What to Eat Before a Workout: Fuel for Energy & Focus

In our latest blog we explore the relationship between food and exercise, read on to discover more.

This month we are delighted to welcome Julie Babis from Nutrition 4 Performance to share her tips and insight on how to fuel your body for your next workout, here is what she had to say:

The internet is a great source of information, but it has the whole gamut of the good, the bad and the downright ugly. So yes, you can turn to it to find out what you eat around exercise, but you will find as many different ‘facts’ as there are people to express an opinion. Separating the reliable from the misleading is a massive task.

I had a conversation recently about dates and how they impacted your blood sugar levels. She questioned why I recommend restricting the consumption of dried fruit to very specific instances, for example as a digestible snack around training. One of her favourite Instagram influencers had posted that dates do not spike blood sugar, backed up by a scientific study. So I dug out the paper and read it.

The said study had 12 participants, nowhere near enough to reach a statistically significant analysis. It used a particular type of date, not the very sweet Medjool or Deglet Noor dates that are generally available in dried form in the UK. Think of the difference in sweetness between a Granny Smith apple and Gala or Pink Lady. The research was completed in Bahrain, where in the Middle East dates are generally eaten as fresh, not dried, fruit. Lastly, all the participants had raised blood sugar anyway, because they were all diabetic.  So what the study actually suggested – not proved – is that three (almost certainly) fresh tart dates per day didn’t spike the already high blood sugar in people with type II diabetes. It did not give anyone carte blanche to consume a packet of dried Medjools dates with impunity.

So, before I answer the specific question between the relationship between nutrition and exercise, I’d like to start with a little bit of a reminder about the basics of nutrition in general.

General Nutrition Guidance

Food provides energy for the body, which is commonly measured as calories. It also provides nutrients, which are the proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and other compounds that the body needs to maintain and build itself. What we eat daily needs to provide sufficient energy for the body to support itself and to meet the requirements of physical activity, which includes normal daily movement plus any exercise on top of that. It also needs to provide the vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients the body needs to function properly.

The conventional wisdom is that if the amount of energy you consume matches the amount of energy you expend, then you meet your body’s needs and maintain a constant weight. Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

The three basic food groups are protein, fats and carbohydrates.

Protein is essential for a healthy body structure: bones, muscle skin, and hair and nails. 22 different building blocks called amino acids make up protein, eight of which are deemed essential: ie they need to be included in a healthy diet. Animal proteins contain all the amino acids. Plants, with the exception of tofu, hemp and quinoa, don’t. If you rely plant proteins, you need to combine different foods in order to get the full range of amino acids. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that over the course of a day you have a portion of pulses/lentils/nuts and a portion of whole grains. Refined grains such as white rice contain less protein than the unrefined varieties. Portion size for animal protein is about the size of a pocket packet of tissues. Plant protein portions need to be larger, because the protein content is lower.

I recommend eating a portion of protein at each meal. Protein at breakfast replenishes the amino acids the body uses overnight in repairing the body.  Eating protein within an hour after exercise gives the body the elements it needs to repair and build muscle. Recent research indicates that as we get older, we need more protein than previously thought, and this is especially true for women through perimenopause and beyond, particularly for maintaining bone strength.

Fats have been demonised, but they are absolutely essential for good health and for recovery after exercise. We all know that we need our omega 3 fatty acids. The best sources are oily fish (salmon, mackerel, anchovy, sardines, herring) and nuts and seeds. However, good quality saturated fats are very nutritious. The membrane of every single cell in the body is made of cholesterol, as are the steroid hormones (oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol). Fats can also be a source of energy, and is what the body will use if it exhausts its supply of glucose.

Fats are required for the absorption of some vitamins, in particular A, D, E and K, which are all critical for strong bones and a healthy immune system. That doesn’t mean rush out and eat junk food – saturated fat combined with sugar is never going to be a healthy option. But choosing full fat plain yoghurt is preferable to reduced fat options (the latter often contains emulsifiers for texture, and artificial sweeteners). Fattier cuts of meat are good, and often less expensive. So 20% fat minced beef rather than the 5% can be a good option, for example. However, be wary of processed meats such as sausages, which often contain a lot of fat and fillers, but not much meat. If you don’t eat animal products, then make sure your diet includes at least a tablespoon of good quality olive, hemp, avocado or flaxseed oil every day. The body can make cholesterol, but it needs fat in the diet in order to do so.

Carbohydrates sub-divide into simple (ie breaks down very rapidly to glucose in the body) and complex (takes much longer to break down). Simple carbohydrates are the ones that on the whole we need to reduce our consumption of: these are any form of sugar, and refined foods such as anything made with white flour, white rice, and also white potatoes. These give you a quick blood sugar high, usually followed by an energy slump and food cravings within a couple of hours.

Complex carbohydrates include non-soluble fibre and cellulose. These slow down the absorption of simple carbs, facilitate the passage of food through the digestive system, and also support the essential bacteria in the gut.

Calorie Counting

Let’s dispell the calorie myth. One gramme refined white sugar contains 4 calories. It contains energy but little else. One gramme protein also contains  4 calories, but it also contains minerals and vitamins. Plus the energy in protein is not readily available for the body to draw on, and it comes for the most part naturally packaged in a more complex item of food.

