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Eating the wrong foods post-workout can stunt muscle growth, cause fat gain, and dehydrate your body. You can easily spend an hour or longer working your butt off in the gym, and reverse all that hard work with just one awful post-workout meal. And worst part is that a lot of the common recommendations (1) of what to eat or drink after a workout are actually based on outdated myths, so it’s very likely that you’re hurting your progress right now based on bad advice. So let’s go over 10 foods that you should limit or avoid post-workout.
And first, we have high-sugar foods and drinks. It’s common to see people drinking things like Gatorade or other sports drinks after their workout and there are actually a few reasons behind this. You see during your workout you deplete glycogen, which is a stored form of carbohydrates. That glycogen is used for energy and is beneficial for optimal performance, especially during high-intensity activities like lifting weights or sprinting. By drinking a sports drink like Gatorade or even other high sugar nonsports drinks like soda or chocolate milk, you’re able to quickly refill those glycogen stores so your muscles are better prepared for your next intense workout. However, the problem is that a lot of people that workout, are doing so because their goal is to burn fat and get lean. It’s not to bulk up and it’s not to be a better athlete. Unfortunately, the calories from high-sugar drinks and high-sugar foods like candy are not filling and will usually go on top of the calories that you already eat on a daily basis. You can still replenish your glycogen stores with the food you eat throughout the rest of the day after your workout it’ll just take a little longer, but complex carbohydrates are much more filling than simple sugars and offer additional nutrients. A baked potato for example is one of the most filling carbohydrates according to the satiety index, and it can be paired with a filling high-protein meal to help you burn fat. Another common belief is that you need a bunch of sugar after a workout to boost insulin because insulin helps shuttle nutrients like amino acids and glycogen into your muscle cells. And sure maybe this can help if your goal is to maximize performance maybe if you’re training twice a day to become an athlete, or if you want to bulk up or gain weight, but it’s absolutely not necessary and can hurt your progress if your goal is fat loss. Whey protein itself is actually highly insulinogenic, so you can get the benefits of a spike in insulin just by having a low-calorie whey protein shake after your workout, rather than taking in a bunch of extra sugar.
Next is alcohol. This is something that you want to limit in your diet in general and it definitely has no place after a workout for many reasons. First is dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it increases urine production which can lead to dehydration. This is the exact opposite of what you want. After a workout, your body needs to rehydrate to recover properly. Drinking alcohol on the other hand can lead to muscle cramps, fatigue, and impaired performance. The second issue is that alcohol can interfere with your body’s ability to repair and rebuild muscle tissue after a workout. This is due to its negative effect on protein synthesis and other essential metabolic functions. This can lead to our third problem which is that alcohol post-workout will hinder Muscle Growth. It’s obvious that sending alcohol to your broken-down muscle tissues instead of amino acids for recovery is a very bad idea for gaining muscle.
But, that’s not all, alcohol can affect the balance of hormones in your body, including testosterone, which is very important for muscle growth. Another issue is that alcohol can interfere with the absorption of essential nutrients, including vitamins and minerals. Also just like sugar, alcohol contains empty Calories with mostly no nutritional value contributing to fat gain. On top of that, it can easily cause you to make bad decisions and overindulge: After a hard workout, you’re likely to already feel hungry as it is, but alcohol can lower inhibition, impair your judgment, and lower self-control. It can also enhance the taste and smell of food, release more dopamine making you feel good while eating junk food, and it can reduce the feeling of being full.
That’ll probably lead you to eat the next foods you should avoid after a workout which are fried foods as well as other highly fattening foods like pizza and hot dogs. The first reason why you should avoid fried foods is because, just like pastries and foods high in sugar, fried foods are…