Ep. #197: What Should You Eat Before Working Out?

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series, where I answer one common question quickly and simply, because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less.

And that’s what I do in these episodes. Let’s talk pre workout nutrition. What should you eat before your workouts and why? All right. So let’s start with why does pre workout nutrition matter now, of course, doesn’t matter as much as the bigger things like energy balance and macronutrient balance, but it does matter to some degree.

And there are two reasons why it matters. The first reason is it can make for better workouts. So if you get it right, you can have more energy in your workouts and have better performance in your workouts, which then you can turn into, of course, better. [00:01:00] Progress. If you push yourself and if you are following at least a decently designed training program, the better you can do in every workout, the more muscle and strength you’re going to gain from those workouts over time.

And the second reason is pre workout nutrition can directly enhance muscle and strength game, because when you’re working out, you are of course damaging your muscles to some degree, and you are also suppressing muscle production. Protein synthesis rates, which of course is the opposite of what you want.

So if you want to be gaining muscle as quickly as possible, you want to be doing everything you can to keep your muscle protein synthesis rates as highly elevated as possible for as many hours of the day as possible. And on the flip side, you also want to do everything you can to keep muscle protein breakdown rates as low as possible for as many hours out of the day as possible.

Pre workout nutrition helps by boosting your muscle protein synthesis rates before you go into your workout, which again, as I just mentioned, then suppresses muscle [00:02:00] protein synthesis rates. And then post workout nutrition helps by again, boosting them before And that’s particularly true if you are training after let’s say five to six hours after having your last meal.

So if you are in a fasted state, let’s say you train first thing in the morning like me, so you’ve just slept whatever, six, seven hours eight hours if you’re good. Then you’re going to be in a fast state and your muscle protein synthesis rates are going to be a low baseline level as it is. And then you’re going to go into your workout.

If you don’t eat anything before you’re going to further suppress them. And then if you were to not eat anything after they are going to plunge even lower, which is bad from a muscle building perspective. So by eating before you Workout. And we’ll talk about what to eat and why you can greatly elevate your muscle protein synthesis rates.

So really what you’re doing is you’re getting muscle building, you’re eating your muscle building machinery moving. So then the workouts [00:03:00] impact isn’t as severe again, from muscle building perspective. And then if you’re eating within an hour, let’s say at most two hours a day, Okay, so let’s talk about what to eat before you work out and why.

So first is protein. Unsurprisingly, that’s the most important thing to eat before you work out, especially if you haven’t had any protein and let’s say the two to three hours preceding a workout then you want to eat some protein. Now if you have, let’s say, you eat a high protein breakfast and you go train an hour and a half, maybe two hours later.

And you probably don’t need to have a shake before you go but I would say you would want to have protein within an hour or so of finishing your workout. But of course that’s a separate discussion. So anyways, 30 to 40 grams of a high quality protein doesn’t have to be an animal protein. It can be a plant protein, but you want it to be high quality, highly bioavailable.

You want it to be rich in essential amino acids and ideally in leucine in particular. That’s what you want to have within. If you are training first thing in the morning, so let’s say you’re in a [00:04:00] fast and state I would say within an hour or so of working out is probably ideal, but if it’s within two hours, that’s fine as well.

But again, if you haven’t had protein in three, four, five, six plus hours and then you’re going to go work out, I would recommend. Within, let’s say an hour or so of that workout having 30 to 40 grams of a high quality protein. Hey quickly before we carry on if you are liking my podcast Would you please help spread the word about it because no amount of marketing or marketing Advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth, so if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscleforlifefitness, Twitter at muscleforlife, and Facebook at muscleforlifefitness. [00:05:00] So carbs, should you have carbs before you work out? And the short answer is yes, if you do.

You care about your performance in those workouts. So for example, if you’re just going to go for a run and you’re just want to burn some calories and you like running, or if you can do some sort of cardio, whatever but you’re not tracking your workouts, you’re not trying to beat times or anything like that, then it’s up to you.

If you find that having carbs just makes that workout more enjoyable, then do it. If you don’t really notice a difference, then don’t worry about it. But if we’re talking your resistance training workouts, where of course, progression is everything. You have to make sure that you’re progressing over time or you’re just gonna get stuck in a rut.

Then yes, having carbs before those workouts is smart because research shows that having enough carbs anywhere from like 15 to 60 minutes before a workout. is going to improve your performance. The reason why carbs makes for better training is one, if you eat enough carbs, it greatly increases your blood glucose levels.

