Planning your Meals for Training

I would say if you're someone who trains in the morning, and you feel great training fasted, that's totally fine. And I would say like continue to do that, that works for your lifestyle, because especially people who wake up at you know, 430 or five, they're not going to want to consume a full meal before their training and like, try to digest that. So if you feel good fasted training, then go for it. If your goal is to build muscle and give put yourself in the best environment possible, there are some strategies around that. So you could potentially have like a, you know, a protein shake that you sip on, you know, before you train or throughout, so maybe like a whey or egg whites on some type of fast digesting protein powder.

So you're kind of sipping on that, you know, before you start your workout and throughout it, that's going to help with just getting that kind of one protein feeding in right to put yourself in that anabolic state. If you're not good, if you want to continue training fasted, I would say that, just having making sure that you are having enough protein post workout, so it really just comes down to thinking about we've probably heard of the anabolic window, right, that is like, you know, we've we've been told at least I've been told in the past that you have to like downer protein shake right after your workout, because then if you don't, you're gonna lose all your muscle doesn't really work like that.

So the anabolic window is basically it's really kind of like a bodybuilding bro term where they say like, after your workout, you're supposed to consume, like a bolus of protein, like within, you know, 20 minutes of leaving the gym or like, right when you leave the gym, or you're gonna lose all your muscle that you just, you know, work so hard for. And that's not, it's, first of all, the window that they talked about is more so like an extended like garage door, I could totally you could call it because it's not just this small period of time, it really does depend on how long you've gone without a protein or a feeding.

So if you like I said, if you had a shake before your workout, right or throughout it, after your workout, you can wait a little bit longer, like maybe a few hours before you have your full meal. Versus if you were to train fasted and you haven't eaten for like 12 hours, right? You're you're fasting throughout the night, then that window does become a little bit more important, right, because you're just you're looking at the full timing of the last time you ate, basically, and the last time you had a protein feeding. So if you are going into your training fasted, then it's probably more beneficial to get a meal a little bit closer after your training. Versus if you were to have a meal before your training, then it's not as important. You could probably wait a little bit longer.

And then it also goes back to that recovery side of things and kind of we can even get into the benefits of carbs post workout and all of that. I would say again, it's really like there's no like, oh my gosh, if you don't have protein feeding within, you know, an hour like your windows gone, like it doesn't typically work like that. But if we're trying to optimize, I would say yeah, I would say that if you went into your training completely fasted like you've been fasting, you know, you went to bed and you woke up trained with just some water or whatever, then I would say probably getting either a protein feeding in like a 30 grams of protein through like an a shake or something like that within maybe an hour, hour and a half and then maybe having like a full meal A few hours later because some people don't like to eat right after they train.

Or if you do want to just maybe wait like an hour and then have a full meal with protein, your protein feeding carbs, whatever it may be. That's totally fine too. So just thinking about okay, like literally just thinking practically about it like how long have I been fasting for and have I been more in this catabolic state let's get into that anabolic state because it's been a little while versus if you ate before then maybe you can go three hours without having that that feeding but it also does come down to like, you know, what are your other feedings throughout the day and I think I would start there first like planning your feedings out, like when you typically eat and then kind of structuring it in that way.