Craving junk food post-workout is more common than we think it is. We are here to look into what happens if you eat junk food after working out.
So what happens if you eat junk food after working out? Well, it depends on what you eat. Junk foods like waffles, PB&J sandwiches, etc are actually good to be consumed after working out. These provide our body with the energy, in the form of glucose, that is spent while working out. Junk foods like bacon, pizza, etc are some of the worst foods that you can consume after a workout. These do keep you full for a longer period of time, but consuming them after a workout may be quite bad for your body, especially if you are trying to lose weight.
A post-workout meal is also very important, no matter your goal as it helps your body to boost the effects of your workout and helps you reach your desired body. A good post-workout meal can make or break your scope to get the max out of your workout, it is not just to eat and stay full but also gives your body what it exactly needs in order to get the utmost results.
Table of Contents
Benefits Of A Post Workout Meal
- Helps recover better
- Meals are digested better
- Nutrients are absorbed better
- Provide muscle with the raw materials it needs
- Protein and carbohydrates get to the muscle faster
Healthy Alternatives To Junk Food
| Healthy Alternative | Junk Food |
| Oatmeal Energy Balls | Donuts |
| Yogurt Fruit Pops | Ice Cream |
| Kale Chips | Potato Chips |
| Bean Brownies | Cakes |
| Baked Veggie Fries | French Fries |
| Homemade Smoothies | Milkshakes |
| Chocolate-Dipped Nuts | Candy |
Learn About Food: What Happens If You Eat Junk Food After Working Out
Junk Foods To Avoid At All Costs
High-fat Fast Food
Food like nachos, french fries, cheeseburgers sounds fun for a cheat day and may help you satisfy your craving, but they are really bad even if you have it only on your cheat days. Food like these may also drag you back and wipe any progress you made in the gym. The amount of fat in these foods will slow down digestion, this is exactly the opposite of what you worked hard on. The goal after a good exercise is to provide lost glucose to your body and not add fats again to your system
Salty Snacks
In simple words, keep salt away. Eating salty snacks like french fries or salty potato chips will only lower your potassium levels which is very important for your recovery. Potassium is far more important for your body than sodium, potassium is a mineral that is essential for your cell function. As your body loses electrolytes during exercise, the worst thing you can do to your body is deplete potassium with salty snacks
Bacon
This should exclusively be for breakfast but in moderation, starting your day with this will give you calories to burn for the rest of the day. It will only slow your metabolism if consumed right after your workout, it slows down the metabolism spike you get from a good workout if you look at bacon for protein give eggs a shot instead they are much better than bacon as a post-workout food.
Pizza
We are hurt to say this, but pizza is another one of the worst post-workout foods, with those fatty sausage and pepperoni toppings and a lot of oil and grease. Just one slice and you are already way past the gains you made in your workout. Whole wheat English muffins with some cheese can help you keep up with your cheesy craving.
Soda And Fruit Drinks
If you are thirsty, the best drink is water. But whatever you choose don’t use sweetened beverages or sugary sports drinks to replenish lost fluids. Whatever it is, soda or fructose-filled fruit juices, drinking a lot of sugary drinks after your workout is like giving your body what it lost, it goes negative when you are trying to lose weight, it makes your metabolism slow and you don’t lose as much as you thought. Sports drinks are only good if you want to replace lost electrolytes. But the best replacement to rehydrate, replenish and quench your thirst is plain water, which you can follow with a banana to help you in some ways.
Milk Chocolate
Milk chocolate virtually gives you nothing you need after a good workout, they are full of calories and sugar which may affect you negatively after training. The negative effects can be far more dangerous, you mag a brief burst of energy but it comes with a huge price. Have a dark chocolate bar instead (at least 70% cocoa), it is full of healthy antioxidants and anti-inflammatories and helps you fight free radicals. This can help with recovery after your workout, just make sure to not eat a lot.
Doughnuts And Pastries
For sure you need carbs after a good workout to replace lost muscle fuel (glycogen), these foods are nutrient deprived and carry a huge amount of fats, they may also clog your arteries. You can try better options for carbs like bagels or whole wheat peanut butter sandwiches or fruit preserves.
