Pre and Post Workout Nutrition

One of the hurdles I have to get over with a lot of my clients when they begin their Ticket to Hotness™ is the idea that time in the gym doesn't do anything to you while you're there. Every movement, rest, and rep has a point and that is to place strain on the body and then allowing the body to react to the strain and produce change that is necessary to reach a fitness goal. That's right, you do not burn fat or build muscle in the gym. Physical change takes place in the other 155 hours in the week during your recovery. Wouldn't be ashame to waste those hours by improperly fueling your body and not allowing those changes to happen? This article takes a look at the basics of "peri-worout" nutrition, or what you should eat around and during your workouts in order to best fuel the changes you want to happen in your body.

But first a little review.

Macronutrients

• Protein- This is the building block of your entire body and 75% of your dry weight. It's the legos you need to build and maintain muscle. In general you need 1-2g/lb of body weight per day.
• Fat- You need fat. Fat is necessary in the proper digestion of a lot of micronutrients (like calcium and vitamin D) and the creation of very important hormones like androgens, which build muscle and burn fat. Oh, and if you are not getting enough, your body will produce more cortisol which will make you more fat. So trust me and get at least 30% of your calories from fat.
• Carbs- Carbs are energy. There are various carbohydrates that metabolize faster or slower depending on the amount of fiber they contain, but you need energy to work out. How much and when depends on your fitness goals and workout timing.

Micronutriets

• Vitamins and minerals- All the little guys, but especially potassium, calcium, sodium, and magnesium.
• Fiber- keeps your blood and bowels moving.
• Creatine Monohydrate- This is molecule your body produces but that people can supplement when training for optimum strength and power.
• Etc.- There are 1,000,000,000 more micronutrients that all do really important things. You need to eat food (and get a little sun) in order to get all of them. 

Water

• You need it to do live; you need it to function. And the more water you drink (to a point), the better your body will function. The better you are functioning, the faster you will see change.

Before you Sweat, Eat.

Simple rule that you should take from this and burn into your sports brain so you never, ever forget: Do not train on an empty stomach. That means lifting, running, swimming, spinning or anything that requires special shoes and a sports bra. Even when you are trying to maintain a caloric deficit, if you train with low blood sugar, your central governor will use it as a reason to make you feel fatigued more quickly and your net caloric loss will be lower. If you train without protein in your blood stream, you will be less likely to synthesize new muscle tissue after your workout. So eat breakfast, even if it's small, and have a snack containing protein before you get your sweat on. What you need will depend on your goals, but here are the basics:

• 20-30g of carbs in the 3-4 hours prior to training. That's basically a small meal.
• 10-15 grams of protein. To promote muscle synthesis. These can be BCAAs, if you are in a severe caloric deficit.
• Caffeine is handy for a pick-me-up and actually has proven to promote fat loss pre-workout.
• I suggest staying away from a lot of fat and fibre just prior to working out. It'll upset your tummy. 

The idea here is to get your glycogen stores restocked so you can maintain a higher rate of work in the session. The science has not been done on the specific types of carbohydrates that are best for specific workouts, so you'll have to experiment. Longer sessions require slower burning fuel, and shorter harder sessions should require faster, high energy fuel. I eat whole wheat and a little honey. That keeps me covered with fast and slow metabolizing sugar. I also like a little peanut butter (1-2 tbl spoons) for the protein synthesis and super-slow metabolizing fat. If you are doing the math at home, what I am describing is a peanut butter and honey covered whole wheat English muffin. If it has been a while since that snack, I like Shot Bloks which have a little caffeine. Oh, and I also drink coffee AS I work out!

After You Sweat, Eat!

Post-workout nutrition is just as important as Pre-workout, but the goal is a little different. After training, the goal is to stimulate muscle growth and repair, as well as replenish glycogen stores. What you eat after is based on your fitness goals and how you just trained.

• After heavy lifting, when the goal is power and strength, you want a 2:1 carb to protein ratio with protein being 0.5 g/kg of body weight to stimulate muscle repair and growth.
• If you just ran or swam for an hour, you want a 4:1 ratio to promote repair and glycogen restocking. This should be done within the first hour and practically as soon as possible.

I carry a recovery shake (or chocolate milk!) with me to the gym or have it in the fridge so it's ready to go when I get back from a run. The reason you need to act fast is that if you don't feed those muscles what they need, they cannot get it easily from elsewhere and your next training session will suffer. Then the next one will suffer, and so on until you are in the Overtraining Death Spiral™ and our body goes to crap. If you don' get the carbs, protein and fat you need after you lift, your muscles won't grow and you will just be weaker and sore for longer.

Later On, Eat!

