What is the higher end of the energy demand for your AM workouts? When I’m doing threshold work, I usually torch close to 1500cal in 1.5hr. In fact, a small amount of high quality carb is supposed to help with gherlin levels in the morning. One of my favorite evening snacks is to have some fibrous fruit (apples, watermelon, etc) and it hasn’t impacted my ability to drop weight so far. In case the above post wasn’t clear, Chad is suggesting that for optimal results, do your strength work on the days when your bike intensity is high.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

Occasionally I’ll do a workout later in the morning, say 9am. If it’s a short workout, I’ll just still do it without any food. If it’s longer, I’ll have 2 slices of toast with a high sugar spread on it (honey or strawberry jam) and grab a cup of coffee. This just puts some sugar in me to get things going and seems to do the trick. I will sometimes get hungry in the afternoon and I’ll go for a banana and a protein shake made with water. This does a good job of keeping hunger at bay until the next meal.

• A lot of this depends on what your goals are and how your past performance has been.
• Is there a different set of guidelines for those who do moderate to high intensity training before breakfast?
• So, likely lunch might be the meal that should be smallest for you.
• That’s fair, a 200cal difference isn’t huge so that’s promising to see.
• Occasionally I’ll do a workout later in the morning, say 9am.
• This just puts some sugar in me to get things going and seems to do the trick.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

As for an evening meal, a common thing that I meal prep is 6 oz chicken breast, 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 cup vegetables which I think is a decent volume of food is only 340 calories. A bit of greek yogurt and a piece of fruit after dinner for something sweet will get it up around the 500 calorie mark. That’s definitely enough for me to sustain a decent morning workout. I know the fuel is there from the day, my legs will be ready and I can do the work.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

I’m definitely not thinking “my morning ride is 1,500 calories, so I need 1,500 for dinner”. This allows the cell signaling the least interference, your muscles the best chance at reaping both strength and endurance benefits concurrently, and your is madmuscles a scam body the opportunity to fully recover between hard workouts. And it’s prudent to recognize that the best endurance athletes will never be amongst the best strength athletes and vice versa.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

As long as you aren’t eating to excess, I haven’t seen a lot of evidence to support that eating carbs before bed is detrimental. That’s fair, a 200cal difference isn’t huge so that’s promising to see. It would probably be slightly better to flip this; come home at 6, train, and then eat afterwards. Losing FatIf you’re trying to lose fat, I tend to think of it like as a pyramid of hierarchy.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

Ps to clarify I also do my strength training on the same days that I have on bike workouts. I’ve found this to work pretty well when spacing them out by about 8 hrs or going back to back when bike intensity is low. I was hesitant to do this since I thought my body would be too fatigued to do a good gym workout on the same day and a tough TR workout. My strength work hasn’t seemed to suffer, but I get a lot more of a return on my recovery days (of course!). I’ve found that it’s more of a mental battle than anything else to double-up those days.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

If you’re in a calorie deficit, the risk is that you’re potentially not optimally fueled for your key workouts. If you have the building blocks of nutrition in place to get to your target weight, then this is where nutrient timing can make the difference. To directly address your question, that your evening meal should be the smallest of the day I think applies to the general population, but probably not someone looking to do hard efforts at 5 in the morning. Dinner for you will be a key fueling point for your next workout. So, likely lunch might be the meal that should be smallest for you. Right now I’m in the gym lifting twice a week in the afternoon and doing low intensity rides on the same days in the morning.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

A lot of this depends on what your goals are and how your past performance has been. If you’re trying to get through tough workouts, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to do both at the same time, which many on this forum are, is when things get tricky. Is there a different set of guidelines for those who do moderate to high intensity training before breakfast? Is hitting macro targets the important thing or should nutrient timing be adjusted to fit a morning workout schedule? Thanks for those insights, what I find interesting here is that 500cal for dinner does not seem like a lot.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

Or have a smaller portion of the high carb dinner, or move the macro towards more protein and see the impact. The question here is do you need your current nutrition routine to perform well in your workouts, or have they just become a comforting routine? The potential performance gain from moving towards more fasted workouts in the morning is to become a more fat-adapted athlete.

Night Before Nutrition for Morning Workouts

At the same time I’ve been running a 500cal/day deficit (50% carb, 25% protein, 25% fat tracked via MFP). It seems unlikely that I’ll be able to complete the threshold workouts keeping everything the same so hopefully playing with nutrient timing will do the trick. PerformanceAre you getting through your tough workouts now? You said you have a high carb dinner and a small snack early in the morning. If you find that you’re fueled enough with that, you could experiment with scaling back a little and see what impact it has. Maybe skip the early morning snack and see what the effect is.