Eating before and after a workout

If you wake up early in the morning and workout for less than one hour, it’s not really necessary to eat anything. Just go do the workout and come home and eat.

After the workout, you should eat something that contains some balance to it according to the Zone Diet. Do this regardless if you are lifting weights or doing cardio. Eggs and an apple are perfect. A Clif bar, chocolate milk, a protein shake, or a high protein cereal like Go-Lean are good choices. Bad choices are toast, coffee, bagels, most cereals, and juices. This will allow your body to burn fat and not blood sugar. You’ll also have more energy.

If you are working out later in the day, eating prior to exercising is going to be a factor. If you are doing cardiovascular exercises that don’t involve a lot of bouncing (cycling, walking on a treadmill, stair-stepping) you can literally eat right before. Ideally, a zone snack would be perfect because it would allow you to primarily burn fat as an energy source. Snacks/meals such as a turkey/cheese sandwich with avocado on it could work. Eating a high carbohydrate meal right before an aerobic workout is forcing your body to use your blood sugar as the primary energy source rather than fat. This makes your exercise not as effective.

If you are doing weight lifting later in the day, it’s best to time your eating so that you are eating an hour before your workout. It’s hard to workout with a full stomach. If you get off work at 5:00 pm, don’t just run to the gym and workout. If you haven’t eaten since noon, you might lose energy. Maybe you can have some yogurt or fruit at 4:00 pm. If you are in a crunch, Gatorade and string cheese is a good pre-workout meal prior to weight lifting.

How to exercise around injuries

Many people have chronic conditions. These are pains that never fully go away but can be lessened greatly through chiropractic methods. The challenge is to still work out while you have the pain. How do you know when you can workout through the pain? Should you rest and wait?

With chronic problems it’s best to work around the pain, rather than through it. A patient of mine was working out and trying to do push ups and it was killing her wrists and shoulders. Since she was working out in the gym I told her to try the pec-deck machine and barbell bench presses. These exercises worked the same muscles as the push up, but didn’t bother her wrist or shoulders. She didn’t stop working out, she just didn’t do the exercises that hurt.

Now some would argue that the push up is a better exercise than the non-functional machines and weights. It’s not a better exercise if you get injured.

You can try the treadmill, elliptical, or exercise bike. There’s even recumbent bicycles if your back is really hurting. While all of these are good for your cardiovascular fitness, some may bother your knee or back. Simply try another exercise until you find the right one.

In certain circumstances you should just not work out at all. In cases where there is a new injury and/or there’s inflammation it would be best to take some time off.

In some cases you can workout through the pain. In these cases where there is a weakness that is the reason for instability in the spine, exercising despite pain would be appropriate. In these cases you will significantly feel better as you are exercising. You will know that it feels better because as you are gaining strength, the pain will lessen. If the pain is getting worse, you need to stop.