Should you eat something before your workouts?
Long story short, the answer is yes, and in this video, we’re going to take a look into
the scientific research to help us find out how much, when, and what we should eat before
doing our 10 variations of bicep curls.
Hi, I’m PictureFit, I make health and fitness content to help you with your goals and gains.
Although eating before your exercises can make a difference, we do have to talk about
priorities first.
So before using the recommendations in this video, first take care of the big picture,
which is your overall nutrition.
That means reaching the calories you need for your respective goals, eating mostly nutritious
whole foods, and of course, getting enough protein.
Another priority to consider is the time of your last meal.
Specifically, if you’re someone that exercises first thing in the morning, or you train fasted,
then the information in this video is much more relevant.
Numerous research, many I’ve covered in my past videos, show that training fasted
can have demonstrably negative impacts to your overall performance.
And, even though it is true that training fasted burns more fat during exercise, none
of it matters if, again, your overall nutrition isn’t properly sorted.
Plus, you can actually burn more calories if you’re training in a fed state since
you can train harder and for longer, which also means burning more fat in the long run,
but more importantly, it means getting bigger scoops of German Chocolate Cake ice cream
during your cheat meals.
VERY important.
For those that have a meal about 4 to 6 hours before training, eating something a bit closer
to it still makes sense.
With priorities covered, let’s get started with first discussing the macronutrients that
will serve us best before training.
When looking through the research, the macronutrient showing the most consistent benefits with
pre-exercise consumption are carbs, especially for endurance and training to exhaustion.
This lines up well with our understanding of our energy system.
Carbs replenishes one of the main energy stores our body uses known as glycogen, which is
usually lower after a long state of fasting and after exercise.
The pre-workout carb benefits are even better when we pair them with the macronutrient protein.
Again, for things like endurance, some studies have shown as much as a 40% increase in subjects
time to exhaustion when taking carbs and protein compared to just carbs itself.
A pretty substantial leap.
However, this really isn’t the case for resistance exercises, like lifting weights.
There are some evidence suggesting pre-exercise carbs or carbs plus protein is beneficial,
but the research is more on internal or mechanistic outcomes and less on performance and muscle.
Nonetheless, pre-exericse protein has also shown to slow down muscle breakdown during
exercise as well as elevate muscle protein synthesis, although this point is still debated.
And again, getting enough OVERALL protein throughout the day is much more important,
and doing so frankly renders most of the pre-exercise protein benefits irrelevant.
Big picture gets the win here.
The least important macronutrient is fat.
There are some evidence of increased fat oxidation, which means burning more fat during exercise,
but the overall outcomes in both performance and gains are largely neutral for pre-exercise
fat consumption.
Again, your overall nutrient intake supplants any importance pre-exercise fat intake might
have.
So, that’s carbs mixed with proteins being best.
It can also be in virtually any form, solid (raisins, jellybeans), liquid (sports drink),
or even gel form (“fuel” gels”) and still provide benefits.
As far as WHEN, some research has shown that eating 30 minutes before exercise is probably
best, however, the dataset here is pretty small and definitely not set in stone.
In my opinion, being close enough to training is fine and still much better than training
fasted.
A good range to shoot for is more between 15 minutes to 2 hours before your workout.
In terms of HOW MUCH you should eat, about 20 to 30 grams of carbohydrates along with
about three to six grams of protein seem to be the best or most practical range for improving
performance.
Getting a bit less or more at times is fine.
But, if you plan to have a larger or full meal before exercise, then try to eat 3 hours
before instead.
Otherwise, 30 grams carbs and 6 grabs protein, not bad.
And for those wondering, in terms of supplements, like preworkouts and caffeine, they definitely
can help.
I’ll leave a few links in the description to my videos covering those if you wanna learn
more about them.
As far as concerns, barring any personal health considerations, everything we just discussed
should generally be fine.
But, if you personally run into problems with eating before exercise, then you should just
skip it and instead, again, focus on covering that big picture we discussed.
So to recap, eating carbs with protein is likely best for all types of training but
more so for lengthy or endurance exercises.
Try to eat about 15 minutes to 2 hours before your training with the sweet spot being around
30 minutes, but make sure you monitor how your stomach reacts to the times.
And finally, aim for around 20 to 30 grams of carbs and three to six grams of protein.
A bit more or less is fine, but extend the gap to 3 hours if you’re planning for a
whole meal.
Now, if you still want to train without eating beforehand, then that’s fine.
But once again, louder for the hungry fasting people in the back, make sure that you’re
getting enough nutrients overall.
And that’s it for eating before your workouts.
Carbs and proteins get a thumbs up.
I hope this video helps you with your pre-workout snackout and bring you that much closer to
your 11th variant of bicep curls.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a nutritious thumbs up and share it with your
bicep-loving friends.
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As always, thank you for watching and don’t forget to get your PROTEIN!
Along with your carbs.