2-3 hours after you train, eat a sizeable, whole-food meal. This is usually my biggest meal of the day. Plenty of the "Four Mores" (protein, veggies, plant or fish fats, water) and yes, complex carbohydrates. This is the time that your body will be most sensitive to absorbing carbs and turning them into glycogen for fuel (instead of fat for fuel). If you consistently skimp on the carbs in this window, expect an Overtraining Death Spiral™.

Periworkout Nutrition for Dummies

There are a million pre-made commercial products you can buy, if you want to go that route. I'm not endorsing the ones I link to, per se, I'm just showing you they exist. They probably won't kill you.

• Before: Surge Workout Fuel, BCAAs, or Gatorade 01.
• During: Surge Workout Fuel or Gatorade 2.
• After: Whey-based protein shake or Gatorade 3.
• After After: A big, whole-food meal with the Four Mores and complex carbs.

A Common Mistake Not to Make

There is no excuse to binge just because you sweat a little. Do not go to Jamba Juice. Do not get a blueberry muffin at Starbucks. Do not get a Milky Way bar because "hey! It's got carbs!" The time to stay the most disciplined is when you think you deserve the most slack.

Patience

"Hey Coach Stevo, how can I speed this hotness thing up?"

First off, let's talk about what you need to be doing. The Ticket to Hotness™, as it were. 

• Resistance training 2-3 times per week.
• Cardio 2-3 times per week.
• Mobility 10 minutes per day.
• Moving every day.
• Eating in a 250kcal to 500kcal per day caloric deficit (or a surplus, depending on your goal).
• Hitting your 1g/lb of bodyweight minimum protein requirements.
• Sleeping 8 hours a night.
• Taking your fish oil.
• Flossing daily.

If you are even 80% compliant to that list then I promise, you will see change. You also deserve a medal. Most people can't do 1/10 of that, and it's the average needed to see body composition change. If you are not doing all the things on that list, stop reading this post and work on getting to 80% compliance. Or email me.

For those of you still reading, let's say you are doing all those things 80-99% of the time and talk about patience. If you are interested in fat loss and are 100% compliant to that list then you will see 1-2lb per week drop in body fat, some of the time. On a scale you might see -6lbs one day or +2lbs another, but averaged out you will see fat loss. But as my trainer put it so eloquently to me when I was trying to lose fat, "Your body is not a car." 

The Ticket to Hotness™ will not take you in a straight line. It's gonna have twists and turns because your body is smarter than you and will be constantly trying to adapt to its new conditions. Some of these adaptations are helpful to the goal (burning fat), and some are less helpful (lowering metabolism), but the net result will be hotness. You just have to stay consistent and be patient. Consistency is vital because that list of actions needs to become a list of habits if you want to effect real change. But patience is even more important because as Dr. Gordon Livingston says "only bad things happen quickly."

The Four "Mores"

A client actually taking my advice!"What should I eat, Coach Stevo?"

This is an important question I get from every one of my clients. And I'm glad people ask, because 90% of bodily change (fat loss, muscle gain, recomposition, etc.) is the result of manipulated nutrition. And people know what to eat. Our grandmothers used to make it for us. Vegetables, fruit, oatmeal, eggs, chicken, fish, etc. We know what good food is. However, I find that people are more often concerned with what they should not eat. We often think of diets as centered around, "less." Less carbs, less fat, less candy and ice cream. But Coach Stevo is here to tell you that if your goal is health and fitness, your day should be filled with thoughts of "more." Four "Mores," actually.

More Protein

This is the biggie. I already wrote one article about how important protein is, but to sum up: proteins are the legos of the human body. They are also the macronutrient that the body metabolizes least efficiently and which provides most people with a greater sense of satiation, or the sense of being full. All good things if you want to make any change to the composition of your body. The baseline number you should shoot for is 1g per pound of body weight every day. So a 120lb woman should shoot for 120g of protein per day. This is not an easy task if you are used to eating 3 square meals a day with some thoughtless snacking (how most people eat), but easy if you structure your diet around your legos. Make sure you have a handful of high-quality, lean protein (chicken, fish, lean beef, eggs, or dairy) with every meal and include protein in your snacks. I like cups of cottage cheese with pepper, yogurt with walnuts, hard-boiled eggs, and a personal favorite, beef jerky.

More Veggies

The name of the game with fat loss is simple: nutrient dense, calorically light. Veggies are the perfect fat loss combo. They are mostly insoluble starch and water and lots of micronutrients. They provide provide a great deal of mass (and therefore some satiation triggers) and whatever carbohydrates they do provide are slowed down by all that fiber, lessening their impact on your insulin (and therefore fat storage) levels. The micronutrients they provide ensure you can create all the hormones necessary for optimum functioning and therefore composition change. Aim for a handful every time you eat. Isn't that convenient? You need a handful of protein and a handful of veggies at every meal and you have two hands!

