What to Eat After Exercise

Now that we’ve discussed that you should eat – and what you should eat – before exercising, I’ll tell you what to eat afterwards.

It’s important to eat a mixture of a protein and carbohydrate within an hour of exercising. Eat within a half hour – max – if you were strength training during your workout. There is much debate on how long you can wait to eat after your workout, but it’s clear that the sooner you eat, the better you will benefit.

Put it this way; if you go to an aerobic-type exercise class, or you spend 40 minutes on a treadmill, eating within 30 minutes of exercise will guarantee you will continue to burn fat as the body will use your food immediately for fuel. If you don’t eat whatsoever, or wait a long time before eating, your body will start to use something else for energy (a.k.a. your muscles).

If you are doing any type of workout involving weights, you may fail to see any gains if you’re waiting too long to eat. Oxygen magazine featured an article that basically said to eat within 15 minutes of exercising; if you wait any longer than an hour, you will seriously minimize the gains you made strength training!

The point is this: be vigilant of your body. You ran it into the ground, now fill it with something nourishing. You will see the results of your efforts at the gym if you treat your body well. Come back next time and I will show you what specifically to eat after each type of workout.

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