Should You Eat Before Training?

When training as an athlete your main focus is increasing your performance. When you don’t fuel your body properly this is a lot harder to achieve. It’s extremely important to give your body the nutrients it needs to perform at its best. So should you eat before training? The answer is yes. When you don’t fuel before your workouts you’re making everything harder for yourself. I feel too many athletes nowadays think it’s better to train in a fasted state but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

There are a few reasons why someone may choose NOT to eat prior to lifting.  First, athletes may feel it will burn more fat. In actuality, lowering your daily caloric intake helps you lose fat in the long run, if you avoid eating prior to a workout it can be detrimental. It will put your body under stress while also resulting in a lack the energy needed to get the most out of your workout. Even if your goal as an athlete is to lose body fat, it’s more effective to consume the bulk of your calories before and after your workout. Then throughout the remainder of the day, you’ll want to reduce the total amount of calories you consume. A fatigued (hungry) body will burn fewer calories in a workout and bring your body into a catabolic state, thus making it harder for your performance to improve (through recovery).

There’s an upside and downside to eating before a workout. The upside is that you give your muscles the fuel they need to perform as well allowing you to burn more calories. Eating prior to exercise can also help with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar); having low levels of sugar in our blood can result in dizziness, blurred vision, and needless fatigue.

The downside that I hear from hockey players is that eating prior to a training session results in them having an upset stomach and feeling sluggish. When muscles work, blood flow will increase in response to the muscles demand for more oxygen and nutrients. Eating too close to training means food will sit in our stomachs undigested. As blood flows away from the stomach and to the working muscles, and this can cause unpleasant symptoms. If you’re going to eat a big meal, do so at least 2.5 hours prior to exercising. This will give the stomach adequate time to digest the food, convert it into energy and fuel your body for best perform.

If you forget or don’t have time to eat a big meal before a training session make sure you eat at least a small snack. Choosing a snack that digests easily like crackers, bagels, bananas or granola bars will allow you to eat as close as 20 minutes prior to your training session. Getting these quick-digesting carbohydrates in your body will increase your performance while preventing the negative effect a larger meal has on the stomach.

The moral of the story

When eating close to your workouts it is also important to consider the type of exercise you are doing. For example, biking will have a different effect on the food in your stomach than running. There is less body movement with biking than running so the food in your stomach won’t be getting tossed around as much.

Ultimately, everyone is different and some people can handle a little more food before exercising while other people cannot, so it is important to figure out what works best for you.