You probably already know that when it comes down to getting cut and gaining mass, your training regimen is only part of the story. Your nutritional plan is often the difference between a so-so physique and the hard, chiseled look you’re striving for.
But what you eat isn’t the only factor—when you eat also affects your ability to train hard, lose weight, and put on muscle. Yet both serious and novice weight lifters often overlook the importance of meal timing and eat too much, too little, or at the wrong times. When you understand the importance of meal timing, you’ll have an advantage whether you’re training to get shredded or simply want to add more muscle.
Why You Need to Eat More Often
Skip breakfast? Eat your heaviest meals at night? You’re setting yourself up for failure. Eating too little throughout the day and then overdoing it at night is an inefficient way to provide your body with the fuel it needs, says Dan Benardot, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor of nutrition and of kinesiology and health at Georgia State University and co-director of GSU’s Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance in Atlanta. Yet surveys of athletes and everyday exercisers show that most people eat too infrequently or skimp throughout the day only to overeat at night.
As an active person, optimally you want to be in "energy balance"—or close to it—throughout the day. That means providing your body with the amount of fuel it needs at regular intervals so you’re neither overeating nor undereating. Understanding how your body’s blood sugar levels rise and fall explains why this is so critical for anyone looking to add muscle mass and stay lean.
Normally if you eat something, your blood sugar, or glucose levels, will rise, level out, and then drop in about three-hour units. If you don’t eat every three hours or so, blood sugar begins to drop even further. "As soon as blood sugar starts to drop to 80 milligrams per deciliter, the body starts kicking in an emergency mechanism to make sure there’s enough sugar around for brain function, heart function, other organ function and so on," says Benardot, author of Nutrition for Serious Athletes (Human Kinetics, 2000). "The way it does that is by catabolizing lean mass, so we burn our own muscle."
That means that exercising to increase your muscle mass isn’t enough—if you don’t eat properly, you’ll burn the muscle you’re trying to build. And the problem doesn’t stop there. As you lose muscle, you lower your metabolic rate as well, which is closely tied to the amount of muscle you have. That means you can’t eat much without storing fat.
Here’s the kicker—even though in a pinch, your body will catabolize muscle to supply itself with fuel, this amount is insufficient to meet your body’s needs and your blood sugar will continue to fall. Then, when you do eat, you’ll produce more insulin than normal because our cells are starving for energy—and insulin helps transport the glucose into your cells. That means more fat around your middle as well.
"If you eat something and you overproduced insulin for what you consume, you’re going to make more fat out of what you ate than if you ate in a non-hungry state," says Benardot. "The other problem is if you eat in a hungry state, your internal satiety controls are not operating normally so people tend to eat more." Eating a large amount of food also stimulates insulin production as well, further complicating matters.
Eating Pre- and Post-WorkoutWhen you stay close to energy balance, you keep your blood sugar levels relatively stable throughout the day. If you’re training intensely three, four, or more days a week, meal timing becomes even more important, says Martin J. Gibala, Ph.D., associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
"The timing and composition of food intake can directly influence the response of skeletal muscle following a single workout—for example, the rate of muscle glycogen re-synthesis or muscle protein accretion," says Gibala. "In turn, these muscle adaptations will have a direct effect on subsequent exercise performance or the adaptations induced by chronic training. For example, endurance exercise performance is directly influenced by initial muscle glycogen levels, whereas the magnitude of muscle hypertrophy induced by several months of resistance training is dependent upon the repeated, small increases in muscle protein synthesis that occur after each workout."
Researchers have been studying the optimal times to eat before and after exercise. For example, a recent study found that eating a high-carb, low-protein, low-fat meal three hours, instead of six hours, before intense exercise improved athletic performance. Other studies have shown that eating carbohydrates immediately after exercise—as opposed to ingesting carbs two or more hours later—results in higher levels of muscle glycogen storage. It’s not clear these higher levels of glycogen storage or whether consuming carbs and essential amino acids post-exercise enhances strength gains—one study found that it does while others have discounted this finding.
While one study published in 2001 found that consuming essential amino acids and carbs before exercise produced a greater anabolic response than taking the same mix of nutrients post-exercise, most experts agree that your post-workout meal is the most important one you eat all day. "Provided that adequate energy is consumed on a daily basis, immediate post-workout nutrition is probably most critical in order to maximize training adaptations," says Gibala. "For strength/resistance athletes, protein or amino acids consumption during the first few hours of recovery clearly seems important in order to optimize gains in muscle mass. Essential amino acids appear superior to non-essential amino acids, but it is likely that high-quality proteins contained in `real’ foods (e.g., skim milk, yogurt, lean meat) are just as effective as commercially-prepared protein shakes."
