What you eat before and after your work out can have an immense impact on your results.
Obviously you do not want to have a big heavy meal right before your work out because your system is too busy digesting. You also do not want to come to the gym hungry because then your body will use the calories you will be burning from your muscles. Instead of gaining strength, you then would be losing strength and actually increase your body fat percentage.
Also, you should not think that you can have a big meal including dessert after work out since you just burnt all these calories. That would defeat the whole purpose.
Let us look at what would be some good solutions for foods or beverages before and after hitting the gym.
For your work-out you will need some energy that lasts you through your routine. Also, it should not sit heavy in your stomach. Our bodies derive energy from fats and carbohydrates. While energy from fats take up to four hours to be ready to consume, carbohydrates are available within 30 minutes (fruit) or maximum one hour (more complex carbs). What would be a good choice for you is also depending on how long a work-out you are planning to have.

Before Your Workout: What to Eat:
So, some easy choices for a routine that is less than one hour would be a banana, an apple or some other piece of fruit. If your routine lasts longer than one hour, you will need extra energy. In that case, have an English muffin with a little bit of peanut butter before your work out.
Any time you feel tired or low on energy, ask yourself, when you ate last and what it was. When you are working out and you are yawning, chances are that your system simply needs extra fuel. And in this case, your body will burn muscle. You can avoid this by bringing an additional piece of fruit to the gym and enjoy it if you feel low.
You will see people in the gym working out while sipping on flavored waters, performance enhancement drinks or simply water with carbohydrate-mixes in.
These are all good alternatives for carbs before or during work out.

After Your Workout: What to Eat:
As for eating AFTER work out, even if you only did some cardio, you have just injured your body, your muscles have been torn on a micro level. Nevertheless, you need to repair. Our body rebuilds itself through amino acids, which are provided in our diet by protein. So, after your work out, give your body what it needs: Protein.
You will get best results if you fuel your system with rapidly absorbing protein in a certain time window after work out: Not within the first 15 minutes but no later than 40 minutes after work out.
Fast absorbing protein that can be used for this purpose would be isolated whey protein in a liquid form. Something around 20g should be enough since some people have issues digesting more than 20g. There are a number of liquid proteins on the market, so watch out, that the one of your choosing has less than 20% sugar out of the total amount of calories from carbohydrates.
Then after this protein-fix, you can have the next full meal two hours later. A full meal consists of lean protein (ideally chicken, turkey or fish) and complex carbohydrates (think veggies or salad) and good fats (a small piece of avocado).
Of course, these recommendations are suited for the average gym-goer who intends to drop body fat and add some muscle definition. It is not so much designed to aid someone getting ready for an endurance event such as a marathon or for some body getting ready for a body building competition. These individuals need to follow a very strict diet in order to achieve their goals and are usually working with a nutritionist.
So, stay well and enjoy life!

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