Helms ER, Aragon AA, Fitschen PJ. Evidence-based recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: nutrition and supplementation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2014;11(1):20. doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-20.
Sacks FM, Bray GA, Carey VJ, et al. Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates. N Engl J Med. 2009;360(9):859-873. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0804748.
Naude CE, Schoonees A, Senekal M, Young T, Garner P, Volmink J. Low Carbohydrate versus Isoenergetic Balanced Diets for Reducing Weight and Cardiovascular Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Cameron DW, ed. PLoS One. 2014;9(7):e100652. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100652.
Dorgan JF, Judd JT, Longcope C, et al. Effects of dietary fat and fiber on plasma and urine androgens and estrogens in men: a controlled feeding study. Am J Clin Nutr. 1996;64(6):850-855. doi:10.1093/ajcn/64.6.850.
18
The Truth about Preworkout and Postworkout Nutrition
I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.
—MIA HAMM
Years ago, my pre- and postworkout meals were sacred, inviolable rituals to be observed without deviation.
A protein shake before and after every workout was crucial, I believed, and especially after, when your body’s “anabolic window” was rapidly closing and with it your opportunity for maximum muscle and strength gain.
Chances are you’ve heard something similar.
Bodybuilders and gymbros alike have been singing pre- and postworkout nutrition’s praises for decades. How important are these meals, though? Does eating before or after workouts actually matter?
The long story short is this: Eating before and after workouts isn’t vital, but it’s not entirely without merit, either.
And in this chapter, you’re going to get the whole story, including why pre- and postworkout nutrition are even a “thing,” the ideal type of pre- and postworkout meals, the truth about the “anabolic window,” and more.
Let’s start with preworkout nutrition.
Should You Eat Protein before You Work Out?
If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four hours preceding your workout, then it’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams before you train.
If you have eaten protein in the last few hours, though, then you don’t need to eat more. You can just eat after your workout.
Let’s take a few minutes to unpack this advice, because it not only helps you understand preworkout nutrition better, but nutrition and muscle building on the whole.
We recall that as far as muscle building goes, eating protein does two vital things:
It bumps up muscle protein synthesis rates and suppresses muscle protein breakdown rates.
It provides your body with the raw materials needed to build muscle tissue (amino acids).
That’s why you need to make sure that you eat enough protein every day if you want to maximize muscle growth.
While there’s evidence that eating protein before a resistance training workout can magnify its effects on muscle protein synthesis rates, the effects don’t appear to be strong enough to support the claim that having protein before a workout is clearly superior to not having it beforehand.1
Instead, preworkout protein should be viewed in the context of your entire diet.
If you haven’t eaten protein three to four hours preceding your workout, your body’s muscle protein synthesis rates are going to be at a low baseline level. This means that your body’s muscle-building machinery will be idle, waiting for the next feeding of protein to kickstart it into action.
Think of any time where this apparatus is dormant as lost production time. Your body could have been building muscle if only it were given the right stimulus and supplies.
Ideally, then, you’d eat another serving of protein more or less immediately after muscle protein synthesis rates bottom out. By doing this, you’d effectively keep muscle protein synthesis elevated throughout the entirety of your waking hours. (And you’d also ideally eat protein before going to bed to boost them while you sleep.)
If you go into a workout several hours after eating, you’re letting that muscle-building equipment remain inactive even longer. And if you wait too long to eat after the workout, muscle protein breakdown rates will rise to exceed synthesis rates, which can ultimately result in muscle loss.2
This is why you should eat protein before you train if it has been a few hours since you last ate some. It’ll get your body building muscle again, and as I mentioned, it may even prime it to receive a larger anabolic boost from the training.3
If you have eaten protein an hour or two before a workout, however, amino acids will still be in your bloodstream, insulin levels will still be elevated, and muscle protein synthesis rates will still be humming. Thus, eating protein again won’t accomplish much.
This is why a study conducted by scientists at the University of Tartu found that weightlifters who simply added two protein shakes before and after their workouts on top of their regular diet didn’t gain more muscle or strength than weightlifters who consumed protein shakes five-plus hours before and after their workouts.4
Should You Eat Carbs before You Work Out?
Yes. The research on eating carbs before a workout is clear: it improves performance.
Specifically, eating carbs 15 to 60 minutes before working out will help you push harder in your training and may also aid in postworkout recovery and muscle growth.
Eating carbs before training provides your body with an abundance of glucose to burn for immediate energy. This helps you in three ways:
The more glucose that’s available for your muscles to burn, the better you’re going to perform in your workouts (especially if they’re longer).5
Elevating blood glucose levels helps preserve the glycogen stored in your muscles, because your body doesn’t need to draw from these glycogen stores as heavily to fuel your training.6This, in turn, improves performance.
