Eating For Exercise

Regardless of whether you're going to do a cardio workout or a resistance workout, you must always be sure to eat a balanced amount of protein and carbohydrates. Depending on what types of exercises you are doing and how hard you are working out is the determining factor on how many carbs and how much protein you should eat. One hour prior to beginning exercise is the best time for consumption of your pre workout meal. If you intend to have a low-level intensity workout, you should eat approximately 200 calories before you exercise. When your exercise routine is going to be very intense, it is best in most cases to consume 4 to 5 thousand calories beforehand. For those of you who will be performing a cardio session, you'll require a combination of 2/3 carbohydrates and 1/3 protein. By doing this, your sustained energy will be longer due to the additional carbs with sufficient protein to keep your muscle from breaking down as you work out. For a resistance workout, you should consume a combination of 1/3 carbohydrates and 2/3 protein, as this will ensure that you have sufficient energy from the carbohydrates to do each set, with the additional protein to keep muscle breakdown low as you exercise. Having something to eat following exercise is as crucial as eating prior to a workout. Whenever you perform any exercise, cardio or resistance, your energy/glycogen levels are exhausted. Glycogen is the most important fuel for the brain and associated components; if it's not replaced after exercise, the body starts to consume muscle tissue to make amino acids into a replacement fuel. The tissue of muscles will be broken down by micro tear creation during resistance exercise. This indicates that following a workout, your muscles start repairing themselves instantly. Protein is crucial here for muscle repair, since you do not want muscle breaking down any more to make fuel rather than lost glycogen. As soon as you're done with a cardio session, you have to have mostly carbohydrates, ideally ones that are high in fiber. Great sources are oatmeal, pasta made with whole wheat, fruits from the north, and rice. In addition, try to eat 30 to 50 grams of these kinds of carbohydrates following exercise. Following some cardio exercise, you can consume food in a short period of time. After performing resistance exercises, it is important to eat a mixture of carbohydrates and proteins. Being different from cardiovascular workouts, resistance exercise will cause muscle break down by making little tears. To increase the strength and size of the muscle, protein to repair and build up the tears is a necessary requirement. The carbohydrates won't just replace the lost muscle glycogen, they also will help the protein get into muscle cells where it will synthesize into structural protein, or the actual muscle itself. Following your resistance exercise, you ought to postpone eating for about thirty minutes, so that you won't draw blood away from your muscles too rapidly. Your muscles will begin healing themselves if the blood has the opportunity to help the metabolic waste wash away.