Food + BED = PANIC
Food? Don’t be ridiculous, it’s almost bed time 🙅🏻♀️
Work-family-life-training; it’s a challenging ‘balance’ to maintain and often tight time constraints negatively affect how we eat. Over the past few weeks i have had a number of people tell me that they do not eat or avoid eating when they train in the afternoon because they get home after-dark; often past 9/10pm and they prefer not to eat that close to bed out of fear of what it may do to their body composition ⚖️
As an athlete missing out on optimal fuel can compromise gains in every aspect of your performance 🏋🏻♀️
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🏉 Endurance, speed and strength all suffer, not to mention your general health and well-being. Too many athletes place a higher importance on training than to their diet. What they do not realise is that you lose a large portion of the potential physical benefits of a workout if you fail to adequately refuel.
Thanks to the catch phrases splashed on food packaging and the looped ads on television we all know that ‘protein builds muscle’ and ‘carbohydrates give you energy’, but yet despite the fact that ‘muscle and energy’ are too key components of performance, we still allow time and social pressures to dictate our decisions and avoid the very things we need to improve; subsequently self-sabotaging our efforts 💣
If energy availability (amount of dietary energy remaining after all your metabolic processes and needs for training have been accounted for) is consistently restricted this can impact your bone health, heart health, mental state, immune function as well as your metabolic rate. Given this topic came about because of concerns regarding weigh management, it seems counterproductive to engage in habits that negatively effect your metabolic rate as it plays a big part in energy expenditure and body composition.
Long story short, DO NOT underrate the significance quality nutrition has post-exercise. Whether you train/play at 4am, 9am or 9pm food should always be a priority.
P.S And before you ask, YES this includes carbohydrates people. You might not make friends with salad but Spag bol is your new bff 🍝