Research suggests that maintaining higher levels of muscle glycogen improves cellular signaling related to muscle building.7
So, by eating carbs before you train, you’ll have more energy in your workouts, which will help you put up better numbers and thus progress faster, and it may also enhance your body’s ability to build muscle.
What eating carbs before a workout won’t do, however, is directly cause more muscle growth. Unfortunately, carbs don’t have the same anabolic properties of protein.
How much carbohydrate should you eat before working out and what types are best?
Studies show that for our purposes, 30 to 40 grams of any type of carbohydrate eaten about 30 minutes before a workout will get the job done.8
And by “any,” I mean any: fruit, starch, simple sugars, etc. Choose whatever you enjoy most and is easiest on your stomach.
You don’t need to buy fancy, overpriced preworkout carbohydrate supplements. They’re usually little more than tubs of simple sugars like maltodextrin or dextrose, which aren’t bad sources of preworkout carbs per se, but don’t offer any special benefits, either.
My favorite preworkout carbs are nutritious whole foods like oatmeal, bananas, dates, figs, melons, white potatoes, white rice, raisins, and sweet potatoes.
Should You Eat Fat before You Work Out?
You can, but you don’t need to.
There are several theories about how eating fat before a workout can improve performance, but the scientific literature disagrees.
A good summary of the existing research on the matter can be found in a study conducted by scientists at Deakin University.9 Here’s their conclusion:
Thus, it would appear that while such a strategy can have a marked effect on exercise metabolism (i.e., reduced carbohydrate utilization), there is no
beneficial effect on exercise performance.
Chalk up yet another strike against high-fat, low-carb dieting.
Should You Eat Protein after You Work Out?
Yes, it’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or two of finishing a workout.
We recall that after we finish training, muscle protein breakdown rates go on the rise, quickly surpassing synthesis rates.
Muscle gain can’t occur until this reverses (synthesis rates outstrip breakdown rates), and eating protein causes exactly that by:
Providing the amino acid leucine, which directly stimulates muscle protein synthesis.10
Stimulating the production of insulin, which suppresses muscle protein breakdown rates.11
Studies also show that protein eaten after a workout causes more muscle protein synthesis than when eaten otherwise.12
Should You Eat Carbs after You Work Out?
Maybe.
We’re often told to eat carbs after working out to spike insulin levels, which is supposed to supercharge muscle growth in various ways.
Unfortunately, studies suggest this doesn’t work, and adding carbs to your postworkout meals doesn’t accelerate muscle gain.13
Only moderate elevations of insulin are needed to minimize muscle protein breakdown rates, and you can easily achieve this with a sufficient dose of protein.14
That said, adding carbs to your postworkout meal will keep insulin levels elevated for longer, which is desirable from a muscle-building standpoint because, as you know, insulin suppresses muscle protein breakdown.
This is one of the reasons why high-carb diets are better for gaining muscle than low-carb ones. Research shows that high-carb diets result in generally higher insulin levels, which results in generally lower muscle protein breakdown rates, which in turn produces more muscle gain.15
One other benefit to eating carbs after a workout is refilling your muscles with glycogen. This whole-body glycogen replenishment can give you a nice postworkout pump and mood boost, but it doesn’t appear to improve overall workout performance unless you’ll be training again later in the same day.16
It’s also worth noting that the body won’t store carbs as fat until glycogen stores have been refilled, which is why people often recommend eating your most carb-rich meals immediately after you work out.17
How much this can actually benefit your body composition over time is debatable, but it certainly won’t hurt.
Should You Eat Fat after You Work Out?
Sure, if you want to.
Some people claim that you shouldn’t because it slows down the process of digesting and absorbing the postworkout protein and carbs that your body so desperately needs.
While it’s true that adding fat to a protein- or carb-rich meal slows down the rate at which food is cleared from the stomach, it’s not true that this makes for less effective postworkout nutrition.18
For example, several studies have shown that the fat content of a meal has no effect on glycogen replenishment rates, and that whole milk may be more anabolic than nonfat milk.19
What about the “Anabolic Window”?
No discussion of postworkout nutrition is complete without mentioning the anabolic window.
The idea here is that once you’ve finished a workout, you need to eat within a certain amount of time (30 to 60 minutes, generally) to maximize muscle gain. If you don’t, the story goes, you’ll gain less muscle from the workout.
How true is this, though? It depends on when you last ate protein.
If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four-plus hours preceding your workout, it’s likely that muscle protein synthesis is going to be at a low baseline level. It would make sense, then, to eat protein soon after you finish in the gym. If you don’t, you’re not missing a special opportunity to gain muscle faster, but your body can’t start building muscle until you eat.
If you have eaten protein within a few hours of starting your workout, however, then the timing of your postworkout meal is less important. Your body will still be processing the food you ate, so you can eat immediately after your workout if you want, but you can also wait until it has been up to three to four hours since your last meal.
•••
It’s long been said that your pre- and postworkout meals are the most important meals of the day.
This simply isn’t true.
