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Post Workout Snack Ideas

post workout snack ideas

Do you get hunger pangs after workouts? Have you considered refueling your body post workouts?

Hunger pangs being the most common phenomenon after workouts are the first signals your body gives to draw your heed. Hunger pangs ask you to refuel your body with nutrient dense foods. However, when you don’t understand those signals and don’t nourish your body with healthy snacks, you end up feeling exhausted and slouchy for the rest of the day and absolutely fragile for the next day’s workouts.

Generally, people consider food as a foe, which hinders their process to burning calories. They believe, consuming calories would zero down their workouts and they feel that they are supporting their bodies in shedding weight by not having meals after exercises. However, the fact is other way round; your body wants to drop extra pounds post workouts but you are not assisting it.

Why PoST workout snacks are necessary?

While doing workouts, a lot of minerals and electrolytes flow out of your body through sweating. You require feeding your exhausted body within 20-60 minutes after workouts. If you don’t do that, you only deter the recovery and repair mechanism of your body.

Post workout is the best time to fuel your body because numerous hormonal and metabolic changes occur in your body after workouts. And post snacks ensure the best utilization of those alterations.

Earlier you will feed your body; better it would be for you to turn your calories intake into muscle formation and muscle repair. As the time passes, recovery and repair process also slows down. For an instance, if you will feed your body two hours after workouts, it will give you mere 50% of the benefit.

Ingredients of post workout snacks

It’s vital to fuel your body with sufficient amount of fluids, carbs, and proteins post workouts. The quantity and quality of foods along-with timing are very crucial for you to know. There should be sync among all of them.

You have to make sure that the calories consumed by you should be 50% of the calories you burn through workouts. So, if you burn 500 calories in a day, feed your body minimum 250 calories.

Fluids

You require drinking a lot of water or energy drinks to compensate the loss of water in your body. You can drink diet drink or sports drink also for they have ample electrolytes to refuel your body. More the water you lose, more the fluids you will require to replenish the loss.

Carbohydrates

Since carbs provide you energy, it’s paramount for you to consume carbs. Your body uses glycogen to attain energy, which comes from carbs. To re-energize and replenish your body with glycogen, you need to feed 60% of carbs to your body in post workouts snacks. Besides, your carb intake should be in harmony with your workouts.

Post Workout Snacks

While light workouts require 30-40 grams of carbs, heavy workouts require 50-60 grams of carbs. Consumption of carbs after workouts also promotes the release of insulin hormone, which keeps check on blood glucose level in your body.

Proteins

There should be 25% of proteins in your meals post workouts, which means 10-15 grams of proteins. Despite being a vital nutrient for body, protein essentially needs to be eaten in a very small quantity.

Heavy amount of protein will hamper the metabolic activities taking place in your body because post workouts, your body gets busy in forming muscles and repairing torn muscles. Under such a condition, it becomes hard for your body to digest excess of protein, which begins accumulating inside your body in the form of fats causing an increase in your weight.

Some healthy snacks

Since your body requires both carbs and proteins after workouts, you can easily prepare the snacks for you at home.

Take watery part of yogurt and one banana, peel off an apple, and blend all three of them in a juicer. Yogurt would provide you protein, and banana and apple would provide you healthy carbs and electrolytes.

There are myriad other healthy snacks, which you can have after workouts. Some of them are –

  • Energy bars, smoothies, chocolate milk and others.
  • Protein shake made from whey protein, water, and half a banana
  • Green salad with olive oil
  • Yogurt with almonds
  • Granola bars
  • Chicken with brown rice
  • Crackers with cheese
  • Vegetables and hummus
  • Slice of fish with quinoa
  • Turkey, apple, and cheese slices

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