What to eat before and after a workout

Start with the daily totals

Before worrying about timing, make sure you hit three numbers most days: total calories for your goal, enough protein, and enough carbohydrate to fuel your training.

• Calories: set by your goal. The calorie calculator gives you a target.
• Protein: about 1.6 g per kg of bodyweight (0.7 g per lb) covers most lifters. A meta-analysis by Morton et al. (British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2018) found gains in lean mass plateaued around 1.6 g/kg/day, with some people benefiting from up to 2.2 g/kg.
• Carbohydrate: 3 to 5 g per kg is a sensible range for people lifting most days; endurance athletes need more.

If those totals are off, perfect pre and post workout meals will not fix it. The macro calculator splits your calories into grams.

Is the anabolic window real?

The idea that you must drink a shake within 30 minutes of training or lose your gains has been largely retired. A review by Aragon and Schoenfeld (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2013) concluded the window is much wider than once thought, at least several hours either side of the session.

What matters is the gap between protein meals. If you ate a protein-rich meal two hours before training, your next meal can wait an hour or two afterwards. If you train fasted first thing in the morning, eating soon after is more useful.

What to eat before training (or not)

The pre-workout meal has two jobs: give you energy and not upset your stomach. Timing changes what you should eat.

Fat and fibre slow digestion, which is good most of the day but can sit heavily during squats or sprints. Keep them lower in the last hour before training.

Aim for roughly 20 to 40 g of protein and 0.5 to 1 g of carbohydrate per kg of bodyweight in the meal before training. Longer or harder sessions justify the upper end.

Lifting on an empty stomach is fine if you feel good doing it. Some people prefer it for early sessions. Research does not show that fasted training burns more body fat over time when total calories are equal.

If you train fasted, you may lose a little performance on long or high-volume sessions. Eating protein soon afterwards matters more here, since it has been many hours since your last meal.

Caffeine and other pre-workout ingredients

Caffeine is the active ingredient in most pre-workout products and the one with strong evidence. The ISSN position stand on caffeine (Guest et al., 2021) reports performance benefits at about 3 to 6 mg per kg of bodyweight, taken around 60 minutes before exercise.

For a 70 kg person, that is roughly 200 to 400 mg, or two to four cups of brewed coffee. Start at the low end. More is not better and can wreck your sleep, which costs you more than the caffeine gains. Avoid it within six to eight hours of bed.

Beta-alanine (the ingredient that causes tingling) and citrulline have some supporting evidence; most other pre-workout additives have little. Plain coffee and a banana do most of the job. Creatine works regardless of timing; see the creatine guide.

What to eat after training

After training, aim for a normal meal with protein and carbohydrate. Research on muscle protein synthesis suggests about 0.3 to 0.4 g of protein per kg of bodyweight per meal, which is 20 to 40 g for most people.

• Eggs on toast with fruit
• Rice, beans or lentils with paneer, tofu or chicken
• Greek yoghurt or skyr with granola and berries
• A protein shake with milk and a banana if a meal is hours away
• Tuna or chickpea wrap with salad

Carbohydrate after lifting refills muscle glycogen, which matters most if you train the same muscles again within 24 hours or do two sessions in a day. For one session a day, normal meals over the rest of the day refill it fully.

Fat in the post-workout meal is fine. It slows digestion slightly but has not been shown to reduce muscle growth, so there is no need to strip it out of an otherwise good meal.

Hydration

Being dehydrated by even 2 percent of bodyweight can reduce performance in longer sessions. Drink water through the day so your urine is pale, then sip during training.

For long or sweaty sessions, weighing yourself before and after is a simple check: replace each kilogram lost with about 1.25 to 1.5 litres of fluid over the next few hours. Use the water intake calculator for a daily baseline.

Do you need anything during training?

For a typical 45 to 90 minute lifting session, water is all you need. Intra-workout carbohydrate drinks and amino acid powders add little when you have eaten in the hours before.

Fuel during training starts to matter for sessions longer than about 90 minutes, hard endurance work, or two sessions in one day. Then, 30 to 60 g of carbohydrate per hour from a sports drink, banana or dates can help you keep performance up.

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) are a common add-on. If you already eat enough protein, research shows little extra benefit; the money is better spent on food.

Workout nutrition when losing fat

In a calorie deficit, there is less food to go around, so it pays to place some of it around training. Moving a portion of your daily carbohydrate into the meals before and after your session can help you keep training quality high, which in turn helps you keep muscle.

• Keep protein high, around 1.8 to 2.2 g per kg, while dieting.
• Put a larger share of carbs in the pre-workout meal.
• Make the post-workout meal your largest protein meal.
• Count drinks and pre-workout snacks; they add up quickly.

Fat loss still comes down to the weekly deficit. Use the weight loss calculator to set a realistic rate, and read how to calculate calories for weight loss for the details.

Vegetarian and budget options

You do not need expensive powders or chicken breast at every meal. These foods give roughly 20 g of protein per serving and work well before or after training:

Combining plant proteins across the day, such as grains with pulses, gives you a full range of amino acids. Vegans may want to aim slightly higher on total protein to make up for lower digestibility of some plant sources.

Sample days by training time

Late training does not need a large meal afterwards if you ate well earlier. A protein-rich snack before bed supports overnight recovery; see sleep and muscle growth.