Inside today’s short, fat loss video, I’m going to talk about the number 1 questions that I’ve gotten over the last 20 plus years of being in the health and fitness industry, and that’s post-workout contrition. So how do you eat after exercise for the fastest fat loss.
And the first to understand that if your goal is to lose belly fat, you should go into the workout in a fasted state, or make sure that you do a 5 minute walk or some type of 5 minute warm up to stabilize insulin, so either 3 or 4 hours after a meal in the morning, after you wake up after sleeping all night on an empty stomach. Or if you eat an hour or 2 before hand, that’s OK. Just make sure you take a 5 minute walk to stabilize insulin. So this way when you go into the work out insulin is flat-lined, and this allows the body to access stubborn fat cells as a fuel source more efficiently.
Now, when you do this and you engage in the right type of exercise, and what I’m going to do is I’m going to share a 12 minute protocol with you, and you’ll see that 12 protocol somewhere at the link around this video where you can use this 12 minute protocol to release growth hormone and adrenaline, and you can elevate your metabolism for up to 38 to 48 hours afterward just from 1 12 minute session.
So ride the fat burning wave for 60 to 90 minutes after exercise. This will allow the adrenaline and the growth hormone that was released during work out to continue to work its magic in the post-workout window.
Now, if you go ahead and dive into a protein shake or a meal as fast as you can after a workout like this, and your goal is to lose, it’s the healthy choice. I’m just going to remind you that it spikes insulin, and insulin is the antagonist to the growth hormone and adrenaline. So although it’s a healthy choice, it could potentially slow down the fat loss process. So I recommend you get the best of both worlds by riding that fat burning way for 60 to 90 minutes, then diving into a low carb meal if the goal is to lose belly fat.
So either protein and a friendly fat. That O stands for oil. I didn’t want to put F and have people confuse it with fruit, right. So a protein shake with a tablespoon of coconut oil, or you could use some type of lean animal protein with a vegetable would be a healthy choice. Now a couple of times of the week it’d be OK to add a starchy carb or a fruit into that post-workout meal, because you’re less likely to store it as fat, but if the goal is to lose belly that, the majority of the time you want to skip those carbs to force the body to use more stored fat as an energy source.
Now if goal is to gain, that approach completely changes, and we’re going to eat as fast as we can after a workout, because the goal is to feed the muscles energy, protein for repairing, carbs for rebuilding. And so I recommend a 3 to 1 ratio of carbs to protein post-workout. Remember, after the workout, the muscles are like a sponge that’s been wrung dry. So it’s something that we call– in our industry, we call this nutrient partitioning. So your body is much less likely to store carbs as a fat source post-workout, because your muscle tissue and your liver tissue has been depleted of energy called glycogen.
So having a 3-to-1 ratio of carbs to protein right away after you’re done working out will help you gain muscle, because most of those carbs are going to be used to build and repair. So protein starch and a fruit. Great example, slow cook organic oats. Maybe a cup and a half, if you’re a guy. A cup, if you’re a woman. Then you’re going to go ahead and stir in maybe a couple of scoops of protein powder and a cup of berries. Now you have a double carb ring or triple carb serving with a protein serving.
So you want to stick close to this 3 to 1 ratio. If you’re doing 20 grams of protein, 60 grams of carbs, right. Doing 30 grams of protein, 90 grams of carbs. And this isn’t an exact science, and I don’t recommend that you do this every day, but 2 or 3 times of the week if the goal is to gain muscle, this is the approach I recommend taking.
The next 1 is to maintain, and this is pretty easy. Just a 1-to-1 ratio of protein to starch or protein to fruit. So, again, a protein shake with some fruit blended in, a cup of fruit blended in, or a lean quality protein source with some type of starch whether it’s oatmeal or quinoa. It could be brown or white rice. It could be a yam or sweet potato. It could be a potato. Remember, after the workout, your body’s going to take those carbohydrates. It’s going to use them to replenish muscle and liver glycogen. So you don’t really have to worry about those carbs spilling over and being stored as fat. And this is one of the hidden secrets of long term exercisers like myself.
Thanks for watching and keep going strong.