Healthy Eating And
Exercise Tips
By Donovan Baldwin
Anytime you exercise, you
almost certainly are doing so in order to try and maintain good health.
You also know that you have to eat as well...and eat well!
This is obviously so your body will have the energy it needs to
exercise and maintain tissues, organs, and functions for the everyday
tasks of life. For most out of your exercise, and the most
out of your life, what you eat before and after you workout is very
important.
Here are a
few healthy eating and exercise tips.
It doesn't matter if you are going to be doing a good
cardio workout or a resistance
workout, you should always make it a point to eat a balanced mix of
protein and carbohydrates. The determining factor in choosing
the correct percentage of carbs and protein you consume revolves around
two questions:
1.
Are you going to do a cardio workout or a resistance workout?
2. What intensity level are you going to exercise?
By the way, I would like to make a quick point here. The
healthy eating and exercise tips on this page must, despite their very
specific recommendations, be only general starting points.
Each of us is different, and a low intensity level of exercise for me
may be a high intensity level for my wife. You may have to
pay close attention to what your body is telling you and make
adjustments in the recommendations.
In most cases, the ideal time for you to eat your pre workout meal is
going to be at least an hour before you start, and not much farther
away than that. If you are planning to exercise at a low
intensity level, you should keep this pre workout meal down to 200
calories or so. If, on the other hand, you plan to exercise
at a high level of intensity, you will probably need your meal to be
between 400 and 500 calories.
Just to emphasize what I mentioned earlier about making adjustments for
yourself. I have found, and I am 63 years old, that it takes
my body a little longer to process a meal than it used to.
For me, a small meal about an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a
half before exercising seems to work best.
Before the
Cardio Session
Those of you who are doing a cardio session will probably want to
consume a mix of 2/3 carbs and 1/3 protein. Choosing this mix
will give you a longer sustained energy level. This is from
the extra carbs which are combined with enough protein to keep your
muscle tissue from breaking down while you exercise.
Before the
Resistance Session
For resistance exercise, such as with free weights and all in one
machines such as a Bowflex or Total Gym, you'll probably want to eat a
mix of about 1/3 carbs and 2/3 protein. As you can see, this
is a bit reversed from the cardio session as you will need more muscle
repair than pure energy. You will get plenty of energy from
the carbs to perform each set, and the extra protein will help keep
muscle tissue breakdown to a minimum while you exercise.
Healthy
Eating and Exercise Tips After the Workout and the Importance of
Glycogen
Believe it or not, what you eat after you exercise can be just as
important as your pre workout meal.
Anytime you exercise, whether it's a good cardio workout or a
resistance workout, you deplete energy in the form of glycogen.
What is
Glycogen Used For?
Well, your brain and central nervous system rely on glycogen as their
main source of fuel. So, if you don't replace it after you
exercise, whether cardio or resistance, your body will begin to break
down its own muscle tissue into amino acids, and then convert that into
usable substitute fuel for the brain and the central nervous system.
Breaking
Down Muscle Tissue - After the Resistance Workout
It happens more during resistance exercise than cardio or
aerobics. The exercise breaks down muscle tissue by creating
micro tears (as in tearing a piece of fabric). What this
means, is that after your workout, your muscles go instantly into
repair mode. Protein is the key here for muscle
repair. You must supply protein to your body as you don't
want muscle breaking down even further to create fuel instead of lost
glycogen.
You need protein as this is needed to build up and repair these micro
tears so that the muscle can not only heal, but increase in size and
strength. The carbs will not only replace the lost muscle
glycogen, but will also help the protein get into muscle cells so it
can be synthesized into a structural protein, or the muscle itself.
After your resistance workout, you should wait about 30 minutes before
you eat. This is so you won't take blood away from your
muscles too quickly. The blood flowing in your muscles will
help the repair process by providing nutrients and oxygen and by
removing the metabolic waste products which are the inevitable results
of exercise.
Healthy
Eating and Exercise Tips - Vitamins, Minerals, and Protein Supplements
I recommend a multivitamin supplement for most people today for a list
of reasons too long to go into here. However, if you are
exercising regularly, you almost certainly will want to take a daily
multivitamin to help your body function and recuperate more
efficiently. There are several good brands available in many
stores, or you can buy multivitamins online
from companies such as Shaklee
and Vitamin Power.
Unless you are a bodybuilder like Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and doing resistance exercises at an
extremely intense level, you probably will not need to take a protein
supplement unless you are simply unsure as to whether or not you can
supply necessary protein levels within your diet. If you find
that you do not seem to recover from a workout rapidly enough, or if
you are a senior, you might want to add some sort of protein
supplement to your diet to "fill in the blanks".
Replenishing Energy - After the Cardio Workout
Once you have finished a cardio session, you will want to consume a
small meal of mainly carbohydrates. These carbohydrates will
preferably be those with high fiber. Rice, oatmeal, whole
wheat pasta, and northern fruits are excellent sources. Also, you might
want to try to consume 30 - 50 grams of there types of carbs after you
exercise. After your cardio workout, it is okay for most
people to eat within 5 - 10 minutes although it will not hurt to wait a
little longer if you desire.
You may be tired, but there will not have been nearly as much tissue
damage as with the resistance workout, and your main issue will be to
replace the energy stores you have depleted and allow the body time to
remove metabolic waste products.
I hope these healthy eating and exercise tips have been of value to you.
Want to know more? Click here
for an in-depth article on performance nutrition.
While I do not normally recommend diets themselves, healthy eating is
important to any health, fitness, or weight loss program. Click Here
to learn more about Diet To Go
meals.
P. S. If you want to learn more about why Diets Don't Work,
please click here.
If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom
Venuto
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