Working out, and what to eat AFTER for maximum weight loss and fitness results

When you want to lose weight through healthy eating long with exercise, it's important to know what, and when, to eat. I told you in Effortless Weightloss  to always combine a quality protein and a fiber filled, vegetable carb together in every meal. Yes, carbs if eaten correctly can help you lose fat.


In fact, many body builders "cycle" their carbs depending on their workout, to build more muscle and lose more fat. To do this, simply add  small serving of a starchy carb (think brown rice, sweet potatoes, bananas) to two or three meals of your set of 5-6 small meals per day, on weight or resistance training days. The carbs give you more energy on high output days with lots of nutrition, fiber, and vitamins. It's  great incentive to work out, since you get to add in some starch!

On the other days, leave out breads and pasta for sure as without a muscle building workout to burn energy, starchy carbs are more likely to be stored as fat. Obviously you want to eat these meals before a workout.

There are two types of meals you want to consume after a workout, and each meal depends on the type of workout you have done.
 
Fitness expert Darin Steen says the meal after a resistance workout is the only meal that you ever want to be absorbed rapidly. As you will find out below, eating right after a cardio work out means there is a good chance your blood sugar will rise too fast, and the carbohydrates will be stored as body fat.

But, Steen says, after a resistance workout, you’ve just primed the pump with an intense workout (with weights), and you have a one hour window of opportunity to shuttle in nutrients, amino acids, glycogen, and other anabolic nutrients to help repair your damaged muscles. Once this hour passes, a good opportunity to feed your muscles repair fuel (enabling more fat-burning muscle growth) is significantly diminished.

Optimum time to feed your muscles is 15-30 minutes post weight lifting/resistance session.
For this reason, Steen insists the best post workout meal on resistance training days is whey protein and a higher glycemic (fast released, starchy) carbohydrate. You can use a banana as your carb. The potassium in the banana seems to help with recovery. The whey protein is already pre-digested so it is absorbed rapidly.

MonaVie makes an excellent shake great for post workout recovery, called  RVL.

On the other hand, after a cardio workout, your stomach and digestive tract do not function as efficiently, because much of your blood is in the muscles that you just finished training.

After a cardio workout, Steen recommends waiting a good 45-60 minutes, and then consuming a high quality source of whole food protein and vegetable carbohydrate. An example would be a spinach salad and some chicken.

That 45 minutes will be well worth it as your metabolism will still be buring hot after your workout so let it take off as much fat as possible! Don't push it any farther, Steen insists, or your metabolism will actually slow down and enter starvation mode.

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