10 min
I get asked about pre and post workout nutrition multiple times, weekly. People want the perfect formula. What do I eat two hours before I lift? Do I need a protein shake the second I put the dumbbells down? Am I wasting my workout if I train on an empty stomach?
The good news is that this stuff is a lot more forgiving than the fitness industry makes it seem. I want to walk you through how I coach my clients through this, both before and after training, so you can stop overthinking it and start using a system that actually works for your life.
Before I get into it, I want to set some context. Everything below is written for the everyday person who is training two to three times a week to stay healthy, build strength, and feel good. If you are training for something like a Spartan Race, an ultra event, or anything that goes on for hours, your fueling strategy looks different. You are looking at carb loading the day before, fueling during the event with things like gels, and making sure your energy stores are topped off so you have enough in the tank to perform your absolute best. That is its own conversation. What follows is for the rest of us.
Let me start with the big question. Should you eat before you work out?
Anything beats nothing. A fasted workout is not going to be as good as a fed workout in terms of pure performance. That said, plenty of people train fasted in the morning and do completely fine with it. It is not the end of the world. If you are someone who has always trained fasted and it works for you, keep doing what works.
Here is the part that matters more than people realize. The real driver of your results is going to be your total calories and total protein across the entire day, not whether you nailed the timing of a single meal. If you are hitting your numbers by the end of the day, the exact placement of when you ate relative to your workout has a much smaller effect than people assume.
I like to use a couple of examples to make this point. Usain Bolt reportedly ate McDonald’s chicken nuggets, sometimes 50 of them a day, while he was setting world records in the 100 meter sprint. He has talked about eating McDonald’s regularly during competition because it was a consistent, predictable option he trusted across different countries. Meanwhile, NFL wide receiver DK Metcalf has talked about relying heavily on gummy candy for a big chunk of his daily calories, with really just one full meal a day rounding things out. I am not telling you to eat nuggets or gummy bears for breakfast. I am telling you that calories are energy, and having that energy available is what fuels performance, not some perfectly engineered meal plan.
If you are doing an early morning workout and cannot get a full meal in beforehand, the bare minimum I want you to do is get some electrolytes in. This could be something as simple as a Gatorade Zero, or an electrolyte tablet that gives you a full spectrum rather than just a giant dose of sodium. A lot of the popular electrolyte products on the market are basically sodium bombs with very little of anything else. Look for something that also gives you potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride, etc. not just sodium. That full spectrum is going to serve you better than a product that is mostly just salt.
It also helps enormously to have a solid dinner the night before a fasted morning workout. Skipping dinner and then walking straight into a lifting session or cardio the next morning is a setup for feeling lightheaded or nauseous. If you are getting anywhere close to that point, you are not going to get the best results you are capable of. So even if you are skipping breakfast, do not compound that by not eating dinner the night before too.
If you do have time to eat before training, here is how I want you to think about it.
Timing wise, aim for about one to two hours before your workout. That gives your food enough time to digest so it is not sitting in your stomach while you are trying to move around.
On the macro side, lean protein and simple, easily digestible carbohydrates are your friends here. What I want you to be more careful with is fiber and protein that digests slowly. Fiber is genuinely great for you and I will get into that more in a minute, but loading up on it right before a workout is a mistake. High fiber intake slows digestion, and while that is exactly what you want later in the day to keep you full and give you sustained energy, right before training it just sits there. It can leave you feeling heavy, gassy, and uncomfortable mid workout, which is not the experience you are going for during your squats.
The same goes for protein in some cases. Digestion tends to slow down as we age, so a protein shake chugged 10 minutes before you walk into the gym can leave you feeling like there is a rock in your stomach. If you can get that one to two hour window between eating and training, you will feel a lot better during your session.
Now let’s talk about what happens after you finish training.
You have probably heard some version of the anabolic window idea, the belief that you have a tight 30 to 45 minute period after your workout to get protein in or you are leaving gains on the table. This idea has been studied extensively, and the research does not support that narrow of a window. A widely cited 2013 meta-analysis in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that total daily protein intake had a stronger relationship with muscle growth than the specific timing of when that protein was consumed. More recent research has continued to back that up, generally putting the practical window closer to several hours rather than a matter of minutes.
So the real question is not “did I hit my protein within 45 minutes.” It is “am I getting enough protein across the entire day.” That is the metric that actually drives results.
