Planning Your Daily Nutrition

When it comes to pre workout nutrition, it seems that the majority of bodybuilders especially beginners and intermediate lifters in particular place a greater emphasis on ensuring that their post-workout nutrition is bang-on. The first thing that comes to mind are when thinking about nutrition of the terms like "whey protein," "creatine" and of course, the notorious "post-workout anabolic window. There's no question that your pre workout nutrition is critical to your success.

Your total daily calorie and nutrient intake along with getting those nutrients from mostly higher quality sources is always the most important part of every single diet plan regardless of what your goal is. Your biggest goal with your pre workout nutrition intake is to consume a significant amount of both carbs and protein in some form sometime before or if needed, during your workout. This is the point when everyone likes to take it a big overcomplicated step further and give specific recommendations for exactly how many grams of carbs and protein you should eat, exactly what foods those nutrients should come from, and exactly how many hours, minutes and seconds before your workout you should eat this meal for excellent results.

The reason its term the “anabolic phase” is again pretty obvious, as anabolism refers to the “building” (or even “rebuilding”) of something.

Quite simply, your pre workout nutrition intake is the meal that plays the largest role in supplying your body with everything it will need to repair, replenish, recover and adapt to the training stimulus that you just provided during your workout.

Specifically, the goal of the pre workout nutrition is to accomplish:

• Replenishing muscle glycogen that was depleted during your workout.
• Reducing muscle protein breakdown caused by exercise.
• Increasing muscle protein synthesis.
• Reducing muscle soreness and fatigue.
• Greatly enhancing overall recovery.
• Reducing cortisol levels.

In order to power through your gut-wrenching, muscle-fiber-tearing workout, you need a premium source of fuel. That's why it's fundamentally important that you consume a slow to moderate digesting source of carbohydrates. It's not recommended to use mainly high Glycemic or fast-digesting carbs as you'll quickly burn out once their energy source is used up during your workout. Oranges provide this type of quick energy source. That's why you always hear bodybuilders talking about eating or sucking on oranges before a workout. Aside from providing a solid source of simple carbohydrates, oranges are packed with vitamin C and electrolytes. Bananas and apples are also excellent options if oranges are not to your liking.

If you already got your pre workout nutrition right, then it probably doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as some people make it seem. The real big advantage of this shake is the convenience of it. Just mix it together and drink. That’s as quick and easy as it gets, and some people might prefer that. Not to mention, some people just aren’t that hungry after working out, so they might prefer to drink this meal rather than eat it. It’s all about personal preferences.