Fueling Fat Burn: 3 Nutrition Tips for Post-Workout Results!
Post-workout nutrition is an intriguing topic and rightfully so. The basic idea is threefold:
The body deals with nutrients differently at different times, depending on activity.
What you consume before, during, and especially after your workout is important.
By consuming particular nutrients after your workouts (aka post-workout nutrition), you improve your body composition, performance, and overall recovery.
Most people have either the goal of losing fat, gaining size or improving sport performance. The timing, type and quality of nutrients around your workout could possibly be the most important factor in determining what result you will ultimately create.
In today’s blog, I want to share with you the TOP 3 Nutrition Tips for Best Workout Results!
#1 - What You Eat or Drink, Your Body Uses.
In order for your body to best utilize nutrition, it has to be at least available in the blood stream. Having nutrients available pre, during and post-workout will make the most of your workouts because the available nutrients safely signal your body to use them for their ideal purpose.
We can improve availability in two ways.
Increased blood flow to skeletal muscle during and after exercise means that more nutrients are floating around more quickly.
Providing an amino acid and glucose dense blood supply during and after exercise means that the rate of protein synthesis goes up.
Thus, we improve availability by having more blood circulating more rapidly, and by having more nutrients in that blood. If protein is available, it will signal the body to build new muscle tissue. If carbs are available, it will signal the body to replenish glycogen (stored energy reserves) stores in your muscles and liver.
BCAAs (Branch-Chained Amino Acids) and EAAs (Essential Amino Acids) are special proteins that you can consume during workouts can signal muscles to repair and grow during the actual workout. Studies have even shown that it may reduce the perception of fatigue as well.
When your body is able to recover and heal fast, it will lead to better fat burning results because its speeds up muscle mass growth and replenishes your energy stores so you can consistently workout at high intensities without chronic fatigues. This is what will ultimately boost your overall metabolism and create fat-burning effects that last a lifetime!
#2 - Never Miss Your Post-Workout Nutrition Window
Some refer to this workout and post-workout phenomenon as “the window of opportunity”.
During this window, your muscles are primed to accept nutrients that can stimulate muscle repair, muscle growth, and muscle strength.
This window opens immediately after your workout and starts to close pretty quickly. Research suggests that while protein synthesis persists for at least 48 hours after exercise, it’s most important to get post-workout nutrition immediately in liquid form, and within 2 hours afterwards in whole-food form.
After an intense workout that is longer than 30-40 minutes, ideally consuming a liquid mixture of 20-25g protein (powder supplement) with 10-30g of fast-acting carbs (dextrose, maltodextrin, glucose) within 30 minutes maximizes the “window of opportunity”.
Within 2-3 hours after consuming the liquid mixture, you should consume a whole-food meal that consists of 2 palms of protein, 2 fists of vegetables, a cupped handful of dense carbs and a whole fruit for dessert.
The plate contents may change depending on your fitness goals but eating a big, balanced meal like this can have the potential to continue fat burn for up to 2 days! If you need to see the specific setup of your post-workout meal for your goals, click here to access this helpful info graph from Precision Nutrition.
If you feed your body properly while this window is open, you’ll get the most fat-burning benefits.
If you don’t provide adequate post exercise nutrition fast enough — even if you delay by only a couple of hours — you decrease muscle glycogen storage and protein synthesis significantly.
#3 - Drinking Nutrients is Faster Than Eating
As we’ve mentioned, post-workout nutrition requires two things:
Protein to aid in protein synthesis (using protein to build structure)
Carbohydrates to help replace muscle glycogen (and to enhance the role of insulin in transporting nutrients into cells)
You could certainly eat a whole food meal that meets these requirements after exercise.
However, whole food meals aren’t always practical.
Some people aren’t hungry immediately after exercise.
Whole food digests slowly, and we want nutrients to be available quickly.
A whole food meal that requires refrigeration might be less practical.
On the other hand, consuming a liquid form of nutrition that contains rapidly digesting carbohydrates (e.g., maltodextrin, dextrose, glucose, etc) and proteins (e.g., protein hydrolysates or isolates:
might accelerate recovery by utilizing insulin for nutrient transport into cells;
can result in rapid digestion and absorption; and
is often better tolerated during and after workouts.
If you drink first then eat second, you can extend your fat-burning ability because you will be able to digest, utilize and absorb nutrients immediately after workouts and extend the metabolic effect with the whole foods after. Its like adding more firewood to a dying flame to make the fire come back to life and last for days.
Extra: Which Workout Qualify?
Save your workout drink for weight training, interval, and endurance training lasting 45 minutes or longer.
Casual exercise like walking the dog, moving cobblestones for grandpa, or riding your bike to the arcade doesn’t require a recovery drink.
When performing energy expenditure work to burn energy or lose fat, a recovery drink is not necessary. If you’re prioritizing fat loss, performance and recovery from these sessions are not as important as creating an energy deficit.
Still, if overall energy intake is low from food intake, and lots of time is being spent performing energy expenditure work, consuming a branched chain amino acid (BCAA) supplement might be helpful.
Conclusion: Always remember that your workouts are your best offense for reaching any fitness goals. What you feed your body around your workout will determine how you look and feel. If you master this concept and it becomes a habit, you will dramatically increase the potential of reaching your fitness goals!
Thank you for reading, I hope this helped you! Please share this with someone that needs to hear this!
- Carl Anthony Grande
Are you struggling with eating habits that promote fat loss or muscle building?
If you are ready to turn this year into a healthy and strong one, apply for a No-Sweat Intro to Empyrea and we will spark the change that you want to see in your workouts and fitness goals!
Empyrea is the most effective gym in the area because we focus on the most important things that make the biggest fitness changes in the shortest time - LIKE USING NUTRITION TO GET BETTER RESULTS THAT LAST. Try us and live the difference today!
