#22: What To Eat After Training
The best feeling on the planet comes moments prior to eating a kingly meal, post-workout, with the pump of your godlike workout still fresh.
With the muscles in your body scrambling for nutrients, what should you really be eating in order to maximize your gains?
The Anabolic Window
Without question, the main objective post-workout is to make full use of the anabolic window; a ‘window’ of time after training when your muscles are repairing and recovering. At this time, your muscles have used up their carb stores (glycogen) and they need to be replenished, presto.
Always remember: glycogen depletion followed by glycogen replenishment means more muscles. But it doesn’t end there.
Eating a proper meal post-workout will also increase muscle protein synthesis while reducing muscle protein breakdown.
Just after a workout, your muscles are in an optimal state to use nutrients for hypertrophy (muscle gain) as they look to recover for the next bout of stress.
This in mind, it is imperative to make use of this window, for as long as time permits. It opens from the moment you put the weights down and lasts for up to two hours, but not leaving it to the last minute has been shown to be more beneficial.
The length of the window also depends on the timing of your pre-workout meal. If your workout was done fasted, or more than four hours prior, then it would be best to have that meal as soon as possible after your workout is done.
You’ll have a little more leeway (up to two hours) if you ate one or two hours before the workout started.
What Should One Eat While In The Anabolic Window?
After an intense workout (not yoga), most available studies suggest consuming 0.4-0.5g per kg bodyweight of protein.
So for a 75kg man, consuming 37g of protein would be more than enough (around 120g of chicken breast) post-workout.
Adding carbs to your meal may also sound like a good way to replenish glycogen stores in theory. However, the science has not really supported it (in the context of building muscle).
Instead, reaching your daily fat and carbohydrate goals - consistently - has been shown to be more efficient.
There are some papers that suggest that a post-workout meal was not important at all, so long as enough calories (especially from protein) were consumed throughout the day. This study is one example.
