These will make your blood sugar spike and crash. Instead, go for complex carbs, like sweet potatoes, oatmeal, or quinoa. These take longer for your body to digest, keeping your blood sugar more balanced.

Carbohydrate-rich foods with a moderate to high glycemic index should be eaten immediately after a workout. This helps get glycogen levels back to normal at a quicker rate. For more stable blood sugar levels, eat complex carbs for meals and snacks.

Some experts say that eating carbs after a workout should be avoided — claiming that consuming a lot of carbohydrate rich foods spikes insulin, causing chronically high blood sugar levels. Insulin is shown to promote the storage of excess carbs as fat and leads to the body being less able to control blood sugar levels.

And you can even zoom in a little further, to consider how glycogen is stored within muscle fibers. The last one, known as intra glycogen for short, has been linked in previous research to how well muscle fibers contract.

But there are times when it matters. For example, I typically play basketball on Friday evenings, then meet friends for a tempo run on Saturday mornings. The data suggests that my legs will still be partly carb-depleted the next morning, so I refuel very aggressively when I get home from my basketball game.

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Search Search. Some scientists have argued that you start getting tired long before your carbohydrate fuel tank is empty. Alex Hutchinson Originally Published Oct 6, Updated Sep 13, btn, a. This is by no means an exhaustive list; you may benefit from a more aggressive approach to carbohydrate intake if you:.

In these cases, consider your post-exercise recovery as your pre-exercise preparation! You may utilise caffeine to enhance muscle glycogen restoration when training twice a day following your morning session or if racing or competing multiple times a day. Be aware that caffeine can also detrimentally affect your sleep so timing is crucial.

Image Credit: Emma Pallant-Browne ©. In contrast to all of the above, when your time to recover between sessions is longer, up to hours, then the urgency to refuel is reduced. You definitely have a bit more flexibility to eat when it suits you. Rest assured that, in the time between finishing your exercise and eating something, the body will still be resynthesising glycogen in the muscle; the process is just happening more slowly.

Do note that after ~24 hours of recovery, regardless of when you ate your post-exercise meal or recovery snack i. if you delayed eating by hours or ate immediately afterwards , total muscle glycogen will be restored to a similar level assuming you meet your overall energy needs.

Just as timing is important to glycogen recovery when you need to perform again quickly, somewhat predictably, the quantity of carbohydrate you eat is too. When trying to maximize glycogen storage in the acute recovery period, you should aim to consume between The type of carbohydrate used during recovery seems to have a limited effect on the rate of glycogen resynthesis.

As long as your total intake of carbohydrate is adequate and your overall nutritional goals are met, meals and snacks can be chosen from a variety of foods and fluids according to your personal preferences. In practice, there are plenty of examples where certain food and drink options may be more convenient than others.

a milkshake, sports drink or a carb-rich recovery mix are much more practical than a jacket potato or helping of rice. Ultimately, a nutrient-dense carbohydrate-rich recovery meal, which also includes some protein and some fat, is optimal. Data are from the US Department of Agriculture.

In the recovery period, protein is necessary for muscle protein synthesis. For most individuals, optimal protein intake in the recovery period is agreed to be between ~0. On average, this works out as ~20g of protein.

For athletes at the extreme ends of the weight spectrum then the guidelines may be adjusted e. rugby players might take up to 0.