Should You Eat Before a Morning Workout?
by SHAPE Diet Doctor Mike Roussell, Ph.D, for SHAPE.com
It's a constant question in the fitness world: Should you eat before a workout? If you're anything like us, when you work out, especially in the morning, you end up starving afterward. But does eating before a workout mean you'll consume more calories than necessary?
We went to SHAPE diet doctor and nutrition expert Mike Roussell, ph.D, author of 6 Pillars of Nutrition to get his opinion on eating before a morning workout. Here's what he had to say.
Not only will you not eat that much more, you should always fuel yourself before you exercise in the a.m. The key with working out first thing in the morning is that you want to energize your training session so you can perform at your best. Feeling sluggish and dragging through your fitness routine is no way to work out.
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Despite what you may have heard, training fasted doesn't lead to greater fat loss and instead allows for excessive muscle breakdown during and after working out. I have found that having clients fuel their training sessions is the quickest way to improve workout intensity and quality. I want you to have something before you train. But unless you get up early enough to eat a meal 90 minutes before your morning workout, you won't have enough time to digest and assimilate a full solid food meal. Instead, try a snack based on your goals.
Goal-Specific Fueling
There are two basic categories that I use for pre-workout fueling-weight loss and performance-and each has its own strategy.
Weight loss: If your goal is to drop pounds, having a scoop of whey protein or 10 grams of branched chain amino acids 20 to 30 minutes before you hit the gym can be all you need to power up your session. The amino acids in the protein or BCAAs will fuel your muscles and jumpstart muscle building while preventing excessive muscle breakdown. Their makeup allows you to readily access alternate fuel sources while training, like body fat, so you burn flab, not muscle.
Performance: Your training shouldn't always be about weight loss and when it isn't, I want add additional carbohydrates to your mix. Twenty to 25 grams of carbs in the form of coconut water or a sports drink in combination with the protein or amino acids mentioned above will give your blood sugar a slight bump so that there is ample fuel coursing through your bloodstream when you hit the track or gym.
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Nutrient Carryover
One area of workout nutrition that we have long underappreciated is the carryover effect. When you have your pre-workout drink, these nutrients carry over to well after your workout is over. For example, one research study found that having a whey protein drink before a workout resulted in blood amino acid levels being increased for up to 2 hours following the workout. Your pre-workout shake does double duty of both pre- and post-training nutrition.
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