Post workout nutrition
It’s necessary that you eat proper food following your workout sessions to compensate for the lost energy and nutrition. In order to speed up the results of your regular workout, choosing the right foods is essential. Workout recovery nutrition therefore, has to become an integral part of your daily workout regime.
The muscle tissue tends to break down after an intense workout session. To counter this, you should have an easily digestible meal immediately post workouts helping the muscles recover sooner than usual.
Very often, the importance of this meal is not realized and, therefore, skipped. This meal, however, is most important when it comes to recouping the muscles and achieving the desired results in the shortest period of time.
The meal should contain carbohydrates and protein in the ratio 3:1 making it easily digestible. This meal is digested very easily and therefore, the body absorbs the nutrients very quickly. Such a post-workout meal should consist anywhere between 350 to 500 calories depending upon the individual. This is essential for muscle growth and faster muscle recovery.
Usually, fat takes time to digest. So, be sure to avoid a fatty meal. Including fat in your post-workout meal will slow down the digestion and absorption processes. Trust me, you do not want this to happen. The meal should, therefore, be easily digestible, in order to rapidly induce muscle building. Muscle building, on the other hand, will help burn more fat.
Here are some ingredients that you can include in your post-workout meal:
-Whey protein isolate – this is an easily digestible protein
-Pineapples
-Raisins
-Maple Syrup (Natural)
-Yogurt (Fat free or low fat)
-Frozen fruits
A smoothie can be a good post-workout meal. Use a blender to blend 2 frozen bananas and about ½ a cup of berries, along with some skimmed milk and a scoop of protein powder (any flavor), until smooth. You can choose the ingredients based on personal preferences.
As an alternative to taking whole foods, you can take supplements after your post workout meal. This is because consuming whole foods immediately after an intensive workout session can sometimes be too heavy for some individuals. A sample post workout diet supplement is as follows:
Sugar – 50 grams
Whey Protein – 40 grams
Glutamine – 10 grams
Creatine – 5 grams
Arginine – 5 grams
Add about 32 ounces of water and mix all of the above together.
During your workout, keep sipping a bit of the mixture at regular intervals. Add another 16 ounces of water when you’re half way through your workout. This is necessary for increasing the body fluids and adding more volume to the blood, which in turn will help pump more blood during your workout.
People who don’t like to eat immediately after a workout can opt for the protein rich smoothie. For about 40 minutes, refrigerate the smoothie and immediately after your workout, consume it.
Since the post-workout meal serves a specific purpose – treating the body muscles soon after workout and helping them recover faster – it’s natural for you to have noticed ingredients that are otherwise uncommon in our regular meals. Although rich, this meal helps regain the lost energy but not add any additional calories since all that you consume is quickly absorbed to compensate the loss.
If not more, the post-workout meal is at least as important as any other regular meal of the day. Remember that skipping this meal will only delay muscle repair, which in turn will delay muscle growth. Post workout nutrition is, therefore, extremely essential to effective and safe body building.
