Post workout meals are one of the most overlooked meals – What should we be eating, when and why?
Words by My Fitness Hub Instructor, Lizzie Hooper
Post workout meals are one of the most overlooked meals, but happen to be the most important.
At this point your muscles are full of blood, so what better time to maximise the effect of your workout by eating as soon as possible? This will allow nutrients to flood to where all of the blood is pumping too. This is the most effective way to repair and rebuild muscle and allow an effective recovery!
Quick science; the body’s energy comes from glycogen stores within muscle. During exercise the body consumes these glycogen stores. So in order to replenish these carbohydrates must be consumed as this is where glycogen can be yielded from. However, proteins are needed as during exercise whether its weight lifting or cardiovascular exercise, strain is placed on a muscle resulting in micro-tears. This is what allows a muscle to grow as muscle fibres fuse together and create new strands allowing the muscle to become larger and become stronger.
So in order to rebuild muscle protein must be consumed, to allow the repair post work out. During this recovery phase, including repair, the body requires energy for this to occur making readily available carbohydrates important.
With this basic understanding this signifies the importance of carbohydrates and proteins post work In this period of time which is considered to be around 45 minutes these nutrient sources should ideally be consumed, Dependent upon your goal.
If you were looking to build muscle it’s advised that you consume your post work out food 15 minutes post workout, containing around 0.4g of protein per kg of bodyweight and 0.8g of carbohydrates per 1kg of bodyweight.
So what carbohydrates should you eat, and where should you get the protein from?
Ideally you should get your protein from a whey protein supplement, because not only does this contain protein it also will have added supplements such as amino acids to help recovery and the transportation of nutrients to the muscle. However it’s important that you have this shake with WATER if you’re wishing to maximise your gains. Why? This is because fats slow down the transition of nutrients around the body so it’s less likely that all that post workout food you’ve eaten is going to reach your depleted muscles. A way that we can make sure that the nutrients are deposited to where they need to go is to eat foods which have a high glycaemic index. What does this mean? These are sugary food or fast acting carbohydrates that our body does not have to work hard to breakdown, due their high glycaemic index they will be right in glycogen and will also spike insulin levels allowing for fast transmission of glycogen and protein around the body.
Example meal 1:
1 Banana & 30g of Whey Protein (mixed with water)
Example meal 2:
30g Coco Pops with skimmed milk & 30g of Whey Protein (mixed with water)
