Guest Post: Post Workout Nutrition
June 18, 2008
The following is a guest post from Parth Shah of ShahTraining.com
Bodybuilders will tell you to eat a bunch of carbs and protein after working out. I tried this and I got fat.
Two questions have always haunted me:
1. What is the most important meal of the day?
2. What do I eat at this meal?
When you ask yourself the first question, another question comes to mind: What makes a meal important?
In my opinion, an important meal is one that feeds your immediate need and your long-term need. You only have one immediate need: replenish used nutrients.
What causes nutrients/calories to be used/burned?
· A bunch of errands that wear you out
A long-term need refers to your long-term goal. This can be burning fat, putting on muscle, gaining strength, or improving as an athlete. But this long-term goal isn’t really important when determining the most important meal, but it is important in determining the contents of that meal.
What have we learned from the above information? Your most important meal should reflect the time where you are most in need of food. This is very obvious, but unfortunately this is a forgotten element in diet design. I don’t think I need to go into the benefits of eating when you need food.
The second question is what do you eat at this meal?
If, for example, your goal is to burn fat, you may be following a low-carbohydrate diet. This is the perfect time to eat carbs. The reason carbs are avoided while fat burning is because this is the first source of energy. And if energy is not needed, then carbs are stored as fat. Protein may not be as important here as carbs are. You can take in gradual amounts of protein throughout the day to maintain your muscle. But the key here is getting the bulk of your carbohydrates (and calories) right after you workout.
If your goal is to put on muscle, you should be eating a lot of food in general. This should come as a no-brainer and hence your largest meal should be a combination of both protein and carbs. In terms of protein, I think this is an element of how hard you’ve trained. Protein is one of those nutrients which I believe we really don’t need a lot of. I was able to build muscle with 80 grams of protein a day, and when I upped it by 20 grams, my bodyweight shot up. If people aren’t gaining muscle mass, it has more to do with overall caloric intake and their training program. Not necessarily their protein intake.
What if your goal is athletic in nature? When you’re an athlete you wear out your joints more then the average guy at the gym. You’re doing a whole bunch of lateral agility movements if you play basketball or soccor. Your jumping around, ducking and weaving if you’re a martial arts guy. Focus on your healthy fats. My healthy fats are at least 40% of my total diet. Healthy fats are also very important if you’re cutting weight.
This was just a brief primer on post-workout nutrition, and few lessons we forget. There is no magic formula, as most bodybuilders claim. Not everyone needs 40 grams of carbs and 40 grams of protein after working out. Your biggest meal of the day should reflect your most calorie-intensive activity of the day (working out), and everything else should be specific to your long-term goal.
This article is based off of experience and observation. I don’t have any lab room science to back of my claims. But I believe my “claims” are common sense. Don’t you?
About the Author
Parth Shah is a Strength Consultant based in New Hyde Park, New York and can be found at his website, ShahTraining.com
Parth wrote, “Your most important meal should reflect the time where you are most in need of food. This is very obvious, but unfortunately this is a forgotten element in diet design. I don’t think I need to go into the benefits of eating when you need food.”
It’s not obvious to me if timing is important on a low-carb diet. Most of the body’s energy will come from free fatty acids (FFAs) circulating on the bloodstream. When cells demand fuel, they don’t care if the FFAs come from the gut or from adipose tissue, so meal timing should have nothing much to do with this.
For carb intake, I can see that you’d want to avoid storing those as fat, so it seems to me the ideal time would be before a workout, not after, so the glucose will be burned first.
The right way to eat is very dependent on the goals we have, there’s no better way to eat for everyone, it’s all very individual, and this post shows that well. I agree that we don’t need so much protein as we’re told in the bodybuilding world. Old time bodybuilders like Steve Reeves (the best of all times for me) didn’t consume that much protein, it’s one example simply.
I believe that there’s still a lot of confusion about the right nutrition for muscle growth, and a lot of different things could be right, or unnecessary. I’ve read recently an article about weight training in prison, and according to the article, those guys that were training in prison, were big and strong, they only had 3 meals a day instead of 6, and no way they were eating enough protein, in fact the quantity of protein they were eating was very low. They were basically consuming carbs, but the total number of calories was not that high.
So i thought to myself, where do we stand in nutrition towards muscle growth? Usually for someone who wants to build muscle, it is said that he/she should eat 6 meals a day, high quantities of protein and high caloric meals. In prison those guys weren’t doing nothing of that, and yet they’re were big and strong.
I can’t believe that they were all mesomorphs. Personally i always thought that behind those high quantities of food, specially protein, there were comercial interests for selling supplements.
I know i’m off topic, but i would like to know what do you think of it?
The guys in prison also get plenty of sleep, train every day heavy in the yard and do pretty much nothing all day otherwise to suck up energy. If they are in their cell they are doing more low volume work of pullups and pushups. They have huge recovery ability and know how to increase volume when they lift. 3…6 meals, it doesn’t matter. You have the ability to build muscle 24/7 (minus the times you are tearing it down while you workout of course), pwo is more ideal for glycogen replenishment so you can recover and keep the intensity high for the next workout. The better intensity you can train at…the better you signal for increased muscle/strength. Training in ketosis can work, but explosiveness and hypertrophy is still glycogen pathway/ATP-CP and could do well for carb up days (it doesn’t have to be alot either). In the end, if you workouts are suffering you will get less results. Eat to recover…sleep to recover…train hard….eat to recover….sleep to recover…and the cycle goes on. The muscles get built in the recovery periods as long as workouts are not excessive/too often and calorie intake is high enough to signal it’s ok to use amino acids to build muscle (and not break down for daily energy needs). PWO is the best window for people intaking larger daily carbs as your muscles are sensitive and you will have less spillover into fat cells. There is of course a limit to how many carbs you really need as most people think they burn way more glycogen than they really do. A serving of whole food 30-40g (including some fruit for liver glycogen replenishment…as that gets depleted with IF) is probably most all people need pwo to recover….unless you are some full time athlete who also trains 4 hours a day, that is a completely different schedule altogether.
