What to Eat Before, During, and After Your Workout

I’ve mentioned in a previous episode that fitness is like baking a cake. The essential ingredients for this cake are movement, nutrition, recovery, and mindset. But as any baker knows, timing is crucial. When it comes to nutrition, questions about what to eat before, during, and after workouts frequently come up.

These are important questions because the nutrition you derive from food is the fuel that allows you to perform during workouts and recover from them afterward. If you’re fueling your body right, this back and forth between performance and recovery progressively leads to a leaner, stronger, and healthier body.

Nutrition scientists are realizing that when you eat doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference for most people when real changes such as performance gains are measured over longer periods of time.

In this episode, I’m going to provide you with simple and straightforward advice based on the latest research on how to best fuel for your workouts. I’m also going to share with you some of my favorite recipes for meals that are delicious and nutritious that you can quickly put together, all available from our colleagues at Cookstr. 

The importance of total daily nutrient intake 

Before we delve into recommendations about what to eat before, during, and after your workouts, it’s important to note that scientific knowledge about exercise nutrition has deepened over the last decade. As more research has become available, total daily nutrient intake has become more important than the timing of intake for athletes and active individuals alike. 

In other words, the question of whether your total energy needs are being met should be prioritized over questions of timing. Nutrition scientists are realizing that when you eat doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference for most people when real changes such as performance gains are measured over longer periods of time. 

That’s not to say that nutrient timing is dead. Nutrient timing is helpful if you’re a weight class athlete, serious endurance athlete, professional bodybuilder, or if you train twice a...

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