Pre, During, and Post Workout “Nutrition”
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Dream in Nutrition
It’s funny, I get a lot of people that ask me about what I do for “pre workout” and “post workout” nutrition – and my answer is almost always the same – nothing (admittedly I often have a slight grin on my face).
This usually leaves people a bit confused, with the most common follow up question of “why do you ignore it?”.
“I don’t.”
As far as I’m concerned, doing “nothing” (more in a second) is the best thing to be doing concerning food as it relates to my workout. Hence, I don’t “ignore” it – if anything I’m respecting my body to the highest degree.
Let’s dig in, shall we?
Pre Workout Nutrition
Check this out – I have gone into virtually every workout for the past four months, on at least, a twelve hour fast (usually closer to twenty hours). By “fast”, I mean I haven’t eaten in X amount of time.
This sounds extreme no matter how you spin it, but I assure you it is not. For one, I exercise either in the morning, or early afternoon. Either way, I have a solid seven to eight hours of sleep built into that “fasting” period.
For two, I don’t get hungry before, or during my workouts – ever (okay, if I go over 24 hours for a fast I’ll get a little hungry, but it quickly disappears once I begin my workout). And I’m not a light eater, trust me on this one =).
At this point you may be wondering why I do this – I sure was when I first heard about it. The reason is simple – most people perform their best fasted, myself included.
Taking profits from selling sugary protein drinks like Muscle Milk out of the equation, why on Earth would eating before a workout be beneficial? It makes absolutely no sense. Digestion requires blood, and energy, as do your muscles performing intense exercise – why make them fight for the same resource?
Digestion also requires insulin – even when no carbohydrate is consumed. Why would releasing a trump hormone, when your body is releasing hordes of other beneficial hormones, be a good idea? It’s not – and this is applicable 100 fold for the “protein” and “energy” drinks packed with insulin spiking sugar.
From an evolutionary standpoint, we hunted for our food (and probably scavenged too at some points). At no point was ancient man pounding leftovers from the night before, only to immediately go and chase down (and probably fight) another one to the death. Not to mention, we were starving half the time anyway. Unlike modern day humans, ancient man didn’t sit around eating Cheetos for fun – he got hungry (or knew he would be hungry), didn’t have any food sitting around in the fridge, and went to go find some (probably with friends).
If the process of being hungry, and then hunting down animals, was common practice for a few million years … what made us so adapted to eating before intense physical activity?
The answer is nothing of course, since we are simply not built that way – and we are certainly not built to ingest a $hit ton of carbohydrate before running something down.
But I get hungry before I workout!
This is either
A. mental angst (a placebo effect)
or
B. a symptom of being addicted to carbohydrate
While I mean no offense with that word, I don’t use it lightly. Most people are blatantly addicted to carbohydrate – gym rats especially.
Eating While Working Out
Exercise of adequate intensity, for best results, demands that you would almost instantly vomit if any food was consumed during your “workout”. High intensity strength training is the most brutal form of physical activity possible (short of intentionally injuring a major joint, child birth, etc), and the body will want to rid itself of anything “extra” under such intense stress.
Furthermore, proper exercise demands as much mental focus as possible. There should be nothing on your mind but moving the weights – no IPOD, no “protein bar”, no hot chick across the room, nothing. Those things are for outside the gym, or at most, after a workout.
Also, see the reasons for avoiding food before a workout (all apply for eating during exercise).
But I get sick/feel funny when I work out on an “empty stomach”.
I would be very, very surprised to hear someone in “good health” genuinely feel this way, who didn’t eat carbohydrate (excluding eggs/meat), or ate only a trivial amount per day (and has done so for at least 1 month).
Again, a symptom of being addicted to carbohydrate.
Post Workout Nutrition
Technically, I do eat “after” I workout (otherwise I would be dead by now), but I always wait one hour or more – so I still say I do “nothing” for “post workout” nutrition.
Why is this? Isn’t that big bad boogeyman CATABOLISM gonna get me?
Hardly.
Humans evolved cooking food – mostly animals. Anyone telling you different, doesn’t understand the subject.
*Gathering by the way, is not limited to plants. It includes eggs, bugs – even small game.
Considering this, when were we finding food, and immediately eating it? Rarely and randomly in my opinion, and never very much. Modern day examples would include “drinking” egg whites when water was not available, shell fish, wild berries (nothing like the berries at most stores), bugs, and so on.
When a large animal was brought down, it had to be brought back to camp, cleaned, then cooked. While I have no experience hunting, I’ve caught a lot of fish in my life. At best, it takes about an hour to
- catch
- kill
- clean
- bring to a fire
- season
- cook
- eat
a fish – and that’s with everything already set up and only a short 5 minute walk from the beach where I caught the fish.
