Posts Tagged nutrition

Nutrition: Pre/Post-Workout Guidelines (Alan Aragon)

Posted by Kyle in Training on October 4, 2010

Alan Aragon is a nutritional expert that I hold in the highest regard. His advice is extremely effective, yet simple to understand. I get a lot of questions about pre-workout and post-workout nutrition, so I figured I would post Alan’s excellent advice here for everyone to review:

The protocol I recommend currently is strikingly similar to the original, with a few VERY insignificant tweaks. Note that TBW = target bodyweight:

60-90 minutes preworkout, have a solid, balanced meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25g/lb TBW
Adding fat at this point is fine, use your discretion as long as it fits into your macro goals. Note that this meal is skipped if you train 1st thing in the morning.

[OR]

30-0 minutes preworkout – (and/or sipped throughout the workout), have a liquid or easily digested meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25g/lb TBW
If you were going to train for close to or more than 2 hours continuously, it would definitely benefit you to have this extra preworkout meal either immediately prior to, or sipped during training. Keep the fats here incidental & not added if you’re prone to gastric distress during training.

Within 30 minutes postworkout, have either a liquid or solid meal:

Protein = 0.25g/lb TBW
Carbs = 0.25-0.5g/lb TBW, depending on how carb-restricted your diet is.
Amount of fat here doesn’t matter as long as your daily target is hit.

Post-postworkout is simply your next sheduled meal, whether it’s 1, 2, or 3 hrs later simply doesn’t matter – especially if your immediate postworkout meal was designed as above.

NOTE: The small differences are mainly geared toward simplifying the guidelines. The rest of the recommendations about food types are pretty much the same. Also note that I no longer give a damn about GI, it doesn’t really make a difference one way or another. If you want high GI carbs pre and/or during training, go for it. As time has passed, GI has proven itself to be a worthless, irrelevant index. Insulinogenesis is a separate issue, and slight elevations during & postworkout is a great idea. This accomplished by both food type & food amount, the latter being more important. To boot, the necessary insulin elevations for maximal net gains in protein balance are easily met without specific attempts at spiking it up. There’s obviously a lot more to this, but that’s the important basics. The rest is fringe.

Glycemic Index (GI) has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years – white bread is nutritionally worse than wheat bread, stay away from pasta, etc – and Alan rightfully dismisses it as bunk. It makes a difference in diseased/afflicted populations, but it is all but irrelevant for the average human. People love to focus on “fringe” issues, because it makes them feel intellectually superior – yet they don’t even focus on the basics. As a good friend of mine always says, “Focus on what matters.” And what matters in nutrition for athletes is:

  1. Set target calories.
  2. Set target protein (1.0-1.5g/lb TBW).

Everything else is simply not relevant until you get those basics down and comply with them for a long period of time.

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Our Stance on Nutrition

Posted by Kyle in Training on May 26, 2010

I get a few emails once in awhile asking me what they should eat, what supplements are good, how many calories they should eat in each meal, and so forth. I’ve decided to spend a long time putting together the comprehensive answer to all nutrition-related questions and make it available on my blog, for free. Here we go!

First Step: Determine your ideal caloric intake. Use a Basal Metabolic Rate calculator (link) to figure out a reasonable estimate given a “sedentary” lifestyle, then multiply it by 1.5 (assuming you are an athlete; I am using a modified version of the Harris Benedict equation). So if your BMR is 2000 calories, multiply that by 1.5 and you have 3000 for your “maintenance level.”

  • To gain weight: Eat 15-20% more than your maintenance level.
  • To maintain weight: This should be obvious.
  • To lose weight: Eat 15-20% less than your maintenance level.

What About Macronutrients?

Eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. If you weigh 200 pounds and have approximately 25% body fat (be liberal with your estimates; no one is below 10% body fat for very long despite what you’ve heard), you have about 150 pounds of lean body mass. Eat 150 grams of protein per day. Space it out if you can and eat more of it around your workouts, but it’s really not that big of a deal.

As for carbs and dietary fat, we don’t care.

Seriously.

What else?

That’s it. That’s the list. In summation:

  1. Set and meet your caloric intake goals.
  2. Get 1  gram of protein per pound of lean body mass per day.
  3. Victory.

“But what about the Glycemic Index, Ketogenic Diets, HFCS, and [insert hot topic here].”

Simply following the three rules above will capture 90-95% of an “optimal” nutrition plan for your average athlete. All that other stuff either doesn’t matter or barely matters. When you can go for six months following the plan above, you can start worrying about the smaller things that only matter if you’re an elite competitor trying to differentiate yourself from others.

It really is that easy, folks. In fact, we can sum up an optimal exercise and diet plan like so:

Exercise:

  1. Squat.
  2. Press.
  3. Pull.
  4. Go to #1.
  5. (optional) Some sort of high-intensity or low-intensity (not medium-intensity, like jogging) cardio work

Diet:

  1. Get an appropriate amount of calories.
  2. Get an appropriate amount of protein.

It’s not rocket science. And to distill it down even further, there’s really only two constants you have to follow: You must squat, and you must eat enough protein. Simple stuff, really.

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