What should I eat before a workout?

According to registered dietitian Samantha Heller, what you eat before a workout should depend on factors such as time of day and how vigorous your routine will be. Watch this video to learn when and what you should eat before you exercise.

Transcript

00:00

[MUSIC PLAYING] If it's closer to the time you're working out, then you want more carbohydrates. You could have a piece of fruit, a little bit of juice,

00:06

maybe a handful of pretzels.

00:14

What should you eat before you work out? This can be a tough question. Do you work out in the morning where you just roll out of bed,

00:20

throw on your gym clothes, and go out for a run or head to the gym, and you just don't feel like eating breakfast? Well, I think a lot of us do that.

00:28

If that's you and you're going for maybe a very low to moderate fitness workout, low moderate intensity,

00:36

honestly, you probably don't really need anything, and water is fine. But if your workout is a little more intense and certainly

00:42

longer than an hour, you want to top off those reserves. So you could have a banana. You could have some juice. You could have a sports drink.

00:49

You could even have some of the chews and the goos and the blocks just before that workout, maybe 15 to 30 minutes before, to fuel your workout

00:58

and give you a better workout. Of course, hydration throughout is always important. If it's in the afternoon, you've been working all day.

01:05

You have lunch at noon. You're not going to get to the gym till 6 o'clock. You're going to need a snack. If it's a couple hours before--

01:12

maybe 4 o'clock, you're going to go to the gym at 6:00-- a small yogurt is fine. A handful of nuts, a hard boiled egg--

01:19

any of that is fine. If it's closer to the time you're working out, then you want more carbohydrates. You could have a piece of fruit, a little bit of juice,

01:27

maybe a handful of pretzels. So the timing is important in terms of what you choose to eat when.

01:33

And it's also important to remember any of the foods that you're using to fuel your workout need to be taken into consideration

01:41

with your calorie intake for the whole day. [AUDIO LOGO]