by the end of the day we’ve consumed our total allotted amount of calories, protein, carbs, and fat, rather than worry as much about what exactly we get before and after a workout.

In addition, much of what we eat before and after (during, even) will be determined first by our own personal preference, food tolerance, and experience, and second by our athletic or aesthetic goals.

Keep in mind that the primary goals of pre- and post-workout nutrition are to:

• Enhance athletic performance (i.e. improve stamina, mental focus, and physical power).
• Positively affect body composition (e.g. assist in recovery for building muscle, minimizing muscle damage, losing weight).

Here’s the rub: Remember, pre- and post-workout nutrition isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. It can vary depending on the particular type of activity (e.g. endurance versus strength/power) as well as duration and time-of-day.Endurance athletes have different nutrient requirements than strength/power athletes and even recreational exercisers.

Let’s talk some numbers. My favorite resource for pre-and post-workout nutrition is Alan Aragon’s excellent Research Review. He has put together a series of sensible and evidenced-based guidelines for estimating the best approach to eating before, during, and after a workout. He’s done a bang-up job of analyzing the body of research on nutrient timing, and I strongly recommend you check him out if this is your thing.

Recommendations for Endurance Sports

Examples: Long-distance track and cycling events, marathons, hybrid sports like basketball, soccer, MMA, possibly Crossfit

Top Macronutrient: Carbohydrates for replenishing muscle glycogen, maintaining stamina and energy during event

• 2-4 hours pre/post: balanced, full meal consisting of carbs and protein, 0.2-0.25 g/lb target bodyweight for both protein and carbs
• During (for every hour of endurance activity): liquids or gels, 8-15 g protein, 30-60 g carb
• 30-60 minutes pre/post: liquid or semi-liquid carbs for easy digestion, 0.2-0.25 g/lb target bodyweight for both protein and carbs

Endurance activities are events lasting at least 60 minutes. Due to the sub-maximal but prolonged nature of these sports, muscle glycogen tends to get very depleted. Therefore, these athletes require a significant daily amount of carbohydrates to maintain energy levels, stamina, and replenish muscle and liver glycogen levels.

The importance of specific nutrient timing is most important with endurance athletes, as these types of individuals will experience the most drastic decrease in nutrient availability during their activity. Protein, while useful for minimizing protein loss, is not as essential in the moment for these athletes, and therefore is not as emphasized as carbohydrates in the context of nutrient timing.

Recommendations for Strength/Power Sports

Examples: Olympic weightlifting, football, powerlifting, bodybuilding, throwing events in track and field, etc.

Top Macronutrient: Protein for optimizing muscle recovery and growth and minimizing muscle damage

• 2-4 hours pre/post: balanced, full meal consisting of carbs and protein, 0.2-0.25 g/lb target bodyweight for both protein and carbs
• 30-60 minutes pre/post: liquid or semi-liquid protein and carbs for easy digestion, 0.2-0.25 g/lb target bodyweight for both protein and carbs

Strength/power sports are characterized by repeated bursts of short, intense activity. While the event may last longer than a couple of hours, the total amount of actual work done is usually around 45-60 minutes. Based on this length of time, and the activities involved in these types of sports, muscle glycogen is not depleted to the extent of endurance sports. Most recreational exercisers tend to fall into this category as well.

Therefore, protein is important for supporting strength and muscle growth while minimizing muscle damage and loss. Carbohydrates are important, but less so, and are generally taken care of by meeting total daily calorie and macronutrient goals.

Recommendations for Weight-Loss

For recreational exercisers, or those looking to shed a few pounds, the most important thing to keep in mind is that you establish a calorie deficit. In other words, you must burn more calories than you bring into your body. Create a calorie deficit first, and then worry about dialing in your pre- and post-workout nutrition.

Using the carbohydrate and protein guidelines above can be effective for supporting the recovery from training, but they’re always secondary to meeting your overall calorie and macronutrient guidelines. Once that is established, nutrient timing is going to come down to personal preference. If you feel bloated and nasty when eating too close to a workout, next time create a bigger window between the pre-workout meal and the actual workout.

Closing Thoughts

Remember, nutrient timing will not make or break your athletic goals unless you’re an endurance athlete. Everyone else, look to meeting your daily calorie and carb/protein goals first and then dial in your pre- and post-workout nutrition based on how it best fits into your lifestyle and schedule. If you train first thing in the morning, you don’t have to eat. Get your nutrients after.

As always, nutrition when it comes to sports can be a tricky beast, but it need not make you a crazy person or ruin your life. Use common sense, follow the guidelines listed here, and listen to your body.

