If you’re like most of our clients you’ve heard a lot of different information about what you should do when it comes to eating and exercising–and mixing the two can be challenging. Should you eat before OR after exercise? WHAT should you eat before or after? With all of the information out there it can be very overwhelming! And many of our clients told us that before they met us all of the information was making them feel like they had to eat a lot—and they ended up eating too much and gain weight!
We do recommend eating both before and after, but not two big meals! In fact we try to time our regular meals with our working out so that we aren’t just eating extra food—we try to eat a meal that we would normally eat anyway, and use it to fuel our workout. And the same goes for the snack after. We try to make it something that we’d eat any way at that time so that we aren’t just piling in extra calories.
Remember–eating before exercise will help provide you with energy that you need during your workout, so don’t skip it! If you’re going to the gym in the morning, try having some whole grain bread with eggs or fresh fruit with Greek yogurt or with eggs about an hour before exercise. These are breakfasts that we may eat anyway so we use them to fuel our workout. It works well because these are foods we like, we know they digest well for us and don’t add extra calories to our day since we’d eat them anyway!
When you get home, a healthy fruit and protein combo smoothie is a perfect sweet, and energizing food choice that you can treat yourself to! For us, to keep the calories in check we try to time this smoothie below so that we drink half after the workout and ½ goes with lunch so we eat a little less of the rest of our lunch. Of course on days when we run many miles, we’ll drink the whole smoothie at once and eat a little less lunch later.
One of our favorite smoothie recipes is a Pure Cocoa Smoothie! Blend together 2-3 ice cubes, 4 oz of non-fat vanilla Greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon of 100% pure cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon of creamy natural peanut butter, ½ of a medium banana, and a dash of cinnamon. It’s delicious!
What do you eat before and after a workout to obtain and sustain ENERGY?