GK- I’m not sure what you’re getting at, to tell you the truth. I’ll be the first to say that I’m not a nutrition expert, and this article written as an attempt to cut out all mumbo jumbo and try to get to the common sense aspect of dieting.
But lets just say we are concerned with carbs being stored as fat. If the purpose of working out is to burn fat, wouldn’t you want the source of your energy to come from fat cells? So this would make more sense for fasted training.
Now, if you wish to consume lower carbs after you training, then by all means do so, if you can recover from the training. What I’ve found from experimentation is that a low-carb approach has always messed with my ability to recover at a high intensity. And so eating carbs right after training is perfect since whatever I consume will go right to aiding in recovery.
Hope this makes sense to. Food isn’t being used as energy for the workout, it’s being used for recovery.
Great post. I’m finding with IF my body just naturally wants certain foods after a tough 2hr Muay Thai workout in the evening. Interestingly, all my carbs come from mixed vegetables and fruit. No starch at all i.e potatoes, rice and oats. I’m finding that my body functions just as well on fruit alone. I’ve resolved to eating just about a pound of cherries at night during my nightly feast. It’s funny how since fatloss and athletic agility are my goals, I’m naturally craving lower GI carbs such as fruit and higher fats. This article is spot on.
Thanks Mike, it could only be it, those guys have big recovery time. I agree with you, right now the only carbs i consume are fruit, right after my workout. I think it’s enough, at least for my goals, i’m not trying to get bigger anymore, i’ve reached the size i believe to be ideal to my frame, and now it’s just a question ok keeping myself lean, toned and getting stronger, but while i was building muscle i didn’t consume more than half of the protein bodybuilders and others say we have to consume to build muscle. The total number of calories were also not high, i’m totally against the idea of bulking, i did once and that wasn’t inteligent. I guess it all depends on each person, i believe that everything in training and nutrition is very individual, there are guidelines and then we all have to find out what works for us, according to the goals each one has.
Helder - yes, I remember I once went on a 3-month bulking cycle. I put on 7 lbs of pure fat and ended up with 25% bodyfat.
[...] In my opinion, an important meal is one that feeds your immediate need and your long-term need. You only have one immediate need: replenish used nutrients. Read more. [...]
Hello,
Thanks for all of the great insight from everyone. My question is when is the best time to work out if you are doing IF? I know it is best to work out in a fasted state and I prefer to get my workout in right away in the morning. I usually fast until 3pm - this obviously does not allow me to eat post workout. What do you all suggest? My goal is fat loss.
Thanks! Steph
Hey Steph,
I usually train at 12 pm, or if I’m training my friend Dom, it’ll be 6:15 AM. Either way, I’ll eat my biggest meal right after training, and the rest of the day is either fasting, under eating, or recovery meals.
I don’t agree with not eating anything after training. If you still want to do an official fast until 3 pm, then I suggest eating a small, 200 calories meal right after training that has both carbs and fat. I like to eat real food, but you can also make do with a quick protein shake.
- Parth
Steph - it depends on your workout, are you doing “cardio” or “resistance training” as their is a difference. Usually best to eat after resistance training, cardio is ok to fast after. If you are worried about muscle loss you could try Vit C and amino acid supplementation. Different types of training result in different hormonal expression and recovery needs.
Thank you both for your response.
Mike- I think I might try doing morning cardio and then fasting after. I will move up my fasting window and eat around 1pm and then do resistance (kettlebell) training after work (5pm). That way I am in my eating window after my resistance workout. As you said before…it’s all about making this work with your current lifestyle - right?
Steph - “it’s all about making this work with your current lifestyle - right?” BINGO! Find what you enjoy and gets you the best results and you are doing it the right way for you…..I can give you all the research on what works and suggestions (such as you can do more interval/heart rate training with high rep KB sntaches in the AM for the fat burning effect post workout in a fasted state and do more pure strength KB work at night so your muscles can get maximum nutrients) on how to use it, but it’s up to you to implement them correctly for your lifestyle and schedule. Anyone who tells you there is only one way to do anything right is probably just trying to sell you a diet book or has just read one.
Mike -
Thanks again for your response and suggestions - I really do appreciate it! You have a great blog and I love reading it daily
Steph
Parth i made that mistake too, once for a few months i have bulked and it was one of the most stupid things i’ve ever done. All i got was fat and my cholesterol rising. I thought to myself, bulking never again, now it’s one of my fights, telling people never to bulk up.
Helder - Yeah. There are a few good things that Bodybuilders have been able to contribute to the exercise world. They basically made it cool to work out. But there are a lot of pointless aspects to bodybuilding, such as bulking phases, that just do not carry over to practical life.
And what if I am very hungry at mornings? It’s easy for most people not eating breakfast because they always complain about not being hungry at mornings (So they skip the morning although “they know” It would be healthy). Maybe I don’t eat enough the day before?
David - “Maybe I don’t eat enough the day before?” I think you may have found your answer there. Make sure you are eating plenty of healthy protein, quality carbs and essential fats too….as the body sometimes can signal hunger as wanting more nutrients/vtimains/minerals…because it is lacking it and hunger is the only way it knows how to signal you to listen.