Should You Eat Before You Exercise?
There are many debates about eating and consumption related to exercise. Depending on who you talk to, you will find that some people think that you should eat before you exercise, and there are those that believe that you should not eat before you exercise.
One thing that most can agree to is that overall, you should have a good nutrition regimen, and one that allows for good eating regardless of when you eat.
The general argument is that by eating after you exercise, you go into the session in partial starvation, and that partial starvation helps your body burn calories faster.
If you are going to exercise for more than an hour, you need to eat before you exercise or your muscles and liver will run out of sugar and you will tire earlier. Your brain gets more than 98 percent of its energy from sugar in your bloodstream. But there is only enough sugar in your bloodstream to last three minutes.
So your liver has to constantly release sugar from its cells into your bloodstream. There is only enough sugar in your liver to last maybe an hour when you exercise vigorously. Eating before exercising can help you to exercise longer.
Whenever your stomach fills with food, its muscles contract and require large amounts of blood. When you exercise vigorously, your heart pumps large amounts of blood to your skeletal muscles. If your heart is not strong enough to pump blood to both your stomach and your skeletal muscles, blood is shunted from your stomach muscles, the muscles lack oxygen, lactic acid builds up in muscles and they start to hurt.
However, most people can exercise after eating without suffering cramps because their hearts are strong enough to pump blood to both their exercising muscles and their stomach muscles.
Some researchers believe that you shouldn’t eat sugar before you exercise because it will cause your blood sugar level to rise and your pancreas to release insulin, which will cause your blood sugar to drop too low so you will feel tired during exercise. However, the major cause of tiredness that you feel in your muscles during exercise is lack of stored sugar in muscles.
Taking any extra calories before and during exercise helps to preserve the sugar that is stored in muscles and help you to exercise longer. If you are going to exercise for more than an hour, eat or drink anything you like before and during your exercise. Most people will not get stomach cramps while exercising, no matter what or when they eat.
Basically, if you are working on losing weight, then the partial starvation method will work well, but if you are exercising for performance, and working to get peak physical condition, it makes sense to eat something small in advance.
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