Post Exercise Eating Part I

Whoa Nelly!

One look here and you are thinking "Damn...she got big!"

Yes I did thank you very much, and that was and still is my goal. It's all a cycle, just like life itself. There is a starting point, changes, backslides, moving forward, nothing is constant.

In the sport of figure, you have to get very, very lean. You also need to sport some pretty impressive muscle. You cannot stay on a diet all the time or you start to look haggard, you lose muscle and you look old and tired.

You may also be interested in doing this even if you don't compete.

So life goes in cycles. Gain and lose, gain and lose.

You bulk up part of the year. You don't have to get fat, in fact, that's not a good idea at all, but with muscle gain comes some fat gain, they sorta go hand in hand, but you can control how much of each if you eat properly.

Eating post exercise is critical because your body is better prepared to receive and store carbohydrate that at any other time during the day. I shudder when I hear women (mostly) talk about how they exercise on an empty stomach, then they don't eat anything for hours, just to make sure they have "burned off all those extra calories".

What they have done is ensure they will look like helpless, skinny, emaciated waifs for a long, long time. Yuck!

Timing is critical. At no other time during the day is your body as receptive to nutrient intake as it is immediately after training. Research shows that the restocking if the muscles' carbohydrate stores is two to three times as rapid immediately after exercise as it is a few hours later.

In the same way, other research shows that the repair of muscles damaged during exercise is more effective if protein is consumed immediately after exercise.

Tomorrow, exactly what and how much to take in?