The Post-Workout Window for Carbs Myth

Good morning, friends! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but my new normal has me a bit preoccupied 😉 Nursing itself is literally a full time job! (No seriously, she nurses about 10 hours a day right now lol!)

This is a topic I’ve wanted to cover for a while now, and I’m excited to dive in to today’s post on post-workout carbs. Since the far majority of my clients’ goals is fat loss, we’re going to assume that if you’re reading this post, your goal is fat loss — for the sake of this post.

During and after an intense workout, our body goes through many physiological changes. Our cortisol is up, our glycogen is down, our muscle protein is broken down, and lactic acid has accumulated, to name a few.

These are all normal responses from a training session, and actually it’s what we want to happen during a workout.

Afterward, our insulin sensitivity is up, making it a prime time to eat a high carb, low fat meal as a post-workout option. A high carb meal will make cortisol go back down and replenish glycogen stores, which is great for maintaining or building lean muscle.

But do we need to eat those carbs within a certain 90-minute window in order for them to be put to use? 

Not necessarily. While our insulin sensitivity is highest immediately after training, that insulin sensitivity remains elevated for up to 16-18 hours after our workout. 

So if my clients’ goal is fat loss — and they’re having trouble seeing that fat loss, or they’re inherently insulin resistant — you could get the benefits of eating those carbs far later on in your day, when cortisol is naturally lower and cater more to your fat loss goals.

This isn’t to say that eating a high carb meal post-workout is bad. Actually, in most cases this is an optimal time to get in your carbs — especially if your goal is to build or maintain lean muscle mass along with. The majority of my clients’ post-workout meals include carbs (at least after intense lifting workouts.) It’s when clients insulin sensitivity is lagging — or when fat loss slows, and it’s time to troubleshoot.

What’s more important to include in your post-workout is a good ingestible lean protein source. After training, our bodies’ ability to utilize amino acids, so that protein is more important to ingest post-workout.

So, is the 90 minute window for post-workout carbs a myth?

Not necessarily. Your insulin sensitivity is the highest immediately post-workout, but it does remain elevated for up to 18 hours after your workout. If some of my clients have a really tough time losing body fat (due to genetics or poor insulin sensitivity,) we’ll talk about pulling carbs out of their post-workout meal.