Fitness Training
How to nail your pre-workout nutrition
Nutritionist and former bodybuilding champion Anita Bean reveals the secrets to eating well before a workout.
Fuelling properly before a workout can help you train harder and keep going for longer, ensuring you perform at your best.
But sometimes, scheduling a meal two-to-four hours before a workout isn't always convenient. Perhaps you get up at the crack of dawn to exercise before work, or you've signed up to Red Bull's Active When On Lunch campaign and exercise on your lunch break.
Here's how to schedule your nutrition around your personal workout timetable, including what to eat and how much.
Why is pre-workout nutrition important?
Most of the energy needed for your workout comes from your fat and carbohydrate (glycogen) stores. Any carbohydrates that you’ve eaten recently will have been converted into glycogen and stored in your muscles and liver. But this process isn't instant. Food ingested immediately before exercise will not be stored as glycogen, but will influence the fuel mixture your muscles burn during your workout.
If you have a meal containing carbohydrates before exercise, this will increase carbohydrate burning during exercise. It also means you’ll be able to exercise at a higher intensity for longer.
The purpose of fuelling before exercise is to keep hunger at bay and raise blood glucose. This will help delay the onset of fatigue and increase your endurance and performance.
What should you eat before a workout?
Porridge is a great morning pre-exercise meal
© Klara Avsenik / Unsplash
Your pre-exercise meal should include foods rich in carbohydrates, as well as some protein and healthy fat. The combination of these macronutrients will provide sustained energy to help you get through your workout. Both protein and fat slow the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates, so the closer your meal is to your workout, the less you want to eat.
Eating too much fat before a workout (think burger and chips or a bacon sandwich) can slow digestion and result in stomach discomfort. On the other hand, eating a meal devoid of fat and protein (think jam sandwiches) could leave you hungry and lacking in energy. Suitable pre-training meals include:
Breakfast: Porridge with milk and a few chopped almonds or a spoonful of nut butter
Lunch: Jacket potato with hummus, tuna or chilli; or a falafel and avocado wrap
Dinner: Vegetable risotto with peas or pad Thai (stir-fried noodles) with tofu or chicken
But if you have less than one-to-two hours before your workout, opt for an easy-to-digest, high-carbohydrate snack. Suitable options include:
- Low-fat plain Greek yogurt with granola
- Bananas
- Peanut butter on toast
- Fruit and nut bar
- A smoothie made with berries, bananas and milk
When and how much should you eat?
A banana is a great source of fuel less than an hour before a workout
© Tim Foster / Unsplash
The closer your pre-workout meal is to your workout, the smaller it must be. For example, if you have only one-to-two hours before your workout, then eat a small meal or snack of 300-400 calories (or about 5kcal/kg body weight). If you can eat four hours before your workout, then have a larger meal of 400-800 calories (or approximately 10 kcal/kg body weight).
In practice, the exact timing of your pre-workout meal will probably depend on constraints such as work hours, travel and your training schedule. Try to plan meals as best you can around these commitments. For example, if you exercise in the early evening, plan to eat a substantial lunch followed by a smaller snack of 100-300 kcal between 30–60 minutes before your session. If you prefer a midday class, then eat a substantial breakfast followed by a smaller snack before your training if you’re feeling hungry.
What is the optimal time to eat before a workout?
Avoid eating too close to exercise as this can cause stomach discomfort
© BSIP / Universal Images Group / Getty
Ideally, try to schedule your pre-exercise meal two-to-four hours before your workout. This will give you enough time to digest the food but not too long an interval to cause this energy to be used up by the time you start exercising. Eating a meal too close to exercise will almost certainly result in stomach discomfort, as the blood supply diverts from your digestive organs to the muscles. The body cannot digest a big meal and exercise at the same time! On the other hand, leaving too long a gap means you may feel hungry, light-headed and lacking energy during exercise. You should feel comfortable – not too full and not hungry.
Fasted training
The theory behind fasted training is to encourage the muscles to burn more fat for fuel and less carbohydrate. This is true up to a point but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll lose weight or that you’ll end up losing weight quicker. To lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit – that is, you must consume fewer calories than your body needs over the course of several days, not a single workout. Sometimes, fasted training may also leave you so hungry that you end up overeating after the session.
Training fasted means you may feel hungry, light-headed and lacking energy during exercise. It may also cause you to fatigue sooner or to drop your intensity, resulting in lower overall calorie expenditure.
If you prefer training fasted (such as first thing in the morning), then that’s fine provided you’re doing low- or moderate-intensity exercise (as you’ll be burning relatively more fat and less carbohydrate). However, if you plan to do high-intensity exercise longer than 60-90 minutes, then having a high-carbohydrate meal or snack beforehand will help increase your endurance (as you’ll be burning relatively more carbohydrate and less fat).
For lower-intensity workouts, such as yoga or recovery runs, the overall calorie burn is fairly low so a pre-workout meal is less important, and you would be fine not eating beforehand. Similarly, high-intensity but intermittent workouts such as weight training places fairly small demands on glycogen stores and the overall calorie expenditure is not as great as continuous high-intensity aerobic exercise, such as tempo runs or hard cycle rides.
Need a fresh workout to do on your lunch hour? Try the 15-minute HIIT workout in the player below
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