A sports snack before your workout can help you perform better and get through your sports session with more ease and well-being. You can find out which snacks are recommended here.
Falling into a hunger pang in the middle of a workout can not only hamper your athletic performance, it can also make you feel exhausted, tired, and unmotivated more quickly. Therefore, depending on the type of sport and the time of day, it can make sense to eat something shortly before the sport. However, such sports snacks should not be sugar-coated bars or energy drinks – instead, healthy snacks consisting mainly of carbohydrates and proteins are recommended.
Sports snacks: when and how to eat before exercise?
Make sure you always go into your workout well-fed. So you shouldn’t feel any sign of hunger. Especially if it’s been a while since the last large meal, it can be worth resorting to a few sports snacks. Otherwise, you can quickly feel sluggish or light-headed when exercising, warns the Mayo Clinic from Minnesota.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t feel bloated either. Eating a large meal too close to your workout session can also lead to more sluggishness and fatigue. The Mayo Clinic therefore recommends the following rules of thumb:
- Eat a large meal, such as a filling lunch, about three to four hours before your workout.
- Eat a small snack between meals one to three hours before exercise.
Sports snacks: what should be in them?
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According to Healthline, when it comes to pre-workout sports snacks, it is advisable to pay attention to a combination of carbohydrates and proteins. Because carbohydrates ensure that our glycogen stores are well filled. In turn, glycogen stores are important because they are available to us as a central source of energy during sporting activities. In general, this applies to all sports: If the glycogen stores are empty or not sufficiently filled, our performance also decreases during the workout. Carbohyrates are therefore an important part of a pre-workout snack.
According to Healthline, protein has also proven itself as a snack before training. Scientific results suggest that sufficient protein in connection with strength training is important for building muscle mass. It is crucial that the daily amount of protein is sufficiently high. Eating protein-rich foods before or after training can also increase training success. For endurance athletes, a protein-rich snack before training can promote regeneration and compensate for muscle damage.
The third macronutrient, fat, doesn’t directly help you right before a workout. Because according to Medical News Today, our body digests fat much more slowly than carbohydrates, for example. So he couldn’t use fat as an energy source during the workout, which we only ate a few hours ago. Nevertheless, it is important to eat a balanced diet throughout the day that also contains enough healthy fats.
These snacks are great before a workout
The following sports snacks are rich in carbohydrates and proteins and are therefore suitable before training:
- Fruit smoothies, (soy) yoghurt or (soy) quark, possibly some protein powder and plant drink, eg banana smoothies
- Fruit with (soy) yoghurt
- a portion of porridge or muesli with soy milk
- sugar-free, homemade granola bars
- homemade energy bars
- a piece of (wholemeal) bread with hummus
Read more on Techzle.com:
- Vegan diet and sport: is that possible?
- Exercising on an empty stomach: healthy or dangerous?
- Do you exercise in the morning or in the evening? which is better