More Plant and Fish Fats

Yes, you need fat. More to the point, you need a balance of fats. There are 3 main types of fats that your body uses to create lipid bilayers in your cells as well as hormones and shuttles for micronutrients like calcium and vitamin D. Those are mono and polyunsaturated fats as well as saturated fats. If you are American, you probably have no trouble getting your required amounts of saturated fats. But the other fats can only be found in plants like avocados, olives and nuts trees and from fatty fish like salmon. You should work to incorporate more of these into your diet. The easiest way is by taking fish oil, but I try to make sure a little olive oil, a few walnuts, or an avocado is present at every meal, especially at night when fats are more easily digested. But be careful, fat has more calories than any other micronutrient and 4 carelessly scooped-up handfuls of almonds can easily top 800cal.

More Water

Everyone knows this but I'm here to tell you again. Water makes all your systems run better and that means faster fat loss and muscle gain. It also tricks you into feeling full. Make water your base beverage and consume it consciously, not just when you're thirsty. I keep a 1.5 liter bottle by my bed and make sure to drink its contents every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep. I also try and drink one glass of water for every glass of alcohol I consume. This goes a long way to preventing hangovers and keeps me bright and perky for my 6AM clients.

Ask Coach Stevo!

"Hey Coach Stevo! My goal is to lose 1lb/wk for the next 10 weeks and I already strength train 3x per week. Should I bike for hour or do kettlebell swings? How many hours of kettlebell swings are equal to an hour bike ride?" -Teresa M.

Ok, so your goal is to lose 1lb/wk. I'm going to interpret this non-literally and here's why.

I don't think you want to weigh 1lb less per week on a scale because I don't think you are flying on the space shuttle or entering a wrestling tournament in 10wks. I think you want to be, bear with me, "1lb hotter per week."

A very important factor in hotness, health, fitness, etc. is fat loss, it's true. And any form of movement will burn calories and that is vital to fat loss. But there are other, more important and quickly attainable benefits that you can derive from an hour of training than fat loss alone. Most important of all, especially to hotness and long term injury prevention, is posture.

Stretching your hip flexors will do more to improve your booty than anything else!If you spend all day sitting at a desk in front of a computer, your body gets used to two things: hip flexion (legs up) and medial shoulder rotation (hunching). This chronically shortens your hip flexors and pectoral minors among other things and creates a posture that is both unhealthy and decidedly un-hot. An ideal use of an hour of your time after doing that for 8 hours would be repeated hip extension (squeezing your ass cheeks together) and lateral shoulder rotation (squeezing your shoulder blades together). That is exactly what the kettlebell swing is: the anti-sitting.

So let's say that the caloric burn of spinning and swings are equal (they aren't, btw), after sitting and hunching for 8 hours, why would you want to pay money to go somewhere and... sit and hunch for another hour?

Tracy Reifkind is the Queen of the Swing and at 47 years old, lost over 100 lbs in a year with good nutrition (absolutely vital), walking, and swinging only 20min per week. But more importantly she is still fucking built. She gained well over 100lbs of hotness. Yes, you should absolutely be strength training 3x a week. That is vital. But use the other 2 hours per week of training efficiently and ask yourself: "What is my goal? What is my behavior? Does my behavior match my goal?" If your goal is health, injury prevention, cardiovascular health, or hotness: swing. If it's to be lighter on a scale or to win the tour-de-france: bike. 

My suggested workout: do 300 swings in an hour, 2x per week and try to make the time it takes you shorter every week. Simple, and it comes with Coach Stevo's "Ticket to Hotness" guarantee!

Seminar with Coach Stevo

It’s the beginning of a new year and you know what you need to do. Eat better. Drink Less. Go to the gym more. But you knew all that last year and the only thing that seems to have improved is your tolerance for wine. Well get started the right way by learning “Healthy Habits with Coach Stevo!”

• Learn the how to make any goal a habit in your daily life.
• Simple tricks to lose weight, gain muscle, write that novel, or just keep your house clean.
• 90min seminar with 30min for Q&A
• Free follow-up session with Coach Stevo (a $100 value) to check in and monitor your progress!

• When: January 15th, 2011 from 2pm to 4pm
• Where: Pacific Heights Health Club, 2356 Pine Street at Fillmore
• How Much: $30 General Public, $15 for PHHC members
• Why: Because this time, it’ll be different.

To Register:  Call 415.563.6694 or send an email to info@phhcsf.com.