What shall I eat before training?

This question is very common amongst gym goers, nobody is quite sure on what they should be eating before the gym and how long before.

First of all of all does it really matter what you eat before training? Are you looking to perform to the best of your ability? Are you just going in the gym to jump on the cardio machines and do a bit of body weight stuff? Are you looking to increase strength? Are you looking to lose body fat?

All of the above is very relevant.

If the goal is to perform to the best of your ability in the weights room, you trying to get stronger, build a great physique and overall change your body composition then what you eat before is key.

Lets look at why we need to have a decent pre exercise meal.

Firstly we are trying to fuel or re-fuel muscle glycogen stores, secondly if you training first thing in the morning we need to restore liver glycogen stores, because whilst we sleep our body uses predominately liver glycogen to maintain blood sugar levels.

We must make sure we are properly hydrated as water plays a huge part in shuttling glycogen to muscle cells.

We must make sure we are not hungry when training but also making sure we don’t have any digestive discomfort, eating foods that are to heavy and seat in your stomach whilst training is never a good idea.

Also a very important thing is to eat a meal you enjoy and can be consistent with, there is no point in downing a tasteful smoothie if you know you are going to dread it every time you going to train, remember consistency is key and if you enjoy it you will be more consistent.

So what shall we consider before training?

Time wise we should be eating anything from 4 to 2 hours, this is dependent on the person. Just remember you don’t want to be hungry whilst training and you don’t want to too full.

This meal in my opinion should contain carbohydrates to fuel you for the up coming training session and you want fat intake to be low as this will slow down the absorption of the carbohydrates.

If you consume a high fibre meal before training this could cause you gastric issues so keep fibre low as well.

#changinglives