What To Eat:

With so many questions surrounding when to eat and what to eat (if anything) before, after and during a workout, it’s easy to get confused. And to make things more complicated, there are even more opinions regarding how to answer these questions!

Who’s been giving you advice on your nutrition at the gym? Is it "Big John," the steroid-laden genetic freak? Sure, he’s big, but chances are he couldn’t offer a great deal of valuable information to the genetically average, chemically-unenhanced trainee. Or perhaps you’ve been reading one of those bodybuilding magazines where "because I said so" authors spew out recommendations without ever supporting their assertions with so much as a modicum of scientific data.

Over the course of the next few pages, we’re going to lay out pre- and post-workout nutritional recommendations based on what the real experts—the researchers—have to say.

Your flavor of exercise All exercise can’t be lumped together in a single category, and as such, no one method of pre- or post-workout nutrition will apply to all types of exercise. You probably do both weight training and cardiovascular sessions; both of which can vary widely in intensity depending on your particular fitness goals (fat loss, muscle gain, etc.). We’ll start with cardiovascular training.

Eating on the run: It works When is the best time to eat in relation to cardiovascular activity? In order to answer this question, we must consider these factors:

Maximize performance. Now, you may be thinking "I don’t care about performance; I’m not competing in a race; I just want to lose fat!" This is a very common attitude; however, it’s not a very smart one. Exercise intensity is directly related to the amount of calories and fat you burn as a result of a given workout. If your performance is suffering from a lack of proper nutrition, you won’t be losing fat at an optimal rate—period.
Optimize fat loss. Obviously, we don’t want to hinder the amount of fat lost either during or after the exercise session. Therefore, we have to consider whether the method we choose has any adverse effects on fat loss.
Minimize muscle loss. Very often people will compromise large amounts of hard-earned muscle mass while dieting. A major contributor to this occurrence is the failure to appropriately time meals to combat the catabolic influences of exercise.

It was originally thought that while consuming a meal before exercise may have a positive effect on performance, it would certainly have a negative effect on the amount of fat lost as a result of that session. Consequently, consuming a meal prior to exercise was frowned upon and performing cardio in a fasted state became the staple recommendation to optimize fat loss. However, all theory aside, some research may show this not to be the case.

Three recent studies found that consuming a carbohydrate-containing meal prior to cardiovascular activity had no adverse effect on substrate utilization during exercise (the amount of fat versus carbohydrates used as energy during exercise).2,3,4 Furthermore, the study analyzing time to fatigue found that people who did not consume a meal before exercising tired faster and performed at a lesser level than people who did eat prior to the session.4

Also, it should be noted that performing cardio in a fasted state can be detrimental to muscle growth. It’s catabolic—or muscle-wasting—effects can decrease lean tissue in those people who are not meeting their caloric needs. This is especially true if you’re trying to shed that very last bit of fat. However, it must be noted that for those of you currently taking in sufficient calories in a balanced protein/fat/carbohydrate ratio, this may not apply to you.

Another common recommendation has been to wait an hour after exercise before eating in order to take advantage of the substantial increase in metabolism that occurs as a result of high-intensity exercise. This hypothesis was studied by Dr. Lee and the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Se Jong in Seoul, South Korea in 1999.1 He and his research team found that people who consumed a protein and carbohydrate beverage actually increased the amount of calories burned during the hour post-exercise while still having no effect on substrate utilization. Also, proper post-workout nutrition may help prevent lean muscle mass from being catabolized and used as energy during this time.

Hopefully by now, it should be easy to see that consuming meals both prior to and immediately following intense exercise may help you: 1) maximize performance, 2) optimize fat loss, and 3) minimize muscle loss.

The nuts and bolts of pre- and post-cardio meals Because cardiovascular activity generally causes less muscular damage than weight training, pre-/post-workout nutrition does not need to be as strictly calculated. Here are some general guidelines:

For all workouts, pre-cardio nutrition can be as simple as consuming a small whole-food meal containing both protein and moderate glycemix index carbohydrates about an hour prior to your session. An example of this would be to have a cup of oatmeal along with eight egg whites at 7 a.m., followed by your cardio session at 8 a.m. If you’d like to perform the cardio sooner after your meal, then choose something that is more rapidly digested, such as ½ of a nutrition shake with a cup of skim milk; this can be consumed half an hour prior to your session.
For a moderate intensity, longer duration session, just consume your next whole-food meal shortly after your training; this will suffice for post-workout nutrition.
For all high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions, consume a rapidly digesting drink containing quality proteins and carbohydrates immediately after your training. An example of this would be a nutrition shake with two cups of skim milk or EAS’ Myoplex Deluxe.

Making the most of your pre- and post-workout drinks Pre-/post-workout nutrition for a resistance-training session is much more of an exact science than with cardiovascular training. The main reason is that not only do we want to elicit an anti-catabolic response when weight training, but we also want to spark an optimal anabolic response as well—and that takes precision nutrition. There are three major things that we want our pre- and post-workout beverages to do:

Replenish glycogen and creatine energy stores
Halt muscle tissue catabolism (breakdown)
Initiate protein synthesis (growth)

To do this effectively and optimally, include the following ingredients in your pre-/post-workout beverage concoction:

Maltodextrin and/or dextrose: These rapidly digested carbohydrates will quench the catabolic hormone cortisol, produce a dramatic insulin spike for the purpose of shuttling nutrients into muscle tissue, and will begin to replenish muscle glycogen stores which have been somewhat depleted during exercise.
Whey protein: Intense training causes an extreme amount of damage to muscle tissue at the cellular level, causing muscle protein balance to slip into the negative range. This fast-digesting protein further spikes insulin, helps bump protein balance back up to positive values, and sparks protein synthesis (muscle growth).
Branched chain amino acids (BCAAs): These essential amino acids also aid in the anabolic process of protein synthesis.
Creatine: Creatine supplementation has been shown over and over again to promote gains in strength and lean body mass (LBM) while boosting recovery. Since muscle uptake of creatine is maximized when insulin is high, including it in this beverage only makes sense.