What Should You Eat Before Exercise?
I was recently asked what should you eat before you exercise, especially in the morning? The answer is… it depends.
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What does it depend on? A number of factors, like:
- What’s the primary goal of the workout? Is it designed to help you lose body fat, gain muscle or are you training for something in particular, and your body composition isn’t an issue?
- What type of workout is it? A strength/power-oriented workout (like lifting weights) will require a different fuel than an endurance-oriented workout (like joggin, biking, swimming, nordic pole walking, etc.).
- How intense is it? Fueling yourself for 10 sets of 400 meter intervals is different than fueling yourself for 4 hours of golf.
- How long is it? Fueling yourself for a 60-minute nordic pole walking session is different than fueling yourself for a 100-meter sprint.
- What is your size? A petite 120-pound female will require a different amount of fuel than a 250-pound football player.
Let’s discuss each in isolation:
What’s Your Goal?
If your goal is fat loss, you have a couple of options (because everyone is different, and we have to accommodate individual differences). One option is not to eat anything within 3 hours of your workout. Why? This ensures that more of the fuel you burn comes from fat and not sugar/carbohydrates/glucose. If your workout is first thing in the morning, don’t eat your breakfast beforehand. Just drink 1-2 glasses of water.
Then there are the people whose workout intensity really suffers if they’re running on empty. For those people, it’s fine to eat before hand. The benefits of greater workout intensity (namely, the ability to burn more calories) outweigh the downsides of a pre-workout meal. If you’re performing a strength-oriented workout, I would consume an equal amount of carbohydrates and protein in a liquid form (because it gets absorbed faster and it’s easier to digest, thus not interfereing with your workout) within 30 minutes of your workout. If you’re performing an endurance-oriented workout, I would consume more carbohydrates than protein, but still consume the protein. Both are important. These recommendations also apply to the people trying to gain muscle mass.
If your goal is performance, then definitely eat beforehand. A mixture of carbohydrates and protein is best. Avoid both fiber and fat during the 2-3 hours pre-workout (they slow down digestion, so you could be running with a belly full of food).
The general rule of thumb is when not exercising, consume low-glycemic carbohydrates (carbohydrates that don’t raise your blood sugar very quickly). The rules are different pre-exercise. Within 20-40 minutes before exercise, you do want to consume high-glycemic carbohydrates, because they’ll be used as fuel right away, and not stored as fat.
Whey protein is also ideal pre-workout. It’s better than other sources of protein for muscular performance, because different proteins have affinities for different organs. For example, soy protein preferentially goes to the liver. Whey protein goes to the muscles.
What Type of Workout Is It?
As mentioned earlier, the more endurance-oriented the workout (things like jogging, swimming, cycling, nordic pole walking, etc.), the more carbohydrates you will need (although protein is still necessary. You just don’t need it in as high quantities).
The more strength/power-oriented the workout (like lifting weights or doing calisthenics, etc.), the more protein you’ll need and less carbohydrates (relative to endurance training). In this case, I’d consume an equal amount of protein and carbohydrates.
How Intense Is It?
The more intense the workout, the more you’ll need of both carbohydrates and proteins (again, assuming the goal is performance, and not fat loss).
How Long Is It?
This is pretty common sense: the longer the workout, the more you’ll need of both proteins and carbs.
What Is Your Size?
The larger you are, the more of everything you need, but let’s give you some numbers (in case you feel like doing some number crunching).
If you’re doing an endurance-oriented workout, you would eat about 0.3 grams/kg/hour of protein and 0.7-1.0 grams/kg/hour of carbohydrates. So if you are a 140-pound female, you weigh 64 kg. 0.3 x 64 = 19 grams (let’s round it to 20) of protein. So a small chicken breast would fit the bill. For carbohydrates, you would eat 45-65 grams/hour, so 2-3 slices of white bread (yeah, I said it! And in this case, it’s justified, as long as you’re not gluten-sensitive) would fit the bill.
If you’re doing a strength-oriented workout, you would eat about 0.5 grams/kg/hour of protein and 0.3-0.5 grams/kg/hour of carbohydrates.
Alternately, some companies make powders with just the right ratios, so if you want something easy to digest without having to do too much math, you can use those powders.
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Any Questions?
Does all this make sense? If you have any questions, let me know.
Until next week,
Igor
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