Eating and Training

NEERAJ MEHTA

Eating and Training

Actually muscles require an ample supply of blood during training, since a lot of the pump you experience is form blood swelling up your muscles. But if the digestive system is also using excess amount of blood to digest a big meal, there won’t be enough to go around and your muscle will suffer for it.
Training with a full stomach can be a very unpleasant experience. You feel bloated, sluggish and slow and a really hard set can make you feel nauseated. The body metabolizes food at different rates. It takes from 2 to 6 hours for the stomach to empty it contents. Foods rich in carbohydrates digest first followed by protein foods, fatty foods are the last to leave.
When you get up in the morning and haven’t eaten anything for 8 to 12 hours, your body is depleted of nutrition’s, since carbohydrates are needed to produce the glycogen the muscle need for intense contraction.
A light meal of fruits, fruit juice or toast can be eaten before you train and will give you energy without slowing you down.
It is not a good idea to eat a big meal immediately after a workout either. You put your body under great stress when you train and you need to give your system time to return to normal, for the blood to leave the muscles and the stress reaction to diminish. A protein or protein / carbs supplement drink after a workout needed for the demand created by training after 30 to 40 minutes you can have a real (heavy) food.

Meal Frequency

You should divide your three big meals into small, 5-6 meals. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can cram more and more food into each meal and get good result. That would lead to an overload o your digestive system causing the excess to be converted to fat.

by Neeraj Mehta (Nutrition and Fitness Profesional)