[00:06:00] Glucose of course, is blood sugar. It’s just the simple sugar that your cells burn for energy. And the more glucose that is available for your muscles to burn, the better you are going to do in your workouts. And it also, when you greatly elevate your glucose levels, it helps preserve glycogen or it helps preserve the glycogen in your muscles and glycogen is a form of glucose that’s stored primarily in the liver and in the muscles.

And it’s also really your primary fuel source in your resistance training workouts. So the more glycogen that you have, the better your resistance training workouts are going to go. And as we’re talking resistance training workouts, it’s worth mentioning that research shows that maintaining higher levels of muscle glycogen may enhance certain aspects of cellular signaling that is related to muscle building.

So while you can’t really say that carbs are directly anabolic, having carbs before you work out, and then of course, having carbs after you work out may produce a slightly more [00:07:00] anabolic environment in your body. That’s, yeah, I’d say that at least that’s more accurate than inaccurate. It’s more complex than that, but I would say that statement is definitely more true than untrue.

And, ironically, you don’t even have to eat carbs to improve your workout performance. Now, if you do, you’re going to see a bigger improvement. But in one study scientists had people swish carbs in their mouth and then do workouts. And what they found is that alone enhanced their performance.

Now, researchers weren’t even sure why this worked, but the most likely explanation is that there are receptors in your mouth that your brain uses to help estimate energy availability. And so when you eat carbs, you’re telling your brain, Hey, you’re about to have a lot of energy. And then your brain allows you to engage in more strenuous.

levels of physical activity. All right. So now in terms of how much carbs and what type of carbs, first good news, you don’t need to buy fancy pre workout carb supplements, which are usually just [00:08:00] multidextrin or dextrose. Although I think there are a couple others out there now that again, they bill some long multi syllabic Carbohydrate as the ultimate in pre workout carb nutrition.

Nah, it’s bullshit. Research shows that, eh, 30 to 40 grams of carbs eaten about, of any kind, eaten about 30 minutes or so before a workout will get the job done. If nothing else, it’ll give you the vast majority of, the benefits that you can get. You don’t need to optimize your pre workout carbohydrate intake, even in terms of, going with soul, specifically glucose rich.

Carbs. Cause some people say that you should stay away from fruit because fructose doesn’t benefit you in the same way as glucose. Now, while that’s true, they are different molecules and they are processed differently. Research does show that, fruit is fine. It’s just 30 to 40 grams. of of carbs, about 30, maybe 45 minutes for a workout.

You’re good to go. One of my go tos for a long time has been a piece of fruit. So I personally like bananas a lot. So I have a banana. And [00:09:00] also I have some protein as well, cause I trained first thing in the morning. So I have about 30 grams of whey isolate protein. I have a banana and I will mix that protein in about a cup of rice milk, just cause it makes it taste really good and adds an extra 25 ish grams of carbs.

Now, if bananas and rice milk aren’t your thing, then that’s fine. Just eat whatever you like. So if you like, if you want to have some white rice, do that. If you want to have white potato, do that. If you want to have oatmeal raisins are also a great pre workout carb that are portable very carb dense, again, just 30 to 40 grams of a carb that you like 30 to 45 minutes before you work out and you are good to go.

Oh, and I should also mention that in terms of. how you combine your carbs and getting very granular with, fructose rich carbs versus glucose rich carbs and also glycemic index, faster processed carbs versus slower processed carbs. None of that really matters all that much for us resistance training us weightlifting people, although higher glycemic index may actually be slightly [00:10:00] better who it does matter for.

Actually are people that do like extreme endurance workouts. Research shows that micromanaging your carbon take can actually impact performance for them, that’s not most of us. So anyways, thought I’d just mention that last is dietary fat. Should you have dietary fat before you work out?

And the answer is do whatever you want. It doesn’t really matter. One way or another, it’s not going to harm your performance, not going to help your performance. If your pre workout meal happens to have some fat, just cause that’s how you like it. So let’s say you’re going to eat oatmeal and you like some butter in your oatmeal, fine, have butter in your meal or whole milk in your oatmeal.

It doesn’t really matter. If you want to read a bit more about this, there’s a good paper that will be linked in the description down below for the people watching this on YouTube. And it was published by scientists at Deakin university, and I’ll just quote here the conclusion thus it would appear that while such a strategy can have a market effect on exercise metabolism, i.

1. reduced carbohydrate utilization, which of course makes sense, [00:11:00] there is no beneficial effect on exercise performance. So do what you want with dietary fat. Hey there, it is Mike again, I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful and if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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