Eating within 30 minutes of workout

(Hi everyone, I'm new here!)

I just read this in the Ask The Nutritionist section, and was curious if anyone knew the reasoning behind it: "To prevent weight gain when exercising, strength-train with light weights and more reps to avoid bulking up, and eat some carbohydrate and protein within 30 minutes of completing your workout." I get the light weights, more reps part, but is there a particular reason that eating after completing your workout helps you avoid weight gain from exercise? Maybe something about water weight from building muscle?

No...eating after exercise does not prevent you from bulking up. However, it is always good to eat something small after a workout or a run as it can help your body recover quicker anre more efficiently. Plus, you wont feel as tired after a hard workout.

There is a window right after you work out wherein your muscle glycogen (muscle energy stores) are depleted, and your muscle fibers are torn. Within the first 30 minutes to hour after exercise, your body sends most of the calories you ingest to replenish glycogen stores, and it also will send most of the amino acids gained from the protein you eat to repair damaged muscle tissue. Not only does this give your body more time to recover so you feel better (you start recovering from your workout thirty minutes afterwards, not 3 hours later, which is a big difference), if you're trying to lose weight, by eating right after working out you run a better chance that the calories you ingest are going towards replenishing energy and muscle tissue instead of being converted into fat.

Do you have a link to where you read that?

Yeah, I'd like to see that too. That sounds like what Paige Waehner and everyone else around here calls the "Pink Dumbbell myth" of women's strength training straight out of fitness misinformation magazines like Shape, Self and Cosmo.

I buy supplements from a company called Hammer Nutrition, and every month they send out a newsletter loaded with tons of nutritional information about pre- and post-workout nutrition and supplements for endurance atheletes (I'm a swimmer). I initially read that information in that newsletter a while ago, which was backed up by several specifically cited scientific studies, but I also read it in last month's issue of Splash which is a free magazine given to all registered members of Souther California Swimming (you need to be a member to participate in meets).

Besides that, I'm pretty sure it's a virtually universally accepted fact. I just did some google-ing and found this article which corroborates what I just said from yahoo.com, which seems like a pretty trusted source:

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/sportsnick/10 564/post-workout-recovery-act-fast

Anyways, eating right after workout has done wonders for my recovery time and energy. Talking from personal experience, if I don't eat after workout (and mine usually exceed two hours) I feel like crap later. But in the end, it's up to you. If you distrust the advice, try out your own way and see what works. No one knows your body better than you do, so if you can wait an hour or two after working out to eat and you feel great and are getting lean and ripped, by all means continue to do so. :]

Interesting article related to this topic:

The Top 10 Post Workout Nutrition Myths

Remember though, this site exists to sell supplements.

I'm still focused on the "strength-train with light weights and more reps to avoid bulking up" portion of the advice...

From the CC's expert list, I looked up Paul Rogers, the Weight Training Guide, and found this.

Women's Weight Training Myth #7 - Women only need to do cardio and if they decide to lift weights, they should be very light.
First of all, if you only did cardio then muscle and fat would be burned for fuel. One needs to do weights in order to get the muscle building machine going and thus prevent any loss of muscle tissue. Women that only concentrate on cardio will have a very hard time achieving the look that they want. As far as the lifting of very light weights, this is just more nonsense. Muscle responds to resistance and if the resistance is too light, then there will be no reason for the body to change.

Me too - I believe greatly in proper pre- during- and post-workout nutrition for your goals (come on, I can't be the only one who knows how long-distance bikers and marathoners are always sucking down the carbs while working out, can I? Or who looks forward to his post-workout shake and raisins :-P), it's the horribleness of the "lift light weights to avoid bulking up" advice I was concerned about.

 That's just an egregious violation of everything we know about human physiology and I was hoping to learn that Mary hadn't in fact been dispensing such misguided notions.

But even within the fueling pre, during, and post workout portion of the advice ... how does that relate to not gaining weight when exercising? Or was that just tacked on to the end of bad advice?

Here's the link:  http://caloriecount.about.com/exercise-enough -q9015

I saw it today and thought it was wrong too.

I haven't read anything on super light weights and high reps to avoid getting big, but I do know that you won't get big if you don't rip your muscle tissue, and for me that means when I go to the gym with the mindset of bulking up, I put on heavy weights that I can only do 6-8 reps with.

Common sense wise, it seems like it makes sense. Usually people who do a lot of pushups and calisthenics/plyometrics don't get big but they get toned (because they're just using they're own bodyweight for weight training). If you want to look like Ahhnold, then you have to lift like him, which means heavy weights.

So for me, if I was a woman who didn't want to get super buff, I'd shy away from heavy lifting. But again, I haven't read any scientific evidence to back this up, so go do some research! :P

niikolai - although that's a common thought, the truth is that women don't have as much testosterone as men. So as hard as you work to gain muscle, we'd have to work even harder. Plus, for people who are eating to lose weight (i.e. at a deficit), it's going to be near impossible to put on substantial muscle mass.

So a woman on a diet... not going to bulk up. I'm now lifting heavy (3x8 currently, was doing 5x5s), have been for about a year, all while eating at maintenance. And bulky would not be an appropriate term for me :) (Or maybe it would be, now that I know that some people think Jessica Biel is bulky... what?).

If you are interested in doing some reading, stumptuous.com is a great site, for women lifters, and really anyone.

Original Post by niikolai:

If you want to look like Ahhnold, then you have to lift like him, which means heavy weights.

If lifting like Arnold would make you look like him, then 90% of the high school kids in every gym in the country would look like him.  If you want to look like Arnold you need to take all the same drugs that Arnold was taking. 

I would just like to throw my two cents in here. I am a girl and I have been lifting HEAVY weights for over 2 years and I am still not "bulky."

If you have the magical genes to become bulky you should feel lucky rather than fear it. Because building muscle is not easy, especially for a woman.

Here are some great articles on pre and post workout nutrition. They will really open your eyes in terms of how important it is to get the right types of protein/carbs before and after a workout.

Pre Workout Nutrition :

http://www.build-muscle-and-burn-fat.com/musc le-building-foods-pre-workout-meal.html

Post Workout Nutrition (Best overall article I have read on the subject) :

http://www.intense-workout.com/post_workout.h tml

Original Post by jmphifer:

Here's the link:  http://caloriecount.about.com/exercise-enough -q9015

I saw it today and thought it was wrong too.

 Melkor, is there anyway you can get in touch with 'Mary' and set her straight on that light weight - hi rep THING!!! please, sheesh!