Pre and post workout nutrition is one of those topics with varying opinions on it.
What’s the perfect thing to eat before your workout?
Carbs? A little bit of protein? Branched chain amino acids? A handful of nuts or piece of fruit?
And after your workout?
A protein shake? Carbs and protein in a 2:1 ratio? No fats whatsoever?
The ‘rules’ change—depending on who you ask or what article you read that it can be downright confusing to know how to best fuel your body and support all the hard work you do in the gym!
So much so that we can actually quite disconnected from our own bodies and what best fuels us—Not what others say we should or shouldn’t eat; but rather the actual foods that sit best with our digestion, our energy, our performance, and our recovery.
For instance: Perhaps you are the type of person who needs a little bit of something on your stomach if you work out first thing in the morning—so reaching for a hardboiled egg, pre-workout protein shake, or ½ banana is money.
For others, training at 5:30 or 6:30 a.m. comes early, and food on your stomach within that 20-30 minutes pre-workout simply makes you want to vomit during your WOD. You’d rather eat a nice big breakfast post workout, after your endorphins have kicked in and you’re really up and running for the day.
Post-workout, some thrive off of having a protein shake; for others, while the thought of post-workout whey seems like a good idea, time and time again, the whey concentrate instantly makes them bee line it to the bathroom—fast.
So what’s a girl to do?! Especially if “80% of your results are related to your nutrition”?
How are you really supposed to eat before and after the gym if you want to:
- Get stronger
- Improve body composition
- Enhance your energy
- Make progress
- Increase your Fran time
- Or, all of the above
Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind:
Do:
- Get to know YOUR body. For one week, keep a food log, noting not only the foods you eat and the time you ate them, but the physical and mental signs and symptoms you experience around your meals. For example: Say for breakfast you wrote down that you ate: “3 eggs, scrambled, 2 slices of bacon and some spinach and mushrooms.” Next to that, log what came up for you, such as: “Feeling a little nauseas for a few hours after,” or “Initially satisfied, but hungry about 2 hours later,” or “Ate it, but felt guilty for eating bacon still—even though I am told ‘it’s good for me.’” Log and simply acknowledge how you feel—inside and out—around your meal times. At the end of the week, go back and look at this log. Do you see any patterns? Like stomachaches on the days you eat eggs? Or insatiable hunger at certain tims of day most days? This log can be a great problem solver in and of itself to finding what works best for YOU (and doesn’t work for you).
- Eat something within 1-2 hours following a workout. There’s some rule out there that goes, “After you finish a workout, you have approximately 30-minutes to replace energy by consuming a mix carbohydrates and proteins”. News flash: Your body does NOT stop accepting food post—workout once the time hits the 30-minute mark. In fact, I’d even be apt to argue that your body actually cannot fully digest your food until about 30-60 minutes after a workout, primarily because of the elevated cortisol levels in your bod if it was a somewhat tough workout! That being said, the ‘hard and fast rule’ that you must consume something immediately post-WOD is more hype to sell you protein powder and workout bars more than your body actually neeeeeding fuel ASAP. Don’t stress too much over the tick of the second hand on the clock.
- Eat carbs. Far too many women get freaked out at the word “carb.” It’s NOT a ‘four-letter’ word—in the sense of profane language, that is. In fact, around workouts, is the most ideal time to consumer carbs. Protein gets a lot of buzz around the necessity of it to build lean muscle and promote recovery—so much so, that carbs often get left out of the mix. If your workout included highly intense, interval-type training or an endurance component, you’ve probably greatly tapped into your glycogen stores (energy stores). Starchy veggies, such as sweet potato or hard squashes (butternut, spaghetti squash, acorn squash) are great go-to sources to replenish and support your muscle glycogen tank that is depleted post-workout. These low glycemic choices are more preferred choices, as opposed to simple carb sources, such as fruit that contains the sugar fructose, replacing glycogen in the liver. Starchy vegetables are also more optimal as they are more ‘real food’ sources—as opposed to a white rice, or tapioca flour, or even pastas and oats, which have been processed to an extent for consumption.
- High-quality H20. Every human on this planet needs at least half their bodyweight in ounces of water as a minimum for good health and baseline function (digestion, metabolism, cellular processes). And, for active folks (like your beautiful selves), you need even more—depending on how much you sweat, as well as how warm the elements are—typically anywhere from 8-16 ounces before and after your workout.
- Eat throughout the day. While pre- and post-workout nutrition IS important…even greater is the food you consume throughout the day. By all means, you could ensure you fuel up with a little bit of protein and maybe some carb pre-workout, followed by some carbs and protein post-workout, but if your nutrition throughout the day is not in line with quality eats for your bod…you are only going to get ‘so far.’ This includes BOTH ends of the spectrum: Severe restriction of your nutritional intake (the ‘diet mentality’: “I can only eat if I’ve worked out”) to a “free-for-all, ear-whatever-the-heck-I-want” rebellious mentality. Fuel your bod with the well rounded base of proteins, healthy fats, lots of fresh veggies, some fruit, little starch, no sugar and plenty of water—you know the drill.
