Pre/Post-Workout Nutrition

I’ve been doing some research and I have what may be a dumb question. Let’s say based on your goals you need 3500 calories a day to grow. If you often struggle to get enough calories during the day, would pre and post workout nutrition make up for the lack of daily calories since your muscles are ready to take in nutrients during those two periods?

Do some research on this site. Both CT and TC talk in length about that very subject.

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Wow. Lots of good info but not really answering my questions about the calories. What I did learn was whey isolate is useless for post workout because it takes too long to digest. Pre workout shakes are better than post workout. Multiple post workout shakes are better than one. Amino acids are considered “fast” proteins and are recommended for post workout supplementation. So are they talking about BCAAS for fast protein amino acids? Shit…that is a lot of info to “digest”. Now I don’t know what to think.

Don’t try to over analyze this. There are 1000’s of articles and they all contradict each other. Been there, done that.

Regardless of trying to gain weight or loose, pre & post workout nutrition should be stable.

Sure you can increase your calories during that time but I don’t believe it’ll make much difference compared to increasing calories on other meals, given that your pre & post workout is proper anyway.

It sound like you may be better getting advice on how to make sure you are getting enough calories in throughout the day, getting your peri workout right is the icing on the cake

plenty of tips to help with hitting your calorie and macro targets. Run us through an honest days eating and I’m sure there will be some easy to implement changes.

Typical day I have:
Breakfast-bagel with ham and 3 eggs
Protein shake
Dinner is some sort of meat, mostly chicken or beef, and veggies.
Lunch is normally something leftover from dinner the night before.
Probably not enough information. We eat a wide variety of things not just chicken breast and broccoli.
3 meals is about all I get really.

Plenty of space to squeeze in more calories there, some easy tips would be…

add blended oats to your shake

add olive oil to your shake

half pint of whole milk with every meal

eat nuts (100g is around 800 calories)

coconut oil in your hot drinks

just some ideas that will bump up your numbers without really having to eat lots more.

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Good ideas. I never really thought of adding calories that way.

Do the oats need to be cooked before blending them into my shakes?

I don’t cook mine.

Yeah load up on as much peri workout supps as can get in without indigestion (and budget). Perfect world get some Plazma but even a few BCAAs mid workout can make significant difference over time

I don’t cook mine either, I do buy gluten free oats though as they are better on my stomach. If you feel full of wind after upping your oat intake then definitely try gluten free.

I have steel cut oats at home. Are these ok or are there better ones?

That is what I have been using, I usually go with 1 part whey protein 2 parts oats and then some BCAAs. After some research I found that most “mass gainer” proteins are just whey, oats, and sugar. They work but its considerably cheaper to make it yourself. Hope this helps some.