For this reason, I never recommend calorie counting. It’s based on the flawed premise that all calories are equal. Theoretically they are in terms of energy, but are absolutely not interchangeable in terms of nutrients. And it gives too much room to justify swapping out healthy stuff for less nutritious snacks, provided that an overall daily limit is not exceeded.

Instead I look at relative proportions of different food groups. So each meal (including breakfast), aim for the following:

• ¼ of your plate should be protein.
• ¼ whole grains or starchy root vegetables: sweet potato, carrot, turnip, celeriac, swede.
• ¼ green leafy vegetables: spinach, lettuce, kale, cabbage, etc.
• ¼ other vegetables: courgettes, aubergine, onion, broccoli, peas, french and runner beans etc
• 2-3 tablespoons of good quality fat such as olive oil, coconut oil or organic butter (yes, butter!).

Plus maximum 2 portions of fruit per day.

There are a couple of additional points:

• If your protein source is from legumes or pulses (lentils, chickpeas, beans) then your starchy carb should be a whole grain in order to get a full complement of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins).
• If you feel hungry after a meal, have more veg, not more protein or carbs.
• Avoid drinking fruit juice, you get all the fructose (sugar) and not much fibre.
• If you really do need to eat between meals, combining a complex carb with a protein is the best option. For example, a piece of fruit and a handful of nuts; humous or guacamole with carrot and celery sticks; cheese and an apple; 3 oatcakes and 3 spoonful’s of cottage cheese or crumbled tofu.

Eating for Exercise

Now we have refreshed some of our general nutritional knowledge, let’s take a closer look at how we might eat to prepare for exercise.

Food timing is actually more crucial than what you eat. Unless you are doing a lengthy endurance session (eg: 2 hours plus constant exercise) you do not need to increase your carbohydrate intake.  However long your session, eating an energy-rich, ie simple carbohydrate snack or light meal, 2-3 hours before training should give you adequate energy for the session, but will be digested enough to prevent you feeling sick.

Then within an hour after training, aim for a meal that contains protein and carbohydrates, which can come from the whole grain group.  This promotes recovery, especially for muscles.

If your exercise session is 30 minutes or less, unless you are going for VO2 Max then there really is no need to adjust the amount of food you consume, just adhere to the above with regards to timing. For longer training you may want to eat more of your overall daily food intake earlier in the day or save it until after training. If your session lasts an hour or more, you may want to increase your carb intake slightly on that day, for example, by adding in a good quality protein bar, or a fruit and nut bar (but not as a regular thing) either at least an hour before or just after training.

I’m not a great fan of protein shakes. Digestion starts before you swallow food. Chewing releases some digestive enzymes into your saliva and taste receptors trigger the secretion of stomach acid ready for digestion. Downing a smoothy by-passes all this. It’s essentially like putting food in a pan before you’ve heated it: it takes longer to cook and never cooks as nicely. Certainly as you move into your 40s and beyond, there is a lot to be said for working with your digestive system, not against it.

If you really can’t face not having a smoothie, then eat something that needs chewing alongside it, for example some nuts or seeds. Also limit the content to one piece of fruit and add 2-3 vegetables. It’s easy to get a massive blood sugar spike if your smoothy is mainly fruit based, which will cause you to run out of energy and crave more food within a couple of hours. A good combo might be:

• 1 small banana, 1 handful of washed spinach, and 1x celery stick with whey protein
• Or 1 small apple, 1 carrot, a handful of washed watercress and a scoop of whey protein. 

Add 300-500ml water to each recipe, depending on how thick you like it, and eat a handful of nuts rather than mush them into the smoothy.

Training early in the morning comes with its own dilemma of whether to eat before training. Ideally eat something before working out as your body will have used energy overnight for repair and maintenance. My preference if I am going to work out before breakfast is to eat an easily digested protein bar, or a banana, or sweetened overnight oats. At the very least try the DIY energy drink I suggest below.

Training for a major endurance event such as a marathon or long cycle needs nutrition adjusted to your specific training plan. I would suggest taking specific advice.

Final thoughts: Energy Drinks

Finally, the thorny topic of energy drinks: do you really need them?

Personally I think they’re overrated and mostly misdescribed. Most of the commercially available energy drinks are compromised by the sugar tax and contain less sugar (ie straight up calories or energy) than they used to and more artificial sweeteners. These do not break down into glucose in the body so do not provide energy. To fill the gap, most energy drinks contain caffeine, which is a stimulant (and is mildly diuretic) not a source of energy. If you need some energy support for a long training session, then adding a dessert spoon of sugar to a litre of water with some added electrolytes is a better option (and way less expensive). If you do buy energy drinks, look for ones that contain glucose, maltose or dextrose, with minimal flavourings and colour, as these are the most easily absorbed forms of sugar.

Thanks for taking the time to share some great advice Julie. Click HERE to visit Julie’s website if you wish to find out more and of course if you would like to see how we can help you to realise your fitness goals, please get in touch.

You can download Julie’s free ’15 Protein Breakfasts’ ebook HERE