What you eat before and after workouts can affect how your body powers through exercises, builds muscle, and recovers. The timing of your pre-workout meals can also help fuel your body for a better workout, while the timing of a post-workout meal can support muscle recovery and maximum gains.
Eating the right nutrients before your workout can help your body operate at its best, so you can reach your exercise goals. Some benefits of fed workouts include:
- More energy: Eating carbohydrates before a workout helps your muscles refuel glycogen (stored glucose, or blood sugar). Glycogen provides energy to your cells, helping sustain energy and prevent fatigue during longer, more intense workouts.
- Improved performance: Research shows fueling your muscles and replenishing glycogen stores improves exercise performance measures like strength, power, and endurance.
- Better muscle recovery: Eating protein before a workout helps start the muscle repair process sooner. This helps reduce muscle protein breakdown during your workout and improves muscle growth.
What To Eat Before A Workout
When choosing a pre-workout snack or meal, focus on incorporating carbohydrates for energy and protein to help kick-start muscle repair. You’ll also want to keep fats to a minimum to avoid slowing digestion, which can cause stomach issues during your workout.
Some of the best foods to eat before a workout include:
- Banana and nut butter
- Whole-wheat toast with hard-boiled egg
- Oatmeal with fruit
- Low-fat Greek yogurt with granola
- Hummus and whole-grain crackers
- Fruit smoothie with protein powder, nut butter, or low-fat Greek yogurt
- A handful of nuts and dried fruit
Research shows that eating anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours before your workout can help improve workout performance. It’s usually better to eat a snack 30-60 minutes before exercise, and a meal two to four hours before.
While there are definitely benefits to fed workouts, some people prefer to work out on an empty stomach, also known as fasted workouts. Often, the goal of fasted workouts is to increase fat burn and weight loss.
Evidence is mixed, but some of the potential benefits of fasted workouts include:
- More fat burn: During fasted workouts, the body uses fat as fuel because glycogen stores are low. This may help you burn more body fat. However, current research is mixed on whether enough fat is burned for significant fat and weight loss.
- Improved blood sugar levels: A study including adults without underlying health conditions found that fasted workouts, specifically cardio, may help improve insulin sensitivity over time for better blood sugar control. However, newer research has found that fasted workouts may increase glucose levels.
- Fewer digestive issues: Working out on an empty stomach may help some people avoid nausea, sluggishness, and stomach pain that can come as food digests.
If you are fasting before your workout, it’s extremely important to refuel your body with food for optimal recovery. Eating after a workout—fasting or fed—benefits your body in a few different ways:
- Repairs and rebuilds muscle: Eating protein after a workout supplies amino acids to help your muscles repair themselves. This effect allows your muscles to recover and grow.
- Reduces muscle soreness: Getting enough protein after a workout to repair muscles can also help reduce muscle soreness and future injury risk.
- Improves energy: Exercise depletes glycogen stores that give your body energy. Eating carbohydrates after a workout helps restore your glycogen stores, which helps your body fight fatigue and have energy after a challenging workout.
What To Eat After A Workout
You should eat about 30 minutes to one hour after a high-intensity workout, such as heavy weight lifting or long-distance running. However, if you did a shorter, low-intensity workout—like power walking, yoga, or jogging—you don’t need to eat right away. Instead, you can eat whenever you’re ready for your next meal.
Protein and carbohydrates are the primary nutrients needed to recover after a workout. Studies show these nutrients help replenish glycogen stores for energy and repair and rebuild muscles. You may need more carbohydrates after a longer or more intense workout.
Some meal ideas for after your workout include:
- Scrambled eggs with toast
- Greek yogurt with fruit and granola
- Protein shake with fruit
- Chicken and rice
- Tuna salad sandwich
- Oatmeal with nut butter and fruit
Nourishing your body with carbs and protein after a workout is essential for recovery and muscle growth. It’s especially important to eat after a fasted workout, as you’ll have even lower glycogen stores. Skipping a post-workout snack or meal can leave you feeling over-tired and leave your muscles prone to injury, not recovery. It’s also essential to drink enough water to rehydrate.
Whether it’s better to work out fasted or fed depends on your goals, the type of workout, and what works best for you:
- For muscle gains or improved exercise performance: Fed workouts help provide enough energy to fuel your workout and improve strength and endurance. Eating protein before a workout also helps your muscles grow stronger.
- For fat or weight loss: Both fed and fasted workouts may work for you. Research is mixed on the results, but some people have found that fasted workouts helped burn more fat. However, research also shows that fed workouts can give you the energy to push harder and ultimately burn more calories for fat loss.
- For high-intensity and endurance training: Eating before a heavy lifting session or a long run helps fuel your body with enough glycogen to power through tough exercises.
- For moderate- to low-intensity workouts: A short run, yoga, or walking is often not intense enough to significantly deplete glycogen levels if you want to fast.
- For people with insulin resistance: If you have diabetes, fasted workouts can be dangerous as they can increase your risk of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.
- For digestive issues: If working out after eating causes you to experience nausea, upset stomach, or other digestive problems, consider fasted workouts to avoid discomfort.
