Saturday, March 8, 2014

What To Eat After Workout (post workout)



The post workout intake is a snack that is taken just after the workout. When your body is in a critical condition after burning many calories it has no choice but to sound the alarm and open the metabolic window. It corresponds to a time interval during which all ingested nutrients are assimilated (good for muscle growth).

Nutrition and metabolic window:

After an intense workout, hormone levels are low, muscles are filled with waste, the glycogen is at its lowest rate and proteins were metabolized to compensate for energy. At that critical moment your body realizes that it must get stronger for your ever more intense exercises. This is why it activates all anabolic mechanisms to engage the recovery and enable the tissue repair: we say that the body opens the metabolic window. A Protein intake during this period allows your body to switch from catabolism to anabolism.

The opening period of the metabolic window is between 40 and 60 minutes after the workout. During this interval of time nutrients are much better absorbed by the body, including proteins which their level of assimilation may exceed 40g for an 80kg individual. Muscle fibers are much more receptive and consumed nutrients are entirely devoted to muscles. To summarize, a devastating workout put the body in a perfect condition for muscle synthesis for only one hour.

Restore glycogen reserves:

The metabolic window Opening is the perfect moment to ingest proteins and also simple and complex carbohydrates. The latter will restore glycogen reserves to better protect proteins consumed in the future and to deliver fuel to muscles. Knowing that the metabolic window pushes away the limits of nutrients assimilation, the rate of sugars transformed into fat is much lower during this period. In other words the metabolic window allows you to consume extra calories which are more than your daily needs and without storing excess fat!

Fast absorbing protein in post workout nutrition:

After the workout you have to eat foods which are quickly assimilated into the body to get the most out of their nutritional intake. Lean fish like sole or plaice are quickly assimilated by the body. Meats such as beef and pork are not adapted to the metabolic window because the body requires more than 3 hours to digest them. It is preferable to take liquid mixture in the shaker because it is rapidly assimilated.

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