Eating Around Workouts

What is recommended to eat before and after workouts and how long before and after?

Food, and it doesn’t really matter.

It’s up to you. I like carbs, some protein, not much fat within the hour before and after. Lots of carbs and some protein during.

But it really, really isn’t that important as long you consistently get in an appropriate amount of calories for your purposes throughout the day.

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Hi, thank you! I sometimes fast before working out. Is this good?

In a word, no. I think there is understood to be some merit to doing some cardio kind of fasted as long as you use Plazma or Surge or something during (I can’t quite find the article I’m afraid), but that’s about it.

A general rule of thumb is that you don’t want to train fasted.

I like to time my macronutrients around my workouts. Let’s say you are training at 12:30 in the afternoon. I would plan on eating about 60% of your daily intake of carbs before this time. Therefore, your breakfast, approximately 5 hours before your workout, will be your largest carb meal. While I don’t recommend training completely fasted, you definitely do not want to be full. So I follow the 5-hour-before meal with a protein bar about 2 hours before your workout, and a banana 30 minutes before. After your workout, consume a high glycemic carb with a high protein source as lunch, then limit your carb intake for the rest of the day. For dinner, pair a low glycemic carb with a protein. You can take this approach and apply it to any time of day.