What to Eat After A Workout
What you eat after your workout is as critical as your pre-workout nutrition. The food you take after a workout plays a significant role in muscle repair, growth and overall recovery. Health expert JJ Virgin shares what you need to take and why it’s important to do so.
After your workout, you’ll want to combine carbohydrates with protein. This pairing helps support muscle repair and growth. It optimizes recovery by replenishing the glycogen stores that your body uses during exercise.
Studies indicate that the synergistic effect of carbohydrates and protein is more efficient at restoring muscle glycogen than carbohydrates alone. This combination aids in muscle repair and can improve performance in workouts, even up to 60 hours after the initial exercise session.
Combining carbohydrates and protein also enhances muscle protein synthesis during and after your workout, optimizing muscle repair and growth. Moreover, it contributes to the broader context of whole-body protein synthesis, supporting growth, repair, and maintenance throughout your body.
The anabolic window—previously thought to be a narrow timeframe of 30 minutes to an hour after a workout for optimal nutrient absorption—has evolved. Newer research suggests that the window for consuming post-workout nutrients may extend several hours following exercise.
In other words, the exact timing of your post-workout meal might not be as crucial as researchers previously believed, as long as your overall daily nutrient intake meets your needs. This more flexible approach allows for a broader range of timing for nutrient consumption post-exercise, emphasizing the importance of consistent, balanced nutrition throughout the day for recovery and muscle growth.
What to Eat After a Workout
After a workout, your body is in a prime state to replenish energy stores and repair muscle tissues, making your post-workout meal one of the most important meals of the day for recovery and muscle growth.
Consuming carbohydrates after your workout is crucial for refilling the glycogen stores depleted during exercise. Replenishing glycogen stores helps to ensure that your body has the energy required for your next workout. Good sources of nutrient-dense carbohydrates include quinoa, oats, sweet potatoes, squash, berries, and unripe bananas.
Protein is essential for repairing and rebuilding muscle fibers damaged during exercise. Aiming for 30-50g of protein after your workout can help optimize muscle protein synthesis, the process by which the body repairs and strengthens muscle tissue. A high-quality protein powder allows amino acids to reach your muscles, aiding in faster recovery. Protein powders are convenient and blend into smoothies for quick post-workout fuel.
Remember to drink plenty of water after your workout. Water is essential for recovery, helping to replace fluids lost through sweat and supporting metabolic functions.
What Not to Eat After a Workout
While replenishing your body with the proper nutrients after a workout is essential, it’s equally important to be mindful of what to avoid. Certain foods can hinder recovery by slowing the absorption of nutrients.
While the right fats are healthy at the right times, consuming high-fat foods immediately after your workout can slow down digestion, delaying the absorption of protein and carbohydrates. The essential nutrients your muscles need for repair and glycogen replenishment might not reach them as quickly.
Likewise, high-fiber foods can slow nutrient absorption immediately after a workout post-workout period. This could delay glucose delivery to your muscles, slowing glycogen replenishment and recovery.
So whether you’re about to head to the gym for some resistance training or just finished a cardio workout, what you eat before and after matters a whole lot to your body’s performance and recovery.
