What to Eat Before and After Training: Amounts and Examples

The idea that saves you a lot of stress: the food around your workout is the icing, not the cake. The cake is what you eat across the whole day: calories and, above all, total protein. In the meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Aragon and Krieger (2013), covering 23 hypertrophy studies, total protein intake was the best predictor of muscle gained, not the timing. If you do not know your number, work it out with the protein calculator and then adjust the details below.

Before training: how much carbohydrate by session length

Pre-workout carbohydrate gets you to the start with a full tank, and it matters more the longer you go. The meta-analysis by Aird et al. (2018), with 46 studies, found that eating beforehand improves performance in prolonged aerobic exercise, but not in short-duration exercise. For sessions longer than an hour, the joint position of the ACSM, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Dietitians of Canada (Thomas et al., 2016) recommends 1-4 g of carbohydrate per kilo of body weight 1 to 4 hours beforehand: with little time to spare, stay near 1 g/kg; with more hours ahead, you can go higher.

• Avoid very fatty or very high-fibre meals right before: they take longer to leave the stomach and sit heavily.
• A little protein beforehand (a yogurt, the chicken in your lunch) also counts: according to the ISSN, the pre-workout meal affects how urgent the post-workout one is.
• Coffee: the ISSN position stand on caffeine (Guest et al., 2021) credits it with performance gains in many studies, especially in endurance. If it does not agree with you, or you train in the evening and it costs you sleep, you do not need it.

Pre-workout examples, with their numbers

Calculated with USDA FoodData Central, with foods weighed after cooking. For a long session, a 70 kg person aiming for 1 g/kg one hour before needs about 70 g of carbohydrate: the meal in the first row (69 g) works if there is time to digest it; if not, combine two of the light options.

After training: 20-40 g of protein, no stopwatch

The ISSN position stand on nutrient timing (Kerksick et al., 2017) puts the protein dose that maximally stimulates muscle protein synthesis at 20-40 g of a good-quality source, and notes that eating it anywhere from immediately to 2 hours afterwards produces a robust response. To scale it to your weight, Schoenfeld and Aragon (2018) suggest about 0.4 g/kg per meal over at least four meals, which gives 1.6 g/kg per day; at the 2.2 g/kg ceiling, that becomes up to 0.55 g/kg per meal. It fits the meta-analysis by Morton et al. (2018), with 49 trials and 1,863 people: above roughly 1.6 g/kg per day, extra protein added no further lean mass. Post-workout carbohydrate depends on your goal and on when you train next: if it is within 4 hours, the ISSN suggests 1.2 g/kg per hour of recovery; if not, your normal meals restore glycogen.

Post-workout examples, with their numbers

All four fall within the 20-40 g protein range. The oat and lentil options carry more carbohydrate: they fit better after a long session or if you train again soon.

Fasted training: what the evidence says

Training fasted is neither harmful nor miraculous. In the short term it changes the fuel mix: in the meta-analysis by Aird et al. (2018), circulating free fatty acids rose more after fasted exercise. But that does not translate into more fat lost: in the trial by Schoenfeld et al. (2014), 20 women in a calorie deficit did one hour of cardio three days a week, either fasted or after eating, and after 4 weeks they had lost the same amount of fat. The cost is performance: eating beforehand improved prolonged aerobic exercise. Practical takeaway: for a short or easy session, train however feels best; for a long or very demanding one, eat something first. We go deeper in does fasted training burn more fat?.

Stress-free summary: secure your daily protein, match pre-workout carbohydrate to the length of the session and pick a post-workout meal that suits you, without watching the clock. To check that your total adds up, take a photo of each plate with Renzy: it estimates calories and macros and you can correct them; for packaged food, use the barcode scanner.