Should You Eat Back Your Exercise Calories?
Does this sound familiar?
“I’ve got to eat to fuel my workout”
“Time for my recovery shake”
The pre- and post-workout supplement business is a BIG business.
And largely a scam.
Unless you are underweight or doing extreme exercise for over 1 hour, you don’t need added nutrition.
ESPECIALLY if you’re trying to lose weight.
Your body naturally stores 1200 or more calories of “ready to use” energy (your glycogen) which will power you through a workout.
PLUS what you eat before or after exercise is a fairly insignificant portion of your overall diet.
Consider this: If you put 1 gallon of premium gas in your car with 12 gallons of the cheap stuff, is it really going to make a difference in the car’s performance?
Would even one full tank of premium matter all that much in the life of the car?
For top performance your overall diet matters. It’s about good maintenance.
You have to be consistent…
Because your body is building, recovering, and maintaining 24/7.
But there’s a BIGGER problem.
It’s easy to overestimate calorie burn and underestimate calorie consumption.
(Even the more expensive apps and gadgets grossly overestimate what you’ve burned.)
If you eat back the calories you think you expend during exercise, you’ll unintentionally undermine your efforts to lose weight.
(And you already know that exercise can be a hidden form of self-sabotage… “I can eat more because I exercised”)
Eating systematically (especially when you don’t feel hungry) also overrides your hunger cues which can negatively affect future satiety AND corrupt your appestat (appetite thermometer).
Intuitively, you know a single post-workout shake, or pre-workout meal will have minimal impact on your overall nutrition.
And it’s your OVERALL nutrition, not acute meal-timing, that determines performance.
AND HEALTH + weight-loss!!
Moral of the story: Unless you’re a high performance athlete or trying to gain weight, chances are you don’t need pre- and post-workout nutrition.
But you DO need to be consistent with your diet.
Having a game plan will keep you on track. If you’re hungry and without good options, you’ll fall victim to junk foods, cancelling out all that good exercise!
That being said, there *IS* still one EXTREMELY IMPORTANT exercise you must do.
Tomorrow I’ll share the MOST IMPORTANT exercise critical to weight-loss
P.S. You DO need to replenish your fluids post workout -- so drink water. AND if you ever feel wobbly or lightheaded, that’s usually a sign you’ve depleted your glycogen. Eat simple carbohydrates for fast relief.