Diet During Sports
The body needs to balance nutrients before being challenged. But be careful—you shouldn’t eat just anything! Two experts explain what to eat to be in shape before going to the gym and what to eat after physical exertion to recover well. You need to know the Diet During Sports.
To care for your body and your health, it is recommended that you have a balanced diet and do 30 minutes of physical exercise per day. But it would help if you ate adequately before going for a run or an intensive Zumba class. Although exercising on an empty stomach is not recommended, certain foods should be avoided. What Diet During Sports should or should not be swallowed before exercising? And after?
Should You Drink and/or Eat Before Exercise?
Studies are unanimous on this subject: Performance is better when a meal precedes physical activity, announces the Cardiology Federation. If eating before sports is recommended for better performance, you can do sports without it on an empty stomach.
Should You Also Drink Before Exercise?
The answer is yes. It is very important to drink enough before, during, and after exercise to avoid dehydration. Water helps transport nutrients and reduce the risk of sustaining an injury. According to the Federation, water serves in particular as a lubricant between the different tissues.
Drinking helps compensate for water losses linked to sweating, which can be very significant depending on the intensity and time period of the exercise, the temperature, and the air’s humidity level. Uncompensated, these losses can have dramatic repercussions on performance and health.
Except in cases of very prolonged exercise, water is sufficient. Otherwise, you can opt for energy drinks adapted to the athlete’s energy, vitamin and mineral needs. You can drink water two to three hours before a sports session, always in small sips, up to 10 minutes before the sessions.
Diet During Sports
How to Eat Before Physical Exercise?
Dietitians and nutritionists, recommend eating complex carbohydrates to ‘nourish’ the muscles used during exercise. You can, therefore, eat pasta, rice, and cereals to stock up on energy at midday.
Foods Rich in Complex and Simple Carbohydrates
She also advises the absorption of simple carbohydrates, which are found in:
- Compotes without added sugar;
- Fresh fruits like apricots are rich in potassium, iron, copper, and magnesium, or bananas. The latter is also “the fruit of the athlete because it is digestible and neutralizes the stomach’s acidity, ” specifies the dietician.
Regarding meals, eat a diet rich in starchy foods and moderate protein to stay in shape during training. If your sports session takes place between snack and dinner, consider eating “a slice of whole meal or semi-whole meal bread for its fiber, protein, mineral content and its glycemic index, which is more interesting than that of white bread,” she advises. The dietitian suggest the diet during sports with gluten intolerance can opt for chestnut bread, which is rich in potassium.
Foods Rich in Antioxidants for Bodybuilding
Blueberry, rich in antioxidants (vitamin C in particular), is recommended for bodybuilding because it can help muscle fiber to regenerate. Antioxidants protect cells by stopping the harmful action of free radicals generated when the body undergoes stress, which is the case during sports, particularly bodybuilding. Other foods are rich in antioxidants: brightly colored fruits rich in beta-carotene and vitamin C (red fruits, carrots, apricots, red peppers, mangoes, etc.). You will find vitamin E in nuts, almonds, avocado, wheat germ should be the diet during sports.
When to Eat Before Sport?
The best solution to stay in shape during training is to eat three to four hours before exercise to give the body time to digest the meal. It is better to prevent the digestive system from working during activity!
However, professional life only sometimes adapts to this need. Finding the right time to optimize performance depends on each athlete. The main thing is to maintain the body’s natural rhythm.
There is no need to get ahead of your hunger. Please wait until it is felt before having a meal. Otherwise, you risk not eating properly, advises Nicolas Sahuc, a liberal dietician attached to the Montpellier CHRU.
Diet During Sports:
But how can you urgently manage your hunger a few minutes before training? The dietitian advises opting for “easily digestible and absorbable products such as compotes, exercise drinks or a small cereal bar. These foods suppress the feeling of hunger without overloading the body. » A little patience is necessary to learn to recognize the body’s signals and find what suits us best.
He recommends avoiding fatty nuts, which can slow gastric emptying and create digestive discomfort. Dried fruits, which are rich in carbohydrates, risk causing a slump mid-workout or digestive problems linked to water absorption.
Athlete’s Breakfast: What Should Be Eaten Before A Session?
Regarding breakfast, we select foods with a low glycemic sign to burn calories and especially more fat.
It is recommended to have a good intake of proteins, which slow down the absorption of carbohydrates and are helpful for the functioning of muscle mass. You can eat a slice of ham or a hard-boiled egg. It is the best example of diet during sports.
Cereals are recommended as they are a real fuel for the body. We turn to bread, rusks, pasta, rice, or semolina (yes, yes, for breakfast!). Muesli can be a good alternative.
