Train fasted or fed?
A common question and confusion from many people is whether to train fasted or have something to eat before a training session. Often training early in the morning leads to the most confusion. People are normally concerned about GI discomfort and eating too close to the start of a session, lack of time early in the morning or little desire to eat after just waking up. All of these are valid reasons to avoid eating; however, training fasted is not always preferred.
The table provides guidelines on when to train fasted or fed:
The duration and intensity both play a huge role in whether you should eat prior to training. This doesn’t have to be a large meal. If eating within an hour of beginning training, a high carbohydrate, low fibre snack is required. Some potential options include:
- Banana
- Oat bar
- Cereal bar
- Handful of dry cereal
The choice on whether to eat before training should come down to the duration, intensity and if performance is a factor. This often requires additional planning to ensure snacks are available prior to training.
Timing of post training food:
Eating after training is essential to aid in recovery, however the timing of when to eat is dependent on several factors. A lot of people think eating within 30-60 minutes after a session is non-negotiable however this simply isn’t the case.
When training once a day with the next session not until the following day or two, recovery nutrition is not as important. Waiting until your next main meal would be sufficient recovery nutrition. If training load is higher and involves two sessions per day or long duration, high intensity sessions on consecutive days, the timing of recovery nutrition is more important. In this scenario having a snack within 30-60minutes is important to begin the recovery process. This would be followed by a main meal within the next 2 hours.
Examples of post training snacks include:
- Flavoured milk
- Smoothie
- Yoghurt with fruit
Often this requires prior planning to ensure snacks are available, especially if needing to travel post training.
The timing of food intake around training is important but there is no one size fits all approach. Training fasted is possible but not for every session and including food straight after training is not always necessary. Just like training changes day to day, your food intake should also change to match training load.
This months blog is written by Dietitian, Sam Coppinger
