Pre-Post Nutrition and Digestion

[MC]

This is a great thread. Back before I knew anything, I trained on an empty stomach. I read and considered my situation and now do what I can to get something in the gut before I train.

I work out at 5:30 am (getting up at 4:50 most days), so the whole "meal 2 hours before training" has never been an option.

I take 8 oz of OJ with a scoop of whey as soon as I wake up. I drink a little under a litre of water while I train. If I am doing cardio after lifting, I typically drink/sip less water as it tends to make me nauseous to have so much liquid in my stomach.

Afterwards (my gym is a 2-4 minute drive from home), I have 8 oz 2% milk with 2 scoops of whey and (new) tablespoon of olive oil. I agree with Carl that I don't think this post-WO shake has to be taken the second you stop training. I try to make sure I have it within 30 minutes or so, but usually have it within 10 minutes of being home.

Then, I have my other meals of the day: 7:30 breakfast, 10:00, 12:15 lunch, 3:00, 6:30 dinner, 8:30 snack. I always fail on this during the weekends with kid commitments and running around, so I typically eat fewer bigger meals.

To the 24-72 question. I do feel like I notice the difference on a workout day when I have under-eaten the day before. I see this especially when I train my legs.

MC, who rambled a bit here. OY.

[bamazav]

I want to respond when I have a bit more time. I will be back later to respond to you guys.

[bamazav]

From a article by Lyle MacDonald on his site entitled Meal Frequency and Mass Gains.

It appears that eating too frequently could potentially be detrimental to the goal of gaining muscle mass in that muscle tissue becomes insensitive to further stimulation by amino acids, increasing protein oxidation in the liver. Eating more frequently than every three hours would seem to not only be unnecessary (based on the rate of digestion of whole proteins) but could possibly be detrimental.

Given a moderately sized whole food meal, the body will generally remain in an anabolic state for at least five to six hours (and possibly longer depending on the foods chosen). Conservatively, we might use five hours as the upper limit cutoff for time between meals.

This yields a duration between meals of anywhere from three to five hours. This should keep the body in an overall anabolic state without causing problems related to too frequent or too infrequent consumption of meals.

Full time athletes with time to eat very frequently are probably best served with the higher meal frequency simply to ensure adequate caloric intake. Again, smaller individuals with lower total energy intakes may want to use slightly larger meals eaten slightly less frequently for practical reasons. Similarly, individuals who work jobs and are unable to fit in a meal every three hours needn’t worry obsessively about becoming catabolic. A solid food meal containing a high quality protein, carbohydrates, fat and some fiber eaten every five hours will maintain an anabolic state readily.

[bamazav]

As I have stated, I am currently eating in the IF style. Since I train in the morning, I saturate myself with BCAA (Xtend) before and during training. After my training I take a protein shake with some carbs, usually a sweet potato blended up in the shake. I then have a large meal between noon and 1. I have not seen any loss of stength, some fat loss, even though I am trying to gain mass, and a increase level of allertness. It all has gotten me on this course of questioning the traditional views of Bodybuilding and eating.