The Egg is the Star Food
Please note about diet during sports: The egg is an athlete’s breakfast star food. It provides a very interesting source of protein (a whole egg provides around 7 grams of protein) and is not at all sweet. Plus, you can vary the recipes endlessly! A hard-boiled egg, fried, scrambled, with vegetables or pancakes, in the form of a high-protein omelet.
What Foods Should You Avoid When Exercising?
Ysabelle Levasseur avoids foods such as “foods that are too fatty and/or too sweet or even industrial dishes.” The nutritionist also advises not to overeat “so it is not counterproductive”. You will thus avoid “the inconveniences, such as nausea, linked to too long digestion”. Finally, the best thing to remember for diet during sports is to chew your food well to facilitate digestion.
“Whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ fats, it is preferable to limit their consumption before sporting activity,” adds the Federation of Cardiology. Lipids need a relatively long time to be digested and “digestion is, therefore, likely to continue during physical exercise and cause serious gastric discomfort”.
In addition, bad fats or saturated fatty acids stiffen the arteries, which must remain elastic to provide oxygen to the muscles.
The Federation of Cardiology also warns on one point: “The meal preceding intense physical activity is certainly not the opportunity to try new foods, nor even to choose foods which have the habit of causing discomfort such as legumes, cruciferous vegetables which can ferment and cause bloating, but also spicy or caffeine-rich foods.”
Another tip: avoid snacking on sugar before a workout. This causes blood sugar levels to increase too high, which causes the dip (hypoglycemia) during exercise.
As for drinks, coffee, tea and sodas, like all drinks containing caffeine, must be limited because they can dehydrate us when we exceed a certain dose.
What Meal After Sports Training?
Diet During Sports
Choosing the menu after a sports session can be challenging, but the body needs nourishment. Whether you are a fan of yoga, running, tennis or the weight room, the feeling of hunger always wakes up. You should prepare yourself to avoid making bad choices and to stay in great shape.
To recover well after a sports session, favor “foods that promote recovery such as milk, fruits, vegetables and almonds,” explains Ysabelle Levasseur.
After exercise, bananas, blueberries, protein foods.
Immediately after exercise, I recommend eating fruits rich in carbohydrates, such as bananas, apricots, grapes or blueberries. You can also take protein foods such as dairy products, which will provide the body with amino acids lost during exercise. Ysabelle Levasseur
A protein intake after exercise is especially indicated “in the event of an intense bodybuilding session or when the workouts are very close together”, as suggested by Canadian dietician Tristaca Caldwell, interviewed by the Best Health Mag site.
The dietician-nutritionist also offers a gourmet recipe that combines 125 to 250 ml of semi-skimmed milk, a teaspoon of defatted, unsweetened cocoa powder, and half a banana to provide nutrients.
What Should You Drink After Sport?
Regarding hydration, if you do sports for more than an hour, and especially if you sweat a lot, you can drink an energy drink. Very popular with athletes, it contains electrolytes that compensate for the sodium and potassium lost in perspiration. If your activity requires less effort or is short, you can simply drink water.
“It is important to hydrate and consume carbohydrates within 30 minutes of exercise,” says Tristaca Caldwell, to help the body assimilate the nutrients it needs.
Eating After Sport in The Evening: Five Menu Ideas
Diet During Sports
Morning athletes jump out of bed as soon as the alarm rings, put on their sneakers, and go to work out, while evening athletes reach their peak of energy after their day’s work. Nutrition and sports expert Cynthia Sass, interviewed by Health magazine, gives some ideas for meals that provide proteins and good fats without weighing down the stomach.
1- Prepare a portion of classic hummus or a lentil-based version and accompany it with a few slices of raw vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers or any seasonal vegetable you like;
2- Mix a small portion of fresh salmon with a handful of spinach and a spoonful of tapenade. To make the mixture even tastier, add a few leaves of romaine lettuce;
3- A handful of chickpeas, a spoonful of olive oil and a pinch of salt are good to stock up on nutrients. Grill in the oven or pan until golden brown;
4- Prepare a salad with hard-boiled eggs and chopped vegetables, such as cabbage or zucchini, and season everything with a spoonful of pesto;
5- Five or six thawed shrimp go perfectly well with a serving of guacamole. Just avoid over-spicing this dish, as some spices can affect sleep.
Diet During Sports: Can We Exercise After Eating?
Overall, it is advisable to leave time between eating and exercising. It is advisable to wait between 1 hour and 1.5 hours between the snack and the start of the sporting activity. If it’s a meal, we even wait 2 or 3 hours. We must give our digestive system time to work.
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