Help Me Understand Something

For the last 3 years of training ive pretty much ate lunch at 12ish then ate a pre workout meal at around 3-4ish. The last two days i left out my 4 oclock meal and my workouts have felt amazing, i feel stronger i have more energy and stamina.

Why would this be? Is it because of my slowish metabolism, my food from lunch has been fully digested and ready to be used as energy where as if i had ate at 4 aswell it would still be in my stomach.

Cheers

Some don’t do well with solid food in the stomach when training, or solid food having relatively recently been eaten even if no longer in the stomach.

I personally am that way: I do very well with preworkout drinks, but not with much of any kind of solid food having been recently eaten. Actually it’s just out of the question for me to train hard after having recently eaten much food. It’s not that I become nauseous or anything, but I can’t perform at the same level.

I don’t know but I strongly suspect this is not from direct effects of energy of the food, but from how the nervous system reacts. Some people seem to have an inhibition from solid food of their ability to work intensively.

Blood sugar

Did you find it effected your gains at all?

I no how T-Nation like to bang on about pre and peri workout nutrition!

I think i will dial my lunch back a bit to bring it slightly closer to my workouts.

You mean training despite having had solid food? Actually once I caught on to the problem, which was very early on in training, I avoided doing it and so I never really had a chance to see how the reduced performance would have affected gains. Basically I switched to preworkout drinks early on. But of course due to circumstances from time to time I’d train having recently had a meal of solid food, and it’s been a consistent experience that I just didn’t do as well in the gym. But I couldn’t say from observation whether gains would have been less as a consequence.

In my case it’s not blood sugar, because actually for me, the more carbs the better I do in the gym, within reason. Certainly it varies between different people. Many have done extremely well with solid food as the only nutrition source, in some cases including before workout, and in some cases avoiding eating for some time before the workout. The thing to do is to see what works individually, which you are doing!

[quote]krpv wrote:
Blood sugar[/quote]

Perhaps, but one cannot make this claim without knowing the OP’s diet.

And that wasn’t posted.

[quote]chillain wrote:

[quote]krpv wrote:
Blood sugar[/quote]

Perhaps, but one cannot make this claim without knowing the OP’s diet.

And that wasn’t posted.
[/quote]

True; but I believe its the most likely. I really don’t think knowing exactly what he eats (diet) matters, unless were talking about the 4 o’clock meal/shake? if it’s the exact same thing everyday at 4 it could be and intolerance to that particular food/product, or to many carbs; however you don’t need alot carbs (or any carbs) to raise blood sugar so the carbs might not even matter; if you ate 4 hours before your next meal theres still aminos and elevated blood suger in your system; actually you probably just began to digest most of that meal and the body is in a nice even keel; good to go.

I’m the same way… I have a meal usually 2 hours before downing my peri-workout stuff for lifting. Seems the right amount of time for me, feel mentally more clear and more focused. If you do this don’t dilly dally around at home or work and be late for the gym, as I sometimes am, otherwise you’ll be starving soon and you’ll have to eat something or train through it.

Cheers guys, i guess its another thing ive learn about my body.