How long to eat after aerobic exercise

For the vast majority of ordinary sports enthusiasts, eating 30 minutes to 1 hour after aerobic exercise is a relatively safe choice. There is no need to stick to a dead standard that is accurate to the minute. Just adjust according to your own exercise intensity and physical feelings.

I also struggled with this problem when I first started running. I read about fitness bloggers who said that we should catch up with the "30-minute anabolic window after exercise". Eating one minute late is equivalent to running in vain. Then I heard from my elders in the family that eating right after exercise will hurt your stomach and you have to wait two hours. After running for three or four years, and meeting hundreds of runners and fitness enthusiasts, I realized that both of these opinions are a bit extreme, and there is no need to follow them to death.

The little sister who ran the city half marathon with me last week usually runs at a slow pace, and the sun was shining brightly that day. When we crossed the finish line, her blood sugar was a little low, and she couldn't stand firmly. We handed her a protein bar and half a banana at the supply point. She finished it in less than 10 minutes. She took a half-hour break to eat Chaoshan hot pot, but she didn't suffer from indigestion. The muscle soreness in the next few days was much lighter than that of some of us who didn't dare to eat in advance.

The specific time actually depends on your exercise intensity that day. If what you do today is low-intensity aerobic exercise such as walking or slow walking for thirty or forty minutes after meals, and your heart rate does not exceed 100 the whole time, and you don't sweat much, then you don't have to wait at all. You can eat whenever you want. It won't put much burden on the body, and there won't be much ischemia in the gastrointestinal tract, so there won't be any problems at all. But if you have just finished a 10-kilometer run or performed a high-intensity aerobics session, and when you stop, you are still out of breath and your heart rate is still above 120, then it is best to rest for a while until your breathing becomes smoother and your heart rate drops to around the resting level before eating - I stepped on this pitfall last year. After running 12 kilometers, I was so hungry that I stuffed a bowl of braised beef noodles within 10 minutes when I got home. As a result, I had stomach bloating and acid reflux all night, and I couldn't even sleep well. To put it bluntly, the intestines and stomach are like a processing factory that has temporarily taken away most of the workers. During exercise, blood is given priority to the muscles. There are only a few employees on duty in the intestines and stomach. If you rush to stuff a lot of materials into it, it will easily be blocked.

If you are interested in building muscle, you need to replenish carbohydrates and protein after aerobics, and you don’t have to stick to the 30-minute dead window. The latest research has already said that the anabolic window of ordinary bodybuilders can actually be extended to 4-6 hours. As long as you eat enough nutrients for the day, there is really not much difference between eating earlier and eating later. There is no need to wolf down it in a hurry and hurt your stomach. If you are here to lose fat, don’t deliberately starve yourself for two or three hours before eating. If you are so hungry, you will easily be unable to control your overeating at the next meal. As long as there is a gap in overall calories, you can eat light foods that are low in oil and salt after exercise and you will not gain weight at all.

In fact, exercise is about doing whatever makes you feel comfortable. Don’t be bound by all kinds of rules and regulations. Feel more about your body’s signals, which is more effective than any rigid popular science standards.