Is it Best to Eat Before or After a Workout?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Is it Best to Eat Before or After a Workout?

This question comes up all the time, “Is it best to eat before or after a workout?” As with many topics in the health industry, you’ll find quite a bit of conflicting information out there. The answer to that question depends on whether your goal is to lose weight (burn fat) or gain muscle. If you’re overweight and looking to lose fat, one of the best tricks is to do your cardio workout on an empty stomach. A great way to make that happen is to get up and go for a walk or jog first thing in the morning before breakfast. When you wake up on an empty stomach after not eating all night long, your glucose levels are low. Your body burns glucose first for fuel when doing any type of cardio workout that gets your heart rate up for a significant length of time. The second choice of fuel once glucose has been depleted is body fat. If you get up and go for a walk or run first thing on an empty stomach, there will be very little glucose to burn, and right away your body will begin to burn fat. If you get up, eat a breakfast of cereal or a bagel and then go out for your walk or run, then it will take some time to burn through the glucose (sugar) you just consumed in those starchy foods. If you are ravenous when you wake up and must eat, scramble up some egg whites or eat a bit of chicken or other protein that doesn’t contain any carbohydrates or sugars. Once you’ve finished your cardio workout, you can come back and eat a good, healthy breakfast.

However, if your intention isn’t so much to lose body fat but instead to increase muscle tone, you’ll be more focused on a strength training workout. You wouldn’t want to get up in the morning first thing and work out with weights on an empty stomach. Your muscles will feel weak, and they won’t be receiving the proper nutrition to build lean mass. Exercising a muscle with weights or resistance training causes tiny tears in the muscle fibers. As the muscle fibers heal, they grow back larger than before. Not only will more lean muscle mass make you stronger than before, but it will also increase your metabolism and create a fitter, leaner, more toned body. Women shouldn’t worry about bulking up like men when weight-lifting – female bodies simply lack the hormones needed for that “bulky physique.” Yet weight lifting is an essential part of fitness for both men and women. In order to maximize each weight-lifting or strength training workout, the proper combination and timing of meals is completely different than that of a cardio session.  Carbohydrates are the main source of energy during a strength training workout. Glycogen from those carbs become the fuel used to provide energy for short, intense bursts of strength. The longer and harder you work out, the more glycogen your muscles will require to keep lifting those weights. Once these stores of glycogen are depleted, your energy levels will decline and your muscles will begin tiring. Hence, it’s important to eat carbohydrates both before and after a workout. Since protein is the building block of muscle, it’s also just as important to incorporate protein in your meals as well. To give your muscles the nutrition they need to rebuild, eat a light meal of complex carbs and protein about an hour before your workout (like oatmeal), and another meal within a half-hour after your workout. The second meal should contain both complex carbs, protein and a bit of simple carbs (like fruit). Eat a mix green salad with veggies, chicken breast and an apple, for example.