Post workout carbs? Yea? Nay?

[Viking Dan]

IIRC, the Drs. Eades reccomend not eating after a workout so as to allow a gh release, but eating carbs after a workout is good since they are more likely to be used to replenish glycogen.

Any thought on this?

[daisy]

I eat a small portion of protein or drink a protein shake after a workout on the basis that protein repairs muscle and it gives me slow energy release so i'll benefit more, this suits me perfectly and fits in nicely with my plan, however if you want to eat carbs afterwards you could use your snack allowance at that point and that will still keep you on track :)

daisy xx

[laughingW]

I say nay. I'm not a bodybuilder so don't care about fine-tuning muscle growth.

I find that putting food in regularly, getting steady fuel, and then working around that, gives more even energy than working and trying to do pre- and post- nutrition tricks.

[Mitra]

As Gabe has said in the past, it probably depends whether you're exercising to suit your diet or eating to suit your exercise.

[cmcole]

http://www.lowcarbmuscle.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/86/6/1770

[Gabriel Guzman]

...but eating carbs after a workout is good since they are more likely to be used to replenish glycogen.


This would imply that glycogen replenishment responds to some sort of 'schedule' or 'critical time', which is not so. In any case, instead of eating carbs after workout, a protein-rich meal does more for muscle development than the much-sought 'insulin spike' that some people like to talk about. What muscles need is to get on with protein synthesis. Glycogen gets replenished anyway. More important is that glycogen needs to be depleted first and that is not always an easy task.

A good protein-rich meal (in this context good means a 'normal' protein-rich meal) that contains plenty of good quality protein, adequate amounts of good quality fat and a controlled amount of carbs will provide with everything needed not only for glycogen replenishment but also muscle repair. Of course, understanding that muscle repair is not driven by insulin but by growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-1 bares the logic that what it's needed is not carbs only.

All this change when the scenario is bodybuilding... then you pretty much eat to suit your exercise needs.