One of our illustrious Femme Fitale Fit Club members posted this question to the group “Do you eat before your workouts?” Now I must admit I do not. Not because I think I will burn more fat or anything, but because I either get sidestitches or nauseas and queasy. Sounds like good reasons to not eat before an intense workout right? Well she presented an article by Jillian Michaels titled “Myth Buster – Should You Eat Before A Workout“.
You can read the full article for yourself here.
Excerpt from the article…”You need sugar to exert energy. Your body needs a certain amount of sugar for fuel when training. When that blood sugar is not there, your body will convert your own muscle tissue into energy.”
Basically what she is stating as science vs. fiction is that our body uses sugar for energy during intense workouts. If we do not have any sugar to burn for energy then our body will use protein (i.e. our muscle mass) to fuel our workouts. This means we stand to burn and lose muscle we are trying to build because we have not filled our stomachs with enough clean fuel to sustain us.
The article offers up a few choices for quick, easy, simple and small snacks we can eat 40 to 45 minutes before our workouts to minimize any impact on our performance and muscle mass. Honestly some of these choices look pretty durn good such as apples and almond butter, bananas and cottage cheese and berries and low-fat yogurt.
I decided to run my own experiment using my body as a guinea pig. For the next 2 weeks I will eat a little something such as these choices before my workouts (I rise at 4:30 am and to date have only consumed 16 oz of water before any early-morning workout) and will journal how I feel. Can’t swear I’ll do it on a daily basis but I will try my best to do it as often as possible so you all can see how I am progressing. Cross your fingers for me. 🙂