Now imagine chasing down and killing a large animal ten miles from camp, dragging it back (hopefully not getting attacked in the process), setting everything up if it wasn’t already, and then cleaning/cooking an animal with primitive tools.
Seriously, it takes a while.
Considering this, why would it make sense to ravenously eat food immediately after working out? Without any substantial amount of carbohydrate in the diet, hunger shouldn’t be much of an issue.
No one was eating much after intense physical activity for the past few million years – and of course, eating brings on insulin (even without carbohydrate). It should go without saying at this point that eating copious amounts of carbohydrate before, during, and especially after exercise, serves no benefit, and is detrimental to your progress – despite what gym “experts” and the latest magazine tell you about “catabolism”.
Perhaps the best way I’ve seen it put (Art Devany) is that muscle is an expensive, and long term adaptation (cardio is not). By the same token, new muscle will not simply disappear at the first sight of your body needing it for other purposes.
Finally (and I won’t pretend to understand this fully), waiting after exercise to eat enhances “protein turn over”. From my limited understanding of this, if you don’t interfere with your body’s natural response to intense exercise, it will use the protein you do ingest more efficiently – please feel free to chime in if you have more to add.
In short, wait an hour or two after working out to eat. I usually won’t wait longer than that since my hunger (which usually isn’t present until 30-40 minutes after working out) will then dissipate a bit, but definitely give it a shot sometime.
Hope this helps
-Anthony
I got my workout in 20 minutes, and after reading your advice I haven’t had anything to eat since last night’s dinner. I’m pretty hungry at this point (always am when I first wake up).. I hope your theory works that that it won’t distract me, but I will make me push harder. I mean, your arguments are solid; I just gotta put it to the test.
This is my post workout meal plan: (I’m not really posting it to get your blessings, more just to see if I’m way off somewhere)
- hour after, I’ll have my shake (mixed berries, coconut oil, egg yolks, unflavoured whey powder)
- hour after that, at around lunch time, I’ll eat my lunch (ground meat with lots of butter)
- dinner tonight is pure beef and coconut oil
(side note: I bought a slowcooker (crockpot), because I’m too broke to afford good cuts of meat – what’s your take on cooking cheap meats (shoulder) really slow-8hrs- at low temps?)
- drink lots of water throughout the day
Also, I’m taking to heart what is advised about no distractions when working out. At first it was hard because they blast horrible top 40 garbage at my gym – my solution to that is white noise. Blocks out everything – I also use it to study in loud environments too.. I particularly like the ‘brown noise’ from simplynoise.com. You can download a clip and loop it on your mp3 player..
…alright then.. I’m going to go murder the gym à la McGuff..
Simz
These are only a handful of peer-reviewed research articles that have found that a protein-carbohydrate drink (usually essential amino acids and sucrose) provide the ultimate anabolic environment for muscle growth:
CRIBB, PAUL J.; HAYES, ALAN (2006) Effects of Supplement Timing and Resistance Exercise on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise:Volume 38 – Issue 11 – pp 1918-1925.
L.Andersen, G.Tufekovic, M.Zebis, R.Crameri, G.Verlaan, M.Kjær, C.Suetta, P.Magnusson, P.Aagaard (2005) The effect of resistance training combined with timed ingestion of protein on muscle fiber size and muscle strength. Metabolism, Volume 54, Issue 2, Pages 151-156
Kevin D. Tipton, Tabatha A. Elliott,Melanie G. Cree,Asle A. Aarsland, Arthur P. Sanford, and Robert R. Wolfe (2007) Stimulation of net muscle protein synthesis by whey protein ingestion before and after exercise. American Journal Physiology Endocrinology Metabolism 292: E71-E76.
D. S. Willoughby1, J. R. Stout and C. D. Wilborn1, (2006) Effects of resistance training and protein plus amino acid supplementation on muscle anabolism, mass, and strength. Amino Acids. Volume 32, Number 4.
Antonis, I was aware that there are countless articles showing such results. All of them are about as useful as The China Study, and make no more sense than “carbohydrate loading” for an endurance event.
[here's my facebook comment, see bottom for update regarding todays workout]
I have been eating immediately after my HIT workouts since I started a few months ago, this may be something to consider changing. What about small snacks in between (i.e hunter finds that berry bush or fruit-bearing/nut-bearing tree while traveling)?
Im not sure where to draw the line when trying to emulate our ancestors, there needs to be a complete understanding of the physiological effect that the timing of eating meals has on our body’s ability to reach our maximum genetic potential [ultimate goal].
