The Post-Workout Window: Eating Fast Carbs After Training

What’s your go-to post-workout meal?

Do you have one? Do you even put that much thought into it?

The post-workout meal is a highly debated topic. Should you eat carbs before your workout? After? What about protein? Is there really such a thing as an anabolic window??

Why Post-Workout Meals Matter

What you consume after training is if importance, for a few reasons: replenish glycogen stores, promote protein synthesis and inhibit muscle breakdown, fend off DOMS, enhance recovery, burn bodyfat more efficiently.

Here are two of my post-workout snacks of choice:

and

I usually have some protein with it like Whey Protein Isolate or some turkey.

High Glycemic Carbohydrates

Here’s why:

High-glycemic carbohydrates – starchy veggies and fruits – are able to best replenish the glycogen stores to the muscle, as well as rehydrate the muscle (carbohydrate.)

Glycogen is essential to optimal performance during resistance training, and a typical resistance training workout depletes the majority of our glycogen stores in the muscle tissue. After training, our muscles our more receptive to glucose intake, as well as the enzyme involved in glycogen storage.

Studies show that adding protein to your post-workout meal can increase these factors even further.

The Anabolic Window

In addition to what we eat after training, when we eat it is just as important. As I mentioned above, our muscles are much more receptive to glucose uptake after training.

This timing occurs pretty much immediately after training, and studies show that it extends through about a maximum of two hours after training. I make it a point to consume my post-workout nutrition as quickly as I can after training (and if it was a very intense workout, I’ll typically have a digestive enzyme in order to further ensure proper nutrient absorption.

Exceptions

Now, I’m absolutely not saying that everyone should ingest a certain amount of carbohydrate of a certain type at a certain time. This is completely dependent on you and your situation.

Of course, there are exceptions or “it depends” for nearly everything.The post-workout meal that best works for you depends on your workout, the volume, frequency, what you ate beforehand, if you’re in a deficit, and how you burn or tolerate carbohydrate, to name a few.

In fact, I sometimes have my clients just stick to protein with certain parameters (and I do myself) temporarily in certain cases.

What’s your post-workout meal?

References!

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-10-5

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577439/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4125607/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761704/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577439/