Eating Right For Sports And Workouts
Eating the right kind of food is a must before a workout session and sporting events or before heading to the gym for a weight lifting session in order to get the best from it. Eating wrong food items before workouts, on the other hand, can make you lethargic and slow. Heavy meals like meat and sausages take a long time to digest. If you ever feel lack of energy before running or workout, then you must check what you eat beforehand to energize yourself. To improve your performance, eating proper snacks is essential. Not only this, make sure that you have hydrated yourself properly by drinking at least 20 ounces of water an hour before beginning your workout. To keep your energy level high, you must replenish the lost fluid and have adequate meal before and after workouts.
Ideal pre-exercise meals should contain complex carbs like fruits, vegetables, rice, cereals, pasta and whole grain bread. These slow burning complex carbs takes longer time to convert to glucose and helps to keep your blood sugar level consistent. You will never feel exhausted in the middle of your performance. At least a small portion of your meal must contain protein. Stay away from fatty foods because they take much longer time to digest and as a result use more energy than protein and carbs.
Smoothies are considered as ideal pre-workout snack because they are easy to digest and also hydrate the body. Smoothies contain milk which is a good source of proteins and fruits contain natural sugar to energize our muscles and boost our energy. Add bananas which are easy to digest to get some extra boost to your smoothies. They will hydrate your body as well. You might have seen many runners eating bananas while running because bananas are great source of potassium and helps muscles and nerves in functioning properly.
Yoghurt contains magnesium which is necessary to activate enzyme implicated in protein and carbohydrate. So add yoghurt to make a tasty and healthy energy drink. Eat small amounts of snacks containing not more than 300 calories before workout which you can digest within an hour. A big meal of 1000 to 1500 calories can take 3 to 4 hours to digest.