But before you down a pound of chicken breasts, keep in mind that ingesting smaller, regular amounts of protein may be the better approach. "A key point is that small doses of amino acids consumed at frequent intervals may be more effective than a single large dose of amino acids. It appears that the maximal effective dose of ingested amino acids following a single bout of resistance exercise is 0.1 grams/kg body mass, or only 5 to 10 grams of amino acids for a typical individual," says Gibala. "Larger single doses do not appear to significantly enhance the muscle anabolic response. However, the good news is that repeated small doses of amino acids appear to `pulse’ the system such that protein synthesis can be increased transiently and repeatedly, and over time this may lead to greater gains in mass."
As research has confirmed, eating carbs immediately after you work out is important, too. When you exercise, you burn glycogen, which is stored glucose. As your glycogen storage begins to be depleted, your body produces an enzyme called glycogen synthethase. This enzyme helps take up circulating glucose and converts it to glycogen. "You can encourage the replenishment of the glycogen that was burned during the physical activity," says Benardot. "Glycogen is highest when glycogen storage is lowest and glycogen is lowest immediately following physical activity … it’s highest when glycogen is lowest so if you provide carbohydrates right after you exercise, you’re going to get a more effective conversion of that glucose in your blood stream to glycogen."
That doesn’t mean you need to overdo the carbs—glycogen synthethase remains circulating for about 20 hours post-exercise, so you have plenty of time to refuel. "Eating following exercise is very important, but it’s not the only important time because there’s a limit to how much energy you can take in at one time," says Benardot.
Applying your Knowledge
If you’re serious about your training, etch these words into your brain: never get hungry. "If you’re hungry it means the emergency mechanisms have already taken hold, and the next time you eat, you’re not going to be doing yourself a favor," warns Benardot. Instead, eat every three hours or so, and you’ll remain in energy balance throughout the day, reduce the chance of storing fat, and have plenty of energy for your toughest workouts.
How much you eat total depends on a number of factors including how much you weigh, your age, your training schedule, and how active you are. A simple formula is to multiply your weight in pounds by 12 if you’re trying to lose weight and gain muscle; multiply your weight by 15 if you’re trying to gain muscle. "We’re basically fuel-based creatures, so before you can talk about energy substrate distribution, or how much should be carbs/protein/fat, you really have to make sure that energy needs are met first and that a person is consuming enough total energy to satisfy their total body needs based on their total physical activity," says Benardot.
"Athletes should have a very good understanding of their daily energy requirements, in terms of calories," agrees Gibala. "An endurance athlete can eat 80 percent of their calories in the form of carbohydrate, but if they are not consuming sufficient energy, then glycogen re-synthesis (and performance) may be compromised. Conversely, strength athletes may need only 10 percent of the total calories from protein in order to maximal gains in hypertrophy, provided they are eating suficient total calories."
After you determine how many calories you need, break up your intake into small, regular meals throughout the day. Plan on eating five or six times a day, and you’ll see a difference in the way you feel—and in the results you reap from the gym, too.
Eating right isn’t just a matter of getting enough calories and consuming the right mix of carbs, protein and fat. These tips will help you reap the most from your meals—and your workouts:
Eat often. Basically, you should be eating every three hours or so—often enough so that you’re not ravenous when you sit down to refuel. Don’t go more than three hours without eating, especially if you’re planning an intense workout.
But eat small. Eating often means consuming small meals—say, 300 to 500 calories each, depending on your weight, age, and energy requirements. Eat more than that and you’ll feel stuffed and be likely to store more calories as fat, too.
Mix it up. The best diet includes carbs, protein and fat—every time you eat, you should get a mix of all three macronutrients. The ratio you choose (40/30/30, 40/40/20 or 60/15/25, for example) isn’t as critical as not skimping on any of the three.
Break the fast. Starting your day with breakfast will boost your metabolism and give you energy, whether you need it for a morning workout or a stressful commute to work.
Replenish your muscles. The meal you eat post-exercise is the most important one you’ll have all day. Plan to eat a meal high in carbs and protein within an hour of working out to help restore glycogen and repair muscle.