So long as your diet is set up properly on the whole, no individual meal ranks high above another. In other words, so long as your daily calories and macros are on point, when you eat isn’t going to greatly influence your results one way or another.
That said, getting your pre- and postworkout nutrition right can give you a slight edge over the long term, so why not take every advantage you can get?
Key Takeaways
If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four hours preceding your workout, then it’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams before you train.
If you’ve eaten protein an hour or two before a workout, eating protein again won’t accomplish much.
Eating carbs 15 to 60 minutes before working out will help you push harder in your training and may also aid in postworkout recovery and muscle growth.
Eat 30 to 40 grams of any type of carbohydrate about 30 minutes before a workout.Choose whatever kind of carbohydrate you enjoy most and is easiest on your stomach.
There are several theories about how eating fat before a workout can improve performance, but the scientific literature disagrees.
It’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or two of finishing a workout.
Protein eaten after a workout causes more muscle protein synthesis than when eaten otherwise.
Adding carbs to your postworkout meal will keep insulin levels elevated for longer, which is desirable from a muscle-building standpoint because insulin suppresses muscle protein breakdown.
High-carb diets result in generally higher insulin levels, which results in generally lower muscle protein breakdown rates, which in turn produces more muscle gain.
One other benefit to eating carbs after a workout is refilling your muscles with glycogen. This whole-body glycogen replenishment can give you a nice postworkout pump and mood boost, but it doesn’t appear to improve overall workout performance unless you’ll be training again later in the same day.
The body won’t store carbs as fat until glycogen stores have been refilled, which is why people often recommend eating your most carb-rich meals immediately after you work out. How much this can actually benefit your body composition over time is debatable.
While it’s true that adding fat to a protein- or carb-rich meal slows down the rate at which food is cleared from the stomach, it’s not true that this makes for less effective postworkout nutrition.
The idea behind the anabolic window is that once you’ve finished a workout, you need to eat within a certain amount of time (30 to 60 minutes, generally) to maximize muscle gain.
If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four-plus hours preceding your workout, it makes sense to eat protein soon after you finish in the gym.
If you’ve eaten protein within a few hours of starting your workout, you can eat immediately after if you want, but you can also wait until it has been up to three to four hours since your last meal.
So long as your daily calories and macros are on point, when you eat isn’t going to greatly influence your results one way or another.
Biolo G, Tipton KD, Klein S, Wolfe RR. An abundant supply of amino acids enhances the metabolic effect of exercise on muscle protein. Am J Physiol Metab. 1997;273(1):E122-E129. doi:10.1152/ajpendo.1997.273.1.E122.
Kumar V, Atherton P, Smith K, Rennie MJ. Human muscle protein synthesis and breakdown during and after exercise. J Appl Physiol. 2009;106(6):2026-
2039. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.91481.2008.
Cribb PJ, Hayes A. Effects of Supplement Timing and Resistance Exercise on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2006;38(11):1918-1925. doi:10.1249/01.mss.0000233790.08788.3e; Wycherley TP, Noakes M, Clifton PM, Cleanthous X, Keogh JB, Brinkworth GD. Timing of protein ingestion relative to resistance exercise training does not influence body composition, energy expenditure, glycaemic control or cardiometabolic risk factors in a hypocaloric, high protein diet in patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes, Obes Metab. 2010;12(12):1097-1105. doi:10.1111/j.1463-1326.2010.01307.x.
Burk A, Timpmann S, Medijainen L, Vähi M, Ööpik V. Time-divided ingestion pattern of casein-based protein supplement stimulates an increase in fat-free body mass during resistance training in young untrained men. Nutr Res. 2009;29(6):405-413. doi:10.1016/j.nutres.2009.03.008.
Jeukendrup AE, Killer SC. The Myths Surrounding Pre-Exercise Carbohydrate Feeding. Ann Nutr Metab. 2010;57(s2):18-25. doi:10.1159/000322698; Hargreaves M, Hawley JA, Jeukendrup A. Pre-exercise carbohydrate and fat ingestion: effects on metabolism and performance. J Sports Sci. 2004;22(1):31-38. doi:10.1080/0264041031000140536.
Haff GG, Lehmkuhl MJ, McCoy LB, Stone MH. Carbohydrate supplementation and resistance training. J strength Cond Res. 2003;17(1):187-196.
Knuiman P, Hopman MTE, Mensink M. Glycogen availability and skeletal muscle adaptations with endurance and resistance exercise. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2015;12(1):59. doi:10.1186/s12986-015-0055-9.
Cribb PJ, Hayes A. Effects of Supplement Timing and Resistance Exercise on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2006;38(11):1918-1925. doi:10.1249/01.mss.0000233790.08788.3e; Haff GG, Lehmkuhl MJ, McCoy LB, Stone MH. Carbohydrate supplementation and resistance training. J strength Cond Res. 2003;17(1):187-196.
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