Sport is of course an integral part of healthy weight loss. Sports activities not only help to lose weight faster, build muscle mass, improve skin tone, but also improve our physical well-being. However, to achieve all of this, it is imperative to practice good nutrition while working out.
Diet during exercise in the gym.
Proper nutrition during sports has its own nuances and subtleties, which means that you will definitely have to make adjustments to your diet to make the training process easy and painless. So what you need to know
Watch your diet and your calories. One of the main errors of pp and training is a large restriction of daily calorie intake. After reducing their diet and starting to train, many do not understand where the breakdown comes from and the persistent reluctance to continue the process. Remember that playing sports requires extra energy for the activities themselves, as well as for post-activity recovery. Our body in a state of calm spends about 1200-1500 calories to maintain life, although this figure is different for each person, depending on weight. In general, it is considered 1 kilocalorie per kilogram of weight in one hour. It is customary for women to take 0.9 kilocalories. So, a woman weighing 60 kg will spend 0.9 * 60 * 24 = 1296 kilocalories per day only on the vital processes of the body. You now understand why it is absolutely impossible to limit your diet so much. During exercise, you can increase your daily calorie intake by 15-20% per day, then your body will not experience such stress.
- Follow BJU. Proper nutrition when playing sports must necessarily include proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Protein is an indispensable building material for our muscles. Protein contains amino acids that our body needs to rebuild muscle mass after training, and therefore must be present in your diet. Sometimes it can be difficult to get the right amount of protein from food, so you can turn to protein shakes. There is a large selection of proteins, so choosing what is right for you will not be more difficult. The use of carbohydrates during physical activities is equally important, because you certainly need to extract energy. And of course, don’t forget healthy fats.
- Good nutrition when playing sports also depends on the goals you are pursuing. Have you ever looked at the diet of people in pp, most of which consisted of protein? Have you seen a menu that gave the prize to foods containing carbohydrates? Surprisingly, in both cases, it was really good nutrition, the difference was only in the goal! Here you have three options:
- Weight Loss – This means your approximate bju percentage should look like this: 40-50% / 30-40% / 10-20%. As you can see, in order to lose weight, the majority of your diet must consist of protein.
- Weight maintenance: 25-35%/25-35%/30-50%. If your goal is simply to maintain your current weight, the ratio will look like this.
- Weight gain: 25-35%/15-25%/40-60%. Good nutrition for athletes is often designed for weight gain, which is why they eat lots of carbohydrate foods. So do not be surprised if under the pp label you will find, at first glance, completely non-dietary foods.
- Skipping meals is not recommended. It is extremely important to control the diet. At least 5 meals a day and any omission is highly undesirable. Breakfast is a must! It is exactly the food that starts our metabolism, and if you want to lose weight, it is extremely important. Try to carry prepared foods with you to resist the temptation to snack on junk food.
Regardless of your daily schedule, you absolutely must eat before training to have the energy you need to train. Proper nutrition for sports should be carried out no later than 1-2 hours before the start of classes so that the food has time to digest. Before training, be sure to include protein and carbohydrates in your menu. Thus, your body will receive the necessary energy, and amino acid muscles. But it is better to exclude fats, as they slow down the digestion process and you can feel heavy during exercise. You can drink coffee or tea 30 minutes before your workout. If you are into a mass set, you can have a protein shake.
Way of drinking
Proper nutrition during training pays special attention to the drinking regime during physical activity: under no circumstances should dehydration be allowed. Be sure to drink water at least 3-4 times per hour. If you are doing an intense workout, you can drink juices, but after diluting them with water.
Can I eat immediately after a workout?
Very often you can hear that after a workout it is enough to limit yourself to one water and wait 1-1.5 hours before a full meal. But what about that intense feeling of hunger that hits immediately after a workout and you feel ready to gobble up an entire fridge? Why such an unbridled desire to eat, and should we resist it? After a workout, our body urgently needs to build up reserves of nutrients. This period is called the “protein-carb window” and lasts 20 to 40 minutes. In other words, this is when you should be eating something that helps your body recover. However, this does not mean that you should immediately eat a full lunch or dinner. Here we are talking about a small portion of food or drink that will help you quickly replenish your body’s stores.
When you lose weight, you need to take a protein product. It can be a small piece of cottage cheese, a glass of kefir or a protein shake. If you’ve been doing weight training to burn fat, you can safely add carbs: a tablespoon of honey, a slice of chocolate, a small sweet fruit.
When you gain muscle mass, you need to eat fast carbohydrates to quickly block the action of hormones that destroy muscle mass. Any drink based on fructose, glucose, honey is perfect.