Eat to Grow:

Solving the Post Workout Eating Puzzle

Jim Bell, PhDc

The most critical nutritional period for muscle growth is the post workout meal.  Following a hard workout, your body is severely depleted of glycogen and glucose.  Hard working muscles utilize glucose (usable form) and glycogen (stored form) for energy.  The proper post workout meal helps create your lean, hard-earned physique and keeps muscles worst enemy, cortisol, in check.  Cortisol chews up muscle tissue for proteins and converts them into glucose.  This is a protective mechanism to ensure that the body has a supply of energy in times of danger.  Any training athlete knows that excessive cortisol is not a good thing.

The following outlines the importance or unimportance of each macronutrient in the post workout meal.  The products suggested are considered the most complete products in the industry to fulfill these needs.

Carbs offset protein catabolism, replenish spent glycogen and permit supercompensation of glycogen stored.  Most studies done have shown good effects of using 1 to 2 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodymass, reflective of your body weight and training volume.

Get your protein from a combination whey and whey isolate protein shake.  Why?  Regular food protein digests too slowly to take advantage of the post workout processes.  You simply can't take advantage of the anabolic state you're in when that chicken breast you eat hits your bloodstream 2 hours later!  Whey isolates are absorbed immediately and whey concentrate soon follows and both are partially predigested through an enzyme bath so half the work is done for you.  25-50g of protein is sufficient depending on body weight and training volume.

 

Fat

 

Avoid fat post workout.  Fat inevitably delays digestion because it metabolically requires so many more processes to break down.  Post workout you want efficient digestion and fat gets in the way.  Besides, it is questionable as to whether or not you need fat for any real nutritional purpose post workout.  If there is a need, I'm sure that most people would have no problem with that fat coming from bodyfat sources.

 

Water 

 

Water is used internally by working tissues and to keep the temperature of your body down.  The fact that you can lose 20% contractile strength by only dehydrating a muscle a little should underline the importance of water in effective training.  Maintaining adequate hydration throughout the day is key.  Suggested amount drink your body weight in ounces of water per day, spread throughout the day.  Example:  200lb person should drink at least 200 oz/day.

 

Moderate your intake of this post workout solution.  Why?  Even though you can process nutrients more efficiently post workout than any other time, it is still possible to overload your body's capacity to digest.  One of the biggest reasons why people get fat is because they eat too much at one time! 

 

Don't Turn a Very Anabolic Period into a Fat Storing Party

Buffer your intake of your post workout meals over 1 to 1.5 hours.  Drink them slowly.  As a general rule, try to consume half your post workout shake immediately after workout, and then continue sipping on the remainder of your shake within 1 hour after your workout has been completed.  Sip on water at the same time too.

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