Diet and exercise are intertwined and it is difficult to achieve the benefits of a healthy lifestyle by paying attention to one and ignoring the other. You must supplement your fitness routine with a healthy diet to get the result you want. It doesn’t make sense to work out for hours and then wolf down junk food or adopt unhealthy eating habits like missing breakfast and meals.
Paying attention to what you eat just before your workout is as important to what you eat during the rest of the day and immediately after. A good pre-workout nutrition gives you enough energy to power through your workout without the feeling of sleepiness and bloating and also prevents catabolism – your body using protein as an energy source due to starvation. This especially important to those whom do endurance exercises like weight lifting and back exercises on the Nordictrack Rowing Machine.
A post-workout nutrition, on the other hand, helps your body recover and build from the work out.
A pre-workout diet should primarily consist of carbohydrates (with a little protein) to give the body the energy it needs during the workout and should be had one to two hours before the workout. The reason for this is to give the body sufficient time to digest and convert the food into energy.
Below is a guide on what to eat before your workout.
Bananas
Bananas are a rich in carbohydrates, fibre and potassium. Carbohydrates are the fuel your body needs during a workout so it doesn’t catabolize and reduce your gains.
Fibre helps with your digestions as well as regulating the conversion of the carbohydrates into sugar thereby ensuring you have a constant supply of energy to take you through your workout sessions.
Besides being an important mineral in the nervous system, potassium also helps with maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance in the body. This is particularly important if your workouts often result in a lot of sweating and is why many will look for the best electrolyte powder to help them replace any lost electrolytes.
Water
Water is not necessarily a food but is an important element in pre-workout nutrition nonetheless. Being properly hydrated is important for high-intensity exercises that cause excessive sweating. You need water to avoid fatigue and release impurities through sweating.
Yoghurt
Yoghurts have a perfect mix of proteins and sugars making them a perfect pre-workout nutrition food. Better yet, yoghurts are easily digestible.
Yoghurt makes a perfect alternative for when you are running late for the gym and you can’t have a proper meal. Working out on an empty stomach will not only lower your performance and cause protein synthesis for energy but might also make you feel dizzy in the course of the exercise. You would rather drink yoghurt and have a banana 30 minutes to your workout than go on an empty stomach.
Bread
A wholemeal bread is another good source energy during workouts. It is however best taken two hours to a workout because the energy release from a whole meal bread is slow and you want the optimal time to be during your workout.
The fibres in a whole meal bread help in digestion and making one full fast and are therefore important for people whose goal is to lose weight.