Post Workout Meals
Eating After a Workout
Is it vital to eat immediately after a workout? Depends. If you’ve worked out in a fasted state, meaning your last meal was more than 6-8 hours prior to the workout, you might want to eat when you are done. Making sure to get a good dose of protein and carbs into that meal. Some folks prefer to workout first thing in the morning even before breakfast. It allows them to get it done before they start their work day and to check it off their to do list. Other folks prefer to workout after work, on their lunch break, or fit it in whenever they have the time. For those who are early risers and don’t eat anything first, you really should eat as soon as possible after working out.
For those folks who workout throughout the day, then meal timing can be a bit more forgiving. Ideally within about 90 minutes of completing your workout you should have some protein and carbs to help muscle repair and synthesis. The time isn’t an exact answer, and some of your gym bros will scream for you to have a gallon of protein or your gains will be depleted. Truthfully, that isn’t correct. The later in the day you may work out means you’ve probably been eating and your body takes time to process those meals, so you should be fine in the short run.
A good meal would be to hit about 30g or so of protein with about 20-25g of carbs. For my clients who are working on fat loss, I often recommend the timing of the workout to coincide with a planned meal. I’ll explain a bit more below. For you fasted exercisers, your typical breakfast should be fine, but you want to make sure you’ve got some good protein sources in their to help with muscle repair and synthesis.
Eating Back Calories Burned
Wearable technology like a FitBit or an Apple Watch allows users to see how many calories they’ve burned in a workout or through out the day. They are pretty inaccurate in terms of calorie burn. I can vouch for this. I wore a FitBit during my SoulCycle days and would sometimes have the device tell me I burned 1,000 calories. The treadmills and ellipticals at the gym will sometimes tell users they burn 750 calories in an hour. These devices use basic formulas to calculate calorie burn and are pretty exaggerated. So don’t eat back the calories your watch tells you you’ve burned unless you’re in a bulking phase of your journey. Even then, don’t eat 1,000 extra calories because your watch said you did that in your 45 minute spin class.
If you are in a fat loss phase of your journey, I encourage you to time your workout to end around a planned meal time for yourself. It allows you to have a good hearty meal after a workout hitting your necessary macros and filling you up after pushing your body to its limits. It can also allow you to feel like you get to eat back your calories, but since it’s a regular meal time, you’re not inadvertently eating more than you need to stay in a deficit.