What You Should Eat After Your Workout - Post Workout Nutrition

You just finished a super tough workout at the gym and your starving! Its time to head home and grab something to eat, but what's the best thing to eat post workout?  Your post-workout nutrition and meal is one of the most important meals of the day, what you eat here can either make or break your fitness goals.

The two important things to keep in mind when you are planning to eat after a workout: 1) When you eat and 2) WHAT you eat. These two things together, if done the right way, will help you build muscle and lose fat.

1) When Should I Eat After my Workout?

The first meal after a workout should be eaten at least 30 to 60 minutes after your workout. If you wait any longer to have your post workout meal, your body will start to store the food as fat instead of going immediately into the muscle.

The timing of this meal determines how effectively the nutrients will be absorbed directly into the muscle. The less time you wait the faster the nutrients are absorb and the glycogen in your body is restored.




The longer you wait to eat after a workout, you begin to starve your muscles and the effects of your workout become less.

2)  What should I Eat After my Workout?

Each meal after a workout needs to consist of both protein and carbohydrates. Your fitness goals are, will determine the proportion of each of these components.  For example, if you want to lose weight, you will need to have more protein than carbohydrates, to make sure that you are building muscle and losing fat.

The one thing you want to stay away from is fat. Healthy fats are a great source of nutrition, however, when it comes to post workout nutrition, fats do not help you. Instead, fats slow down the digestion process, which in turns, slows down the absorption of nutrients into the muscles.

Some great examples of post workout meals include: a whey protein shake with some fruit - either mixed quickly in a shaker cup or mixed in a blender, grilled chicken breast with some brown rice, or egg whites with oatmeal.

Remember, that what you eat after your workout is one of the most important factors in helping you reach your fitness goals and get the flat abs you've always wanted.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Melissa_Wall/16604

You Fit and Healthy - Build Muscle With A Dumbbells Only Workout

I am a big believer in finding what you like to do and changing up your workouts to keep your interest. Doing the same workouts week after week gets stale and boring.

Weight training with barbells and dumbbells, Interval training, Tabata's, bodyweight workouts, jumping rope the possibilities and variety of workouts you can do is endless. In this article I'm going to give you a workout using only dumbbells.

One of the advantages of using dumbbells over barbells is that dumbbells allow for a greater range of motion recruiting more muscle fibers. Dumbbells are useful if space is a problem where you workout. So lets take a look at a dumbbells only workout.




What we are going to do here is sort of an old school full body workout. Before starting any exercise program get yourself a physical and clearance from a doctor to begin working out.

Start off with a good warm-up. Jump rope for five minutes combined with some bodyweight exercises pushups, squats etc. to get your muscles ready for weight training.

What you will do is 4 sets 6-10 reps of all exercises in straight sets.

1) Dumbbell Squats
2) Dumbbell Bench Press
3) Dumbbell Bent-over -row
4) Dumbbell Press
5) Dumbbell Tricep Extension ( can be done seated or lying down)
6) Dumbbell Curls ( both arms or one at a time)
7) Dumbbell Calf Raises

As you can see 7 exercises and you have hit every body part. As I said this is a full body workout so typically what you would do is use this workout 3 days a week. If you are looking to do a three day aweek workout what you would want to do is change some of the exercises for variety.

For example let's say you are working out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You would do the workout above on Monday and Friday. On Wednesday change your exercises for example:

Instead of Dumbbell Squats do Bulgarian Squats

In place of Flat Bench Presses do Incline Bench Presses

So there you have it an old school style dumbbells only workout for muscle building and fat loss. Remember that workouts are great but if your living on a diet of fast foods your efforts will be in vain. There is a saying among fitness pro's "You Can't Outrain A Lousy Diet".

The breakdown usually is thought of as 75% Nutrition 25% Training so if you think your just going to do a little extra sets and reps to make up for that lousy diet think again.

Weight Training, Interval Training, Tabata's and a sound nutrition program is what it takes to be fit and healthy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Joe_Gagliano/59594