The Mind-Muscle Connection

Many people eat more than 3 times a day.  They understand that smaller, more frequent meals help the body burn fat and provide the body with a constant flow of quality nutrients for growth.  What most people don’t know is that some meals are more important that others.

Your body is constantly adapting to your daily life.  Whether you are sitting at a desk, walking, driving, sleeping, or working out, your body is on the hunt for energy, and this means calories to burn.  Those calories come from food and each food item you consume provides the body with a different nutrient profile of fats, carbs and proteins.  Why is this important?  Well, depending on what you are doing at a certain time, your body will optimally need to account for that with stored nutrients to used for energy.  The body needs more energy if you are awake, than if you are asleep. And more still if you are exercising, than if you are sedentary (sitting or lying). 

This energy requirement is most important at one time during the day, right after you are done with your workout.  When you exercise moderate to heavy exertion, your body burns energy stores to provide kinetic energy (motion) for your muscle groups.   It will burn carb stores first, then fat stores, then protein. The goal is to burn carbs and fat, but to spare protein.  This is why workout should only last an hour or so.  After the workout, your body needs to be replenished so the burn cycle can start over.  This is why a post workotu meal is so important.  Restoring your body with the quality nutrients that it needs post-workout will help you grow and recover more efficiently.

For a post workout meal, you optimally should eat 3 times within the 2 hours after your workout.  I know that’s alot, but they should be small, nutrient-dense meals.

Meal 1 – Right after your workout (within 15 min), you should consume high bioavilable protein, preferably whey protein.  Around 50g will do. To get a true value, it depends on how much protein you are taking in during the day.  Anywhere from 1g per lb bodyweight to 2g will help you grow.  If you take in 1.5g per lb, and you weigh 200 lbs, thats 300g of protein a day. And if you eat 6 meals a day, thats 50g per meal.  You also want some high glycemic carbs.  These will drive the protein plus any other nutrients that you add (more on that to come) to the muscles faster and more efficiently.  High glycemic carbs cna be anything from dextrose, to gatorade, to pure sugar or even blended fruit.  The ratio is 2:1 with protein, so if you have 50 g protein, you need 100g carbs.  And don’t think that eating sugar at this time will cause your body to store it as fat.  Your glycogen (blood sugar) levels are so low at this point after training, that your muscles are like a sponge and can absorb way more nutrients to help in recovery than during other meals.  Other things you can add to your shake to help with recovery and to hitch a ride with the protein are: Creatine, Glutamine, Leucine and other Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs). Mix this all up in a shake and drink with water, gatorade or milk. Fat should be kept to a minimum

Meal 2 – about 30 min after the shake, a whole food meal is required to stabilize the influx of nutrients to help with recovery and growth.  By this time, your first meal should be completely absorbed and your body will need to more nutrients.  Protein should come from a high quality whole food source like chicken, fish, beef or eggs.  The amount should be consistent with Meal 1.  Carbs should come in the form of low glycemic, whole food carbs like rice, oatmeal and pasta. The amount of carbs should coincide with the overall protein/carb/fat ratio used for the entire meal plan (except the first meal, post workout). This is normally 40/40/20. So if you have 50g protein, you would have 50g carbs and 25g fat) to follow the ratio.  For fats, you want clean, polyunsaturated fats.  You will get close to your ‘per meal’ amount just with the fat content in the protein and carb food sources, so if you need any further fat added, add almonds or other nuts or oils to supplement.

Meal 3 – Meal 3 should occur and hour after Meal 2, or 1:45 post workout.  The serving amounts should be the same as Meal 2.  So within 2 hours, you get 3 meals and a continuous flow of nutrients to the muscles.  After meal 3, you should resume your normal meal schedule for the rest of the day (normally every 2-3 hours). The serving sizes and ratios should be adjusted to meet your goals.  If you are trying to lose weight, than you should eat less than 17 times your bodyweight.  This may drop the protein, carb, fat amounts per meal, BUT DO NOT CHANGE THE AMOUNTS FOR MEAL 1.  This meal is different from the rest.  Keep that protein per lb bodyweight value constant and adjust up or down only after you adjust the protein/carb/fat ratios for the rest of the whole meals