Here is an interesting wrinkle though. When researchers compare people who do stick closely to that post workout protein habit against people who do not, the ones who chug a shake or eat a protein rich meal right after training tend to end up eating more total protein over the course of the day. So there is still a case for building that habit in, not because the window itself is magic, but because it is a useful behavioral anchor. Having a protein shake or a quick protein rich meal 30 to 45 minutes after training can help you space your protein out and stay on track with your daily total, especially if you have higher protein needs. Just do it because it helps you hit your numbers, not because you are panicking about a ticking clock.
If you have back to back activity in the same day, like a hockey game followed by a second game an hour or two later, or a workout followed by an adult softball league game, getting a meal in between matters more. In those cases you genuinely need the fuel to perform in the second session, so try to eat as soon as you reasonably can between events.
Once your workout is behind you, this is a great time to focus on getting in the things that make the rest of your day work for you, especially fiber.
A good daily target is somewhere between 25 and 35 grams of fiber, or if you want to get more precise, about 10 to 14 grams per 1,000 calories you eat. Generally that puts women closer to the 25 gram mark and men closer to 35 grams. The upper limit on fiber is very high, and health benefits tend to keep climbing the more you get in, within reason. The key is spreading it out. Do not try to knock out 35 grams in a single sitting. That is a fast track to the toilet seat. Instead, build it in gradually across your meals and snacks throughout the day.
I like to think about fiber in five categories, and if you can pull at least one source from each of these across the day, you are in great shape.
Whole grains are the first one. Think sprouted breads, brown rice, etc.
Beans and legumes come next. Black beans or lentils tossed into a rice bowl or salad work well here.
Nuts and seeds are third. A small portion, like a 100 calorie nut pack, is an easy way to work these in as a snack or as an add on to your salads.
Fruit is fourth, and it is an easy and enjoyable way to add fiber to your day. Having some for breakfast is a quick and easy way to add more fiber and more morning energy.
Vegetables round out the list at number five. Worth noting here, vegetables are mostly fiber by volume, but the actual gram counts tend to be lower than people expect. If you track your food and look at something like spinach, you will see it takes a lot of volume to add up to meaningful fiber grams. So vegetables are great, but do not rely on them alone to hit your daily target.
Getting variety across these five categories is not just about making your fiber goal easier to hit. It genuinely benefits your gut microbiota, and a healthy gut plays a real role in things like weight management, mental clarity, and steady energy throughout the day.
The last piece of this is fat, and specifically which kinds you are prioritizing.
Healthy fats matter for hormone production and many other things to keep you healthy. Getting the right kinds matters, because leaning too heavily on the wrong kinds of fat is tied to things like cardiovascular issues.
The general hierarchy I use with clients, from best to worst, looks like this. Unsaturated fats, like olive oil, sit at the top. MCT oil comes next. It is better than saturated fat, but it still raises LDL cholesterol, the kind commonly referred to as the bad cholesterol, more than unsaturated fat does. Tropical fats like coconut oil come after that. Coconut oil also raises LDL meaningfully, even though it gets marketed as a health food a lot of the time. At the bottom of the list are straight saturated fats like butter and beef tallow, which you want to limit the most.
A reasonable target is keeping saturated fat to about 10 percent or less of your total daily calories. For someone eating 2,000 calories a day, that works out to roughly 22 grams or less, since fat carries 9 calories per gram. If you are eating 1,500 calories a day, that number drops to somewhere around 16 to 17 grams.
This does not mean cutting saturated fat out entirely. There is a reasonable case for keeping some in your diet. It just should not be the majority of your fat intake. Realistically, your diet is going to include a mix of all of these at different points. You will have nights out where butter is involved, or a protein snack that happens to use coconut oil or MCT oil. That is normal and not something to stress over. What matters more is what you consistently reach for day to day, the oils you cook with at home and the fats that show up in your diet again and again. That is where it is worth being intentional.
None of this needs to be complicated. Eat something before you train if you can, even if it is not a perfectly timed, perfectly balanced meal. If you train fasted, get your electrolytes in and do not skip the dinner before. Give yourself an hour or two to digest before a session, and go easy on fiber and slow digesting protein right before you train. After your workout, stop stressing about a tight window and focus on your total protein for the day. Then use the rest of your meals to round out your fiber from a variety of sources and lean your fat intake toward the unsaturated end of the spectrum.
Get those fundamentals consistent and the timing details stop mattering nearly as much as you have probably been told they do.
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