To Eat Before Or After Exercise?

lt’s an often asked and very good question: When’s the best time to eat in relation to noon time exercise?

Answer: That depends on the intensity of the exercise, and why it’s being done. If your primary goal is to burn calories for the purpose of weight control, research shows it’s best to eat before you exercise, so long as you’re not going to be exercising too hard. By eating before you exercise, you increase what’s known as the thermal effect of food. That means calories are more readily available for immediate use as fuel when consumed shortly before exercise. Food should be eaten within 30 minutes before exercise begins for this increased calorie-burn to occur, studies show, and the increase can be substantial — as much as 30 percent, in fact.

But if your reasons for exercising are more performance oriented - perhaps you’d like nothing more than to whip a colleague or two in the next corporate SK — you’d do better to eat after your lunch-hour workout. The greater intensity with which you’ll be exercising could cause digestive discomfort if you eat beforehand.