Last one, this is getting too long haha, what about specific low glycemic foods and ‘different’ carbs like coconut flour (high fiber/protein/no glucose) or sprouted/soaked grains (supposedly nutrient dense and without the anti-nutrients found in processed breads)? Is there a most efficient order in which to consume different types of foods, like fats before long stretches of fasting and high quality protein as first meal post-workout/intense activity? Would a hunter-gatherer have the luxury of choosing this? no, but perhaps that was part of the ‘luck factor’ of living back then. We’ve pretty much mastered our fate with the advent of farming practices centuries ago – we just took it into an unneccessarily dangerous direction recently(when mass production became the goal as opposed to carefully grown/prepared local traditional food)
UPDATE: Yeah so I had it timed so that my workout came up about 10 after breakfast. It was surprisingly easy not eating, maybe due to a decent breakfast of a bunch of raw, unprocessed yogurt+fruit and 4 farm fresh pastured eggs with a cod liver oil supplement(lots of fat/vitamin D). The workout went well, and I made some progress whether time under load or increased load. I waited about 2 hours before chowing down a monster salas from Jason’s Deli and now I am just basking in all my neo-hunter gatherer glory!
Ha, but seriously will keep it up and see if I notice any long term effects.
A few things:
First, I just want to echo your comments about hunger once carbohydrates are removed. It is a completely different phenomena. I tend to eat one major meal a day with a smaller snack several hours later, totally naturally. Sometimes I’ll go a whole day before realizing I haven’t eaten. This is so much more comfortable and satisfying than the alternative of eating 6 times a day.
I found myself back to carby ways for thanksgiving and the immediate effect is profound. I am hungry again within an hour and have to fight it before finally caving 2-3 hours later.
–
Second, you mention that insulin is a trump hormone. I think it is important to mention precisely what hormones raised insulin levels actually trump.
Those would be: epinephrine, norepinephrine and growth hormone.
The epinephrines are responsible for raising heart rate, releasing energy from stores into the bloodstream, and increasing bloodflow to muscle.
Growth hormone is responsible for developing muscle, burning fat, protein synthesis, etc.
To me, this is the strongest reason to exercise while fasted. To allow for the maximum levels of anabolic (constructive) hormones in the blood stream.
–
I’m not sure how I feel about eating directly after a workout. I certainly don’t think that carbohydrates are ideal to eat after exercise as many say.
I think your paleolithic reasoning makes sense, but I am a bit weary of going too far without some sort of physiological reasoning or, best of all, proper scientific evidence.
To me this connects with Kurt from PaleoNu’s idea of paleolithic food re-enactment Vs. understanding our paleolithic metabolism. Paleo, to me, is a way to create more accurate hypotheses and to explain complex phenomena (to myself and others) but not always something to mimic directly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if eating some fat and protein right after a workout could be beneficial. Also wouldn’t be surprised if the opposite was true.
Since I mentioned proper science, onto those articles Antonis mentioned:
The difference between these and the China Study is that TCS was an epidemiological study (though the book contained some other controlled studies). So, these are studies that could provide some useful information.
I only read the abstracts, but they do not support your (very general) position, Antonis that they “have found that a protein-carbohydrate drink provides the ultimate anabolic environment for muscle growth”:
1. This study found that protein, creatine & carbhydrates taken before and after a workout are more effective than protein, creatine & carbohydrates taken evening and night.
The problem here is that the control is too complex. What if the creatine alone is responsible for the gains? What if removing the carbs could result in better gains? What if only the post-workout supplementation was actually responsible for the gains and the pre-workout was hindering gains?
This study provides some information but is not focused enough to really progress our understanding.
2. This study found that protein supplementation alone was more effective than carbohydrate supplementation alone (before and after workout). The advantage was “minor”. Again, does not even compare protein + carbohydrate vs. no supplementation.
3. This study compared protein + carbs taken pre-workout and post-workout. They were testing for specifically the uptake of the amino acids (not performance) and found no difference based on timing.
4. This study again compared protein vs carbohydrate and again before and after. It’s worth noting that supplementation was 1hr before and after, hardly what we consider ‘right after your workout.’ This study also found protein is a more effective supplement than carbohydrate.
–
It is also worth mentioning that anyone who is long-term low-carb is ketoadapted and able to use much more energy from fatty acids & ketones.
What are the chances that a significant number of subjects in a study are ketoadapted? If they aren’t, it means that they will be hypoglycemic if exercising on an empty stomach and will perform poorly, skewing results.
It is far too easy to take a single, very specific study and blow it up into a wide-reaching speculation (that is then reported in the news).
Science is wonderful but we must be critical thinkers and relentless investigators.
@Nicky
“I found myself back to carby ways for thanksgiving and the immediate effect is profound. I am hungry again within an hour and have to fight it before finally caving 2-3 hours later.”
>>Every single time I eat carbohydrate now, I feel sick, literally. I haven’t eaten it “alone” though (little fat/protein), will have to try it sometime to see if the same happens regarding hunger (I assume it will but have yet to experience it).
“It is also worth mentioning that anyone who is long-term low-carb is ketoadapted and able to use much more energy from fatty acids & ketones.
