John Myers
It’s a well-known rule not to eat anything heavy before swimming. But what about other sports? You can find out when, how much, and what is good before training here.
The right food before exercise
Without nutrients, the body lacks energy. Anyone who has eaten too little during the day and starts an intensive workout in the evening will soon notice a drop in performance. Especially in endurance sports, the body uses carbohydrates that are stored in the cells of the organs. Even when these glycogen stores are well stocked, carbohydrates are only available to the body for about 90 minutes of intense exercise. If they are empty, the athlete runs out of readily available energy for muscle work even more quickly. Starvation diets such as the military diet are therefore unsuitable if performance is to be achieved.
Filling up glycogen stores: a prerequisite for fitness
Although the organism switches to burning fat, this process only works in well-trained athletes without loss of performance. Everyone else feels the notorious hunger pangs, the hypoglycaemia in the body, which manifests itself in a feeling of weakness. Since this increases the risk of injury, neither endurance nor weight training should be practiced on an empty stomach. In the latter case, it is also true that eating before training is easy on the muscles. When working with heavy weights, the body goes into a muscle-wasting state. If your goal is to build muscle, a pre-workout meal is a must. If you want to lose weight, eating before exercise prevents you from losing desire during your workout with a growling stomach and then overeating afterwards.
When and what should you eat before exercise?
Eating before exercise should therefore primarily fill the glycogen stores. However, that doesn’t mean that a lot helps a lot. While digestibility is not that important when eating after exercise, a heavy meal beforehand would be too heavy on the stomach: the body is busy with digestive work, and training is impaired. There should therefore be an interval of two to three hours between meals and the last main meal. Even if they are part of a balanced diet for athletes, foods rich in fat and fiber are unfavorable with this type of food, as they remain in the digestive tract for a particularly long time. It is better to rely on a diet that is easy to digest: Lean meat or fish, non-bloating vegetables, pasta, or rice, for example, are good choices. Eggs, finely ground wholemeal products or oatmeal with fruit provide energy in the morning. Be inspired by our ideas for an athlete’s breakfast. In the time after the main course, snacks with quickly digestible carbohydrates and some protein, such as natural yoghurt with ripe bananas, are recommended.
