What Do I Eat Before My Boot Camp Workout?
Understand that what you eat before your workout makes or breaks your weight loss goals! By choosing the right selections, puts your body into a much greater position to burn calories and recover better between boot camp sessions.
What You Don’t Want To Do:
- Don’t skip out on meals during your day when you know you’re going to boot camp later on in the day! This will prevent you from giving it your all when boot camp class arrives, not to mention you’ll feel light headed, hungry, and even nauseous.
- Don’t eat too soon before your boot camp workout. You’ll feel sluggish, tired, and bloated.
What You Do Want To Do:
- Your pre-workout meal must be right for you. It might take a few times to really nail down when it’s best to feed your body before your workout but it shouldn’t take long. Start experimenting today to see what works for you.
- Your body must be propery fueled and properly hydrated if you hope to get the most out of each and every boot camp workout.
The all important science:
To really get it right, you need to focus on fibrous and complex carbohydrates before your workout. These are slower digesting carbs that will help provide your body with the energy necessary all the way up to and during your boot camp workout.
By focusing on your carbs, you’ll help keep your glycogen levels in your body full before your workout. Glycogen helps provide your body with the energy needed to get through an intense workout.
If you don’t mind your glycogen levels, your body still needs to take the energy from somewhere in your body. And if your glycogen levels are low or empty, your body takes the energy from your lean muscle tissue – yes, the same lean muscle tissue that you’re trying to tone up with! You need to avoid this at all costs!!
Keep a good protein source in your pre-workout meal because this will help keep your amino acid stores full.
What To Do Now:
Understand your goal of your pre-workout meal. You now know why it’s important, and if you don’t follow this, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle with your body all the way. It will be hard to see results quickly.
You must have a plan. Know when you’re going to be coming into your boot camp workout. When you know that, you know when you should be eating your pre-workout meal.
The closer the meal is to your workout, the lighter the meal should be. You want the meal to work with your body, not against it.
Pre-workout meals should be between 45-30 minutes before your workout.
As discussed above, proper carbohydrates and fluids are important to have in your pre-workout meal.
It’s important to include protein because this helps to ward off hunger during your workout.
Pre-workout protein smoothies are fine if you can stomach them – just keep a 2:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio in your smoothie blend. That’s 1 gram of protein for every 2 grams of carbohydrates.
Great Pre-workout choices:
- Light yogurt – 100 calories or less
- Your favorite fruit
- 8oz of fruit juice
- 1 slice of whole grain bread
- 1/2 bagel
- Table spoon of peanut butter
- 1 cup of coffee
