A snack prior to a lift can provide some energy if fasting before training doesn’t provide you with the boost your system needs.

As you know, if you’ve been browsing the last week of posts, I’ve been conducting two new practices:

1. Training at 5:45am
2. Lifting on an empty stomach

The former has been great; the latter has been hit or miss. I’ve been scrambling without some of the energy I’m accustomed to with my normal, balanced eating habits pre-workout. I believe in trial and error, so I won’t be over adjusting with my experimentation by going all the way back to a large meal before my workouts. Instead, I’ll try an egg and an apple followed by my training session. Then, I’ll return home to 5 eggs, mushrooms and a few cups of black coffee. That pre workout “snack” might be the ticket to enhanced energy. Particularly, the glucose in the fruit may be the key. From sportsmedicine.about.com:

Because glucose is the preferred energy source for most exercise, a pre-exercise meal should include foods that are high in carbohydrates and easy to digest.

While I could certainly opt for foods with a higher carb count, my aim is to hunt my sugar in the form of fruits and veggies both pre- and post-training. I don’t mess with supplements, and I’m not about to eat processed foods like breads and pastas. That leaves me with getting my energy from a natural carb source, and I’m thrilled with that outcome. From sfgate.com:

One apple, banana, orange, peach and pear, one-quarter of a cantaloupe, and 21 sweet cherries provide 12 to 34 grams total carbohydrates. Pears, sweet cherries, bananas and apples have the most carbohydrates. They range from 26 grams in pears and cherries to 34 grams of total carbohydrates in an apple. The other fruits have 12 to 19 grams of total carbohydrates.

I’ll give my egg + apple a try to optimize for energy and report back.

What’s your pre workout meal?

Kap