What are the chances that a significant number of subjects in a study are ketoadapted? If they aren’t, it means that they will be hypoglycemic if exercising on an empty stomach and will perform poorly, skewing results.
It is far too easy to take a single, very specific study and blow it up into a wide-reaching speculation (that is then reported in the news).
Science is wonderful but we must be critical thinkers and relentless investigators.”
>>Bingo!
Thanks for the comment Nicky, as always, adding a ton of value. Took a peak at your blog recently btw…lookin good! Read the post about about “free”, good stuff.
-Anthony
@Simon
Your meals sound good- not “perfect”, but definitely adequate and ahead of the pack. Why not buy fattier meat though?
Regarding shoulder cuts, I eat em all the time! Especially grass fed lamb, very cheap, very delicious. I’ve seen arguments against slow cooking, but I throw them to the wind. Go ahead and cook it like that if it’s what you prefer, just don’t overcook it.
Regarding noise distraction, I use cheapo ear plugs, BUT, Tim Ferris recently put out a link to some really good ones at
http://earplugstore.stores.yahoo.net/silnatrubear.html
Picking up a pair asap to test out
good luck and rock on
-Anthony
@kevin
“What about small snacks in between (i.e hunter finds that berry bush or fruit-bearing/nut-bearing tree while traveling)?”
>>>Eh, it was happening, but I doubt very often. Ideally you shouldn’t be hungry anyway eating one or two large meals a day (once adapted to burn fat over glycogen). If you aren’t hungry…then why eat?
“Last one, this is getting too long haha, what about specific low glycemic foods and ‘different’ carbs like coconut flour (high fiber/protein/no glucose) or sprouted/soaked grains (supposedly nutrient dense and without the anti-nutrients found in processed breads)?”
>>>I’d have the coconut flour long before the grains, but I don’t I wouldn’t really consider either “food”, I’d consider coconut flour “fud” for example, fun food =). But ya, the fat in coconut is what’s really great, the rest isn’t very important (fiber included).
Is there a most efficient order in which to consume different types of foods, like fats before long stretches of fasting and high quality protein as first meal post-workout/intense activity?
>>>As much moaning and groaning as we do about this (myself included), it probably makes little difference as long as you avoid any significant amount of carbohydrate and are eating animals.
Hilarious that you mention that it isn’t as bad as childbirth. I’ve been training my mom whenever I’m at home (bless her, she’s been going to the gym on her own too!) and when I last went in with her, she was unsure how much weight to put on her leg press because she had changed from doing the one where you stack weight on yourself to the one with numbered plates.
She ended up doing the leg press for over 3 minutes, at a slow 5×5 cadence. She told me afterward that it was worse than childbirth.
LOL
Hmm, could be wrong on that one then eh? I’m pretty sure about the intentional injury to a major joint though – I’ve severely dislocated my kneecap and the extent to which it hurts is indescribable – even in comparison to HIT training, or Hybrid machine negative training. The knee is so prone to pain it’s not even funny! =O
-Anthony
Hey Dream,
why you used a whey protein?i dont see the need for it when you consume whole foods plus since you are a caveman like me whe dont consumed procesed food.great info you are right in the money with this post.
I have a bunch sitting around, and think it’s fine as long as I eat it with a bunch of fat. I don’t have a lot, maybe one or two shakes a week at this point. They taste pretty good too =)
Hey dream
I was wondering how you’re approach to exercise and nutrition would change if you were preparing for a bodybuilding show. assuming it was a natural competition meaning you would be tested for banned substances. Would you start doing a “standard” 3-5 day split or stick to 1-2 full body sessions a week. Any change to your diet?
Thanks
I would consider increasing my frequency to a strict once a week WOW*, rather than a 7-15 day recovery period to help preserve muscle while eating less. My diet would consist of only meat and eggs, and nothing else (it’s pretty close right now as it is, but not 100%). The meat would be mostly grass fed lamb and other red meats, and maybe some medium boiled eggs.
*My workouts are almost always full body, and would definitely be in this case.
I figured the meat/eggs approach would be the way to go, I am curious as to how those bodybuilders get such freaky levels of definition, its one thing to have low body fat but these guys have real freaky striations. Is this from the dehydration/ diuretics? fat burning supp’s? I am completely lost when trying to wrap my mind around how a guy can be at 5′9 275lbs and I can see low back striations and rib cage separation. Please shed some light on this if you could
Thanks Alot- love this blog!!
On stage? They are dehydrated out the wazoo, period. Most have crap diets too.
thanks for commenting, it’s the best way to show some love! =)
-Anthony
The case for fasted training is strong, but the argument is not as on-sided as you make it out to be. Martin Beckham’s (Leangains) recent posts on peri-workout nutrition have been eye-openers, but even he says, “Remember, it is still not known if the net effect of fasted state training will lead to more favorable results in the long run.”