Don’t:
Fitspiration sometimes goes TOO Far…
- Feel like you have to ‘earn your food.’ Often times, people figure, “I worked out today, soooo….” “I can eat those cookies…or I deserve a treat…or I can justify that pizza…or I can eat whatever I want throughout the day.” Remember: Your nutrition is 80% of your results in the gym. If you want to see improvements, gains, performance enhancement…eat like you mean it. Not like you could care less. AND, eating is NOT a game of perfection either. Live a little (80/20 people)…but the daily mentality of: “Workout=Eat anything I want” tends to get a little out of hand with some. Reign it in. You spend enough time, money and dedication to your love for CrossFit—likewise, care about that through your nutrition.
- Eat too close to your workout. You ate an early breakfast…and then that meeting at lunchtime ran way late. By the time you get to eat again at 3 p.m….you are starving!!! And, therefore—reach for anything and everything in sight! Food, yummmm! Then…5:30 p.m. strikes: Workout time. You show up to the gym, mentally ready to go…but your bod is telling you otherwise. Still digesting that chicken breast, sweet potato, broccoli plus ‘seconds,’ it’s feeling a little sluggish in the digestive department. You start to warm-up, but still with a belly full of food, you wish you hadn’t eaten everything in sight. You fight through the workout…but all you can think about during the 800-meter run (x 3 rounds) is wanting to be curled up at home on your couch, letting the fullness subside, or taking a swig of a probiotic and digestive enzymes to quell the fullness. Working out on a full stomach is not comfortable. If you are going to be working out anywhere in the next 1-3 hours, be mindful of the amount of food you consume. You DO need food if you are hungry…but if you eat too much, too soon before your WOD, your bod is just going to be at war to digest its food vs. working out—and via the ‘fight or flight’ response, it will abort the normal digestive process, in order to fuel you the best it can to fight through your workout…resulting in: sluggish digestion.
- Waste money on products. Protein powders, BCAA’s, casein, creatine, L-glutamine…you ‘need’ it all if you want to really enhance your workout right? Take it from me: The Queen, who has spent hundreds upon hundreds of hard earned dollars on various protein powders under the sun. Only to find out that…my body really just doesn’t like them. Constipation, bloating, runny stools were all common occurrences with various brands and products. However, I ‘needed’ my protein powder pre and post workout if I wanted to replenish and recover right? Wrong. Girl, listen to your body. For some, protein powders may very well digest fine—but over the years, if there is anything I have learned…it is that your body most readily accepts (and prefers) real food. Hands down—it recognizes real food as its diesel fuel any day over packaged, processed and mystery chemicals. Bottom line: Eat and drink foods that agree with your body, and truly make you feel good…and in the long run, you may very well save some dollars. On this note: I will say I have finally found the most amazing protein powder that does NOT upset my stomach: It’s called PaleoPro protein and is made from egg white and lean beef protein (no whey). I personally know dairy does NOT agree with me, so this one has been a winner!
- Get caught up in counting macro-nutrients. “I can only have 70 grams of carbs today,” or “I need at least 1.2 grams of protein per pound of my body weight”, etc. Counting only makes you…go crazy! Ok, maybe not always, but in all seriousness…food is not meant to be complicated or a numbers game. Be mindful of course of the nutrients you consume…but is it a precise number you must hit each day? Not quite. Instead, learn what a serving size looks like, and eat accordingly—in conjunction with hunger-fullness cues. A protein serving is about the size of 1-2 palms of your hand, veggies (especially green ones) should make up half your plate (if not more), fruits are equivalent to a fist (apple, orange, pear) or a handful of berries (between both hands), fats are about the size of the tip of your thumb (butter, ghee, coconut oil), 2 tablespoons of nutbutter would be a little smaller than a golf ball, cut a medium avocado in half and you have a good base for spreading on your burgers or dicing on a salad, and for raw nuts and seeds, a nice closed fist size is plenty. Balance the foods you get in daily…and I’d say, ditch the macro-nutrient (and calorie counting) diary.
WOD on.
Workout Wednesday: Weekly Workouts
Wednesday
21-15-9
Kettlebell Swings
Toes-to-bar
Burpees
Thursday
5 rounds for time
20 Thrusters (65 lbs. barbell or 20-30 lbs. dumbbells)
10 Bench dips/ring dips
20 Pushups
10 Handstand Pushups (or dumbbell push-presses)
50-meter Bear Crawl
Friday
Complete as much work in the following time frames:
3-minutes
Row for meters
3-minutes
Ground-to-overhead (clean and jerks, or dumbbell snatches)
3-minutes
Burpees
3-minutes
Sit-ups
3-minutes
Lunge Jumps
Saturday
15-minute AMRAP
5 Deadlifts
10 Pull-ups
15 Kettlebell Swings
Sunday
5 Rounds for Time:
400 meter run (2-minute run)
30 Wallballs
30 Box Jumps/Step-ups
Monday
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Bench press
Squats
Deadlift
Tuesday
10 rounds for time:
10 Dumbbell Thrusters
10 Pushups