Feel free to leave comments and questions below.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Over the last couple of months of getting deeper involved in a group workout community, I’ve found that as a whole, people are extremely passionate about everyday nutrition, though seem to be generally less focused on fueling in and around the timeframe of their workout. I think in the four months since I’ve been doing these group classes regularly, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen someone sipping a carbohydrate-protein beverage during a workout. And it’s not much more often that I see people taking in recovery nutrition after workouts. It’s not to say that this is not getting done, maybe before arriving to the gym or after leaving, but in the context of some of the more recent research, the precise timing of calorie consumption is important.

There may be a number of reasons as to why some people are not hyper-vigilant about workout fueling. Maybe there is a sensitivity to sports nutrition products in general. But a very likely reality is that most people do not NEED to consume any nutrition to complete most workouts. But despite not NEEDING nutrition to complete a workout, why not do what you can to maximize gains (not to mention dollars and time spent)?

Getting back to the idea of nutrient timing, nutrition is not something that can be compartmentalized into clean categories. Instead, I think of it as a continuum. The body is constantly requiring fuel, but the specific requirements change in an analog manner based on a number of factors, including being in a working or resting state, and how long it has been (or will be) until the next workout. When it comes to specific recommendations on what to consume to maximize performance, I like to look to what the primary literature shows in a testing environment, then marry that up to my own personal experiences and see what the best combination is for me.

Effects of Pre-Workout Nutrition on Recovery

Some of the more recent research on recovery nutrition actually looks at the effects of consuming carbohydrate and/or protein immediately before a workout. The goal was to see what the effects on recovery might be as measured by certain body markers. A 2001 study by Tipton et al. had participants ingest a combination of carbohydrate and essential amino acids (35g protein, 6g amino acids) immediately prior to or immediately following a resistance-training workout. Researchers observed that the effect on net protein status (breakdown versus synthesis) was greater when the supplement was ingested before exercise as opposed to after.

Another study conducted by Willoughby et al. in 2007 looked more specifically at the effects of pre-workout consumption of protein and amino acids versus carbohydrates. Willoughby had participants complete 4 days per week of relatively heavy lifting (3 sets of 6-8 reps at 85-90% 1RM) over a 10-week period. The participants were assigned to either a 20g protein group (14g whey and casein plus 6g free amino acids) or a 20g carbohydrate group, ingested before and after the workout for a total of either 40g protein or 40g carbohydrate per day. What he found was the group that ingested the protein experienced greater increases in body mass, fat-free mass, strength, and had generally up-regulated markers of muscle synthesis and anabolism. 

Getting It Done

These are just two studies that show what you eat before your workout may significantly affect your performance in the gym and ultimately fitness gains over time. By nature many athletes tend to think of nutrition as secondary to a workout, but coaches and trainers know that you don’t get stronger while working out, you get stronger while resting after your workout. What you put in your body is one factor that can have a major impact on the gains you see.

When it comes to what you actually eat to get this nutrition, there are limitless choices. One of the biggest things that supplements (as used in these studies) provide is convenience, and the ability to dial-in nutrient values specifically to your needs. If you are working out in the morning, it can be time consuming to prepare whole-food pre- and post-workout nutrition options, not to mention can be difficult to comfortably ingest them before a workout. For me there is greater value in getting the nutrients that will benefit my body in a convenient, easy to consume, and time efficient way versus the alternative of potentially foregoing nutrition due to inconvenience or laziness.

So what should you actually eat? It depends. In his review of pre-exercise nutrient ingestion, the following statement from a literature review by Kersick et al. in 2007 sums up the situation well, “Regular ingestion of various protein sources in conjunction with carbohydrate sources stimulates greater increases in strength and favorably impacts body composition when compared to carbohydrate alone.” But science is yet to say, “Eat this in this exact amount and you will see gains.”

Going back to what I touched on near the beginning of this article, nutrition is a continuum, and your body’s needs will change based on what you are doing. For the average CrossFit or similar workout, which generally places demands on both the aerobic and muscle systems, a dose of about 20-30g of carbohydrate to top off glycogen stores and provide immediate energy combined with about 10-20g of protein to get the strength related benefits discussed above is a good place to start.

Quite a few studies look at what effects nutrition before and during a workout has on both performance and the body’s ability to recover. I look forward to writing about these topics in the future, but in short, the research indicates that even in resistance training scenarios, what you consume during your workout may have as big, if not greater impact on recovery than what you eat after your workout. For the athlete training multiple times a week (not to mention living a normal day-to-day life), getting the most out of each workouts by putting the proper fuel into your body can make a big difference in your ability to perform over the long term.

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