Timing doesn't matter for everybody, though. If your routine includes consistent meals and consistent exercise, and you basically feel fine, you may not need to mess with timing at all. You aren't "wasting" your workouts if you fail to eat afterward (even though everybody on TikTok may be telling you otherwise). You also don't need to nail down your timing to the precise minute. But there are some rules of thumb that can help you to have more energy during workouts or to fuel yourself better throughout the day.
If changing your body size isn’t a priority, you don’t need to track this exactly; just make sure you’re not accidentally undereating when you don’t mean to. And if you want to be fitter but you keep running into roadblocks—fatigue, injury—consider increasing your calories. Sometimes your body just needs a little more fuel.
Once you’re consistently getting enough calories and protein, you have a lot more leeway to adjust your diet to your liking. We should all get some amount of fat—0.5 grams per pound of bodyweight or more. And carbs may not be essential for life (as low-carb dieters like to point out) but people who eat a lot of carbs have a much better time in the gym than those who don’t. Carbs provide energy for activity, and they prevent your body from turning to muscle tissue for extra energy.
I mention all this because what you eat is more important than when you eat it. If you aren’t getting enough protein or enough vegetables, fixing that situation is more important than getting everything timed properly. But if you’ve got the basics down, let’s talk timing.
Carbs before workouts help with energy
When we exercise, it’s hard for the slow and steady pace of our fat burning to keep up with what we’re asking our body to do. If we have carbs available, in the form of blood sugar or muscle glycogen, we use those as a source of fuel. If we don’t have enough carbs available, we can feel tired or sluggish. We might still be able to get the workout done, but workouts will often feel better if we’ve managed to get some carbs before or even during the workout.
“Carbs” refers to anything with sugar, or anything that breaks down quickly into sugar, which mainly means starches. If you can eat a meal shortly before your workout, try classics like:
Toast or bread with jam, or just a thin spread of something else like peanut butter
Skim milk, maybe with some cereal or granola
A smoothie made of carb-y foods like fruit
When workouts go longer than an hour or two, you may need more than just a pre-workout snack. This is why marathon runners will suck down packets of gel while they run, and why powerlifters pass around bags of candy between sets.
Energy gels like GU
Candy, like gummy bears (a favorite of runners) or Sour Patch Kids (a favorite of powerlifters and weightlifters)
Carbs after workouts set you up for your second workout of the day
If you're planning on doing two workouts in the same day, or if you have a late evening workout followed by another first thing in the morning, eating after that first workout will prepare you for the second. If you finish a workout and aren’t likely to have another workout until tomorrow or the day after, you don’t really need to worry about this; just eat normally.
But if you do two hard workouts a day, or if you just did a workout in the evening but you also want to be at your best for a run the next morning, you may want to replenish your glycogen more quickly. After a hard workout, your muscles are ready to store carbs as glycogen if they can get them, so consider a high-carb meal after your workout.
But if you’re trying to build muscle, or if you’re trying to maintain muscle as you train for an endurance sport or as you lose weight, you want more—anywhere between 0.63 to 0.82 grams per pound of bodyweight depending on how intense your needs are. That would be 95 to 123 grams for that same 150-pound person. Going over that amount is usually OK for your health (talk to your doctor if you have kidney issues) but not necessary.
There's also a myth that if you're lifting weights, you need to have protein immediately after your workout. I should say it's mostly a myth, since having protein within a few hours of a workout is a good idea. Research shows that normal eating patterns are good enough to get those protein timing benefits; for example, if you hit the gym between breakfast and lunch, you're pretty much covered.
Protein, fats, and fiber when you want to feel full or slow digestion
We’ve talked about quick-digesting carbs (sugar, plain starches), but the flip side is that other nutrients digest more slowly. You don’t want that when you’re in the middle of a workout, but it can be useful at other times.
So if you’re eating a breakfast before a long morning of work and you know it will be a while before you get to lunch, oats (fiber) with almond butter (fat) and a side of scrambled egg whites (protein) will keep you full a lot longer than some toast with jam. Save the toast for later, when you want to have a pre-workout snack.
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