There are about ten thousand different opinions on what to eat after working out. Some are wrong, some are being applied out of scope, and some are mostly right.

One of the most common myths is that you need to eat back your workout. If you’re working out to lose weight,  you’re undoing a portion of what you just worked so hard to accomplish when you eat back the calories you just burned in your workout.

NOTE: This topic is a “gray area” according to Mrs. trshmnstr, and the info described here may not be accurate for all workouts and all post-workout meals. Also, it is going through a filter (me) that doesn’t understand this stuff at a very deep level, so I’m liable to screw things up.

When you’re working toward a goal of weight loss, one of the primary purposes of your workout is to create a calorie deficit. The math is simple. Calories in minus calories out equals change in weight. 3500 calories in a pound of fat means that if you have a 500 calorie/day deficit, you’ll lose a pound of fat per week. The complexity comes in determining the calories in and the calories out, but for our purposes this week, all that matters is calories in minus calories out.

There’s a tension at play when you’re working out to lose weight. On one side, if you can eat less than your basal metabolic rate (usually in the 1500-2500 calorie range), any additional calories lost through working out are icing on the cake. If you have a BMR of 2000 calories and you eat 1500 calories per day, you’re losing 1 lb per week. If you also burn off 1000 calories at the gym every day, you go from 1 lb per week to 3 lbs per week.

On the other side of the coin is sustainability. Your body will begin to push back against your abuse if you don’t fuel it properly. When you workout, whether you do cardio or weight work, you are tearing up your muscles, literally. Your body has to repair your muscles with protein. If you’re eating a 1500 cal/day deficit, but your protein is deficient, you’re going to feel miserable, struggle to recover from your workouts, and be prone to injury and illness.

However, factors such as intensity of the workout come into play when determining how much of your workout to eat back. If you’re doing relatively low intensity work, you need less protein than if you’re burning the same number of calories in a high intensity workout.

Personally, I shoot for the fewest amount of calories where I don’t feel my body increasingly drag through a week of working out. It’s not very scientific, and it requires a bit of experimentation, but you want to fuel your body’s regenerative process without undoing your calorie deficit.

For strength training, the calorie deficit isn’t as important, but giving your body the fuel necessary to build muscle is very important. The biggest mistake you can make is to do a strength based workout and not bother to make up for your body’s increased need for protein. There are easy ways to get a quick hit of protein after a workout. Some of the shakes aren’t disgusting. Some of the bars aren’t terrible. You could eat a hard-boiled egg, as an example. You want to ingest a significant amount of protein within 30 minutes of the end of your workout because your body begins repairing your muscles almost immediately after the workout, and you don’t want your body to start tapping into your unused muscles as a protein store.

Personally, I’ve found that it’s a night and day difference between strength training without a protein supplement and with a protein supplement. Fatigue and soreness go from a major issue to a minor annoyance at most when protein is properly administered after a workout.

HIIT workout of the week

Ass kicking treadmill intervals:

3 Min at 2% incline and a slow jogging pace (3.5-4 mph) (“Warmup/Cooldown”)

2 Min at 5% incline and a jogging pace (5.5 mph) (“Jog”)

1 Min at 8% incline and a running pace (6.5 mph) (“Run”)

2 Min at Jog

1 Min at Run

2 Min at 8% incline and a jogging pace (5 mph) (“Hill Jog”)

1 Min at 10% incline and a running pace (6.5 mph) (“Hill Run”)

2 Min at Jog

1 Min at Run

2 Min at Hill Jog

1 Min at Hill Run

2 Min at Jog

1 Min at Run

2 Min at Jog

1 Min at Run

2 Min at Hill Jog

1 Min at Hill Run

3 Min at Cooldown

 

Recipe of the week

Carne Asada Bowls

I shameless ripped this recipe from Cooking Light, so I’ll link the recipe so that they get the clicks.