Should you eat before a workout?

We get it, it can be tricky to find time to work out, let alone find time to eat beforehand (not to mention, what exactly should you be eating prior to exercise, anyway?). In this blog, you’ll learn why it’s crucial to properly fuel your body before you hit the gym, and our favorite foods to do so. 

Food is fuel

In the simplest terms, food is fuel. If you put gas in your car, it has enough fuel to get you where you need to go. If you fuel your body with food before a workout, you’ll be able to push yourself harder and see progress faster. 

Let’s look at what happens when you don’t fuel your body properly before a workout. When you go for a long period of time without eating something, say, from dinnertime the previous night to a 5:00 am workout, your body uses up all the energy from the food you ate during dinner. Once it empties your stomach and gets all the energy it can from your last meal, it starts breaking down carbohydrate stores in your muscles for energy. About 12 hours after your last meal, your body begins breaking down protein in your muscles for energy to keep your body functioning properly while you sleep. Ideally, we want to eat meals close enough together so our body does not rely on protein for energy, since protein is needed for so many other purposes throughout the body; including building and maintaining muscle mass. If you don’t eat before a morning workout, your body has gone through the energy from your last meal, used up the carbohydrate energy stores in your muscle, and has begun to break down protein in your muscle for energy. If you exercise on an empty stomach in the morning, your body will continue to break down muscle to provide energy to power your workout. This means you have the normal amount of muscle breakdown from a strength workout (which you need to stimulate your muscles to get stronger), but your body is also breaking down your muscle even faster so it can fuel your lift. This makes it harder to get stronger because your body is breaking down your muscles for energy.  

Now let’s compare that scenario to one where you eat something before a workout. A lot of us have a hard time eating something before we workout, especially if it is a morning lift. I was the same way until I took a metabolism class my junior year of college, and realized I was actively harming my progress in the gym by not eating something before our team workouts in the mornings. If you eat something before a workout, even if it is half a banana or a few bites of toast, it will switch the pathway your body uses to provide energy for your workout. If you have an easily digestible carbohydrate in your stomach (rice krispies, banana, granola bar, toast, honey, etc), your body realizes this and switches from using protein in your muscle for fuel, to breaking down those easily digestible carbohydrates. Once it digests those carbohydrates, it can distribute the energy to your muscles and give you an extra oomph to crush your workout. Instead of weakening your body by breaking down muscle for energy, you are fueling your body and giving it energy to enhance your workout.

Eating before a lift is vital anytime you workout, whether it’s in the morning, evening, or afternoon; but it’s especially important when you haven’t eaten a meal in the last 3-4 hours, because your body has used all its easily accessible energy stores and has begun breaking down muscle for energy. 

What should I eat?

If you don’t currently eat anything before a workout, start small. Experiment with a small amount of something different before each workout and see how you feel during your lift. Try to avoid things high in fat or fiber if you are eating them within an hour before you start working out. These foods take longer to digest and could sit in your stomach and make you feel sluggish during your workout. Instead, try easily digestible carbohydrates like rice krispies, bananas, apples, grapes, granola bars, toast, or low-fat milk. My go to pre-workout snack is rice krispies with skim milk because I get the quick digesting carb source in the rice krispies, and a little kick of protein in the skim milk. In turn, this fuels my workout and gives my muscles the tools to build up strength after my lift. 

It will take a few weeks for you to feel a difference, but when you start to consistently eat before your workouts, you’ll be able to push yourself harder during the workouts while your body uses food for fuel instead of breaking down muscle for energy. Don’t let all your hard work go to waste - eat before you workout!