Junk Foods Which Can Actually Boost Your Workout
Waffles
Now don’t jump right for a plate full of waffles, but if you like waffles here is another reason to have them as they make good post-workout food. We absorb nutrition the best after a good workout, the half-hour window after a workout is a perfect opportunity to give your body what it lost. Like glucose which will be restored with a good meal within this period, after a couple of hours, the glucose absorbed will be 50 percent or less.
Bagels
Bagels are rich in starch, each having around 30-35 grams, also they fuel you up really quickly. Post-workout, they are a good choice and they also help rebuild what you lost in your workout.
Chocolate Milk
Chocolate milk is one of the best post-workout drinks there is, it is a perfect combination of protein and carbs which helps in fast muscle recovery and prepares your body for the next workout. The research found that a workout followed by chocolate milk and taking it again after 2 to 3 hours will help reduce muscle soreness and reduce muscle damage caused during the workout.
Peanut-butter-and-jelly Sandwich
2:1 or 3:1 is the perfect carb-to-protein ratio after a tiring workout. Consuming carbohydrates with protein will shuttle the protein and allow muscle growth and recovery.
Ice Cream
It may sound strange at first but go ahead and scoop your favorite ice-cream flavor followed by your workout. The cold treat will create a surge of insulin that may slow down the protein breakdown post-workout.
Workout And Food Myths
Avoid Carbs Post Workout
The energy which we get during working out is mainly drawn out from the carbs that we consume. Carbs also play a big role in repairing the muscles by using glucose and glycogen, which are both bi-products of carbs. Villainizing carbs is nothing but a facade.
Consuming Food Post Workout Is Bad For You
We all have heard how eating post-working out is almost equivalent to not having worked out at all. But when you evaluate that statement, it starts to make absolutely no sense. Eating after working out isn’t going to reverse the benefits of working out. In reality, it helps with keeping the benefits of working out even after we are done working out. It helps in muscle repair and in maintaining the boosted metabolism which comes from the workout.
Consume Lesser Calories Than What You Burn
By burning more calories than what you consume, you are sending your body into a calorie deficit. This slows down your metabolism and slows down the weight loss process. Even if you lose a significant amount of weight, you will gain it all back once you get back to your normal eating proportions. Instead of worrying about how many calories you consume, eat whenever you are hi=ungry and work on maintaining a good relationship with food.
Always Burn Off Everything You Eat
Relating your eating habits along with how much or how little you workout is a very easy way to mess up your mental health. By doing so you are putting workouts in a place of penalty that has to be paid for eating. Foods that are supposedly bad don’t really do as much harm as they are portrayed. By making yourself believe that eating is wrong as deserves punishment can cause serious body dysmorphia and eating disorders.
Weight Loss Only Comes From Low-Calorie Diets And High-Intensity Workouts
We are taught to believe that starving ourselves of fuel (energy) is supposed to trigger our bodies to start using up all the stored fat. But what no one realizes is that following this can actually slow down the usage of fat in our bodies. When our body receives less than required energy for the day, it goes to think that there isn’t fuel available and hence it needs to conserve whatever it can. This results in the metabolism slowing down which in turn causes mood swings and frustration. Losing any weight by this means will also refuse to remain lost.
Similarly, high-intensity workouts, if overdone, can also cause your metabolism to slow down and put a halt to your weight loss altogether. Getting tired more doesn’t mean that you will lose more weight. Everything has a measurement and sticking to that as closely as possible is the wisest thing you can do for yourself.
Post Workout Foods Should Always Be Low-Calorie
When you work out, your metabolism gets all pumped up, and not eating or eating something very low in calories will slow down the progress that you made at the gym. It will also slow down the muscle repair rate. It is a misconception that eating little to nothing after working out is good for us and will help us get fit alongside working out.
A bad workout is better than no workout
We have all somehow come to believe that pushing through sleep and tiredness is the key to becoming a fitness guru of some sort. We have heard people tell us that no matter what just shows up, something is better than nothing.
What we fail to take into account is that when we feel fatigued, sleep-deprived, and stressed, then our body is most probably going through those things. And although it seems like pushing through is the better way to go, it isn’t always the case. When we feel those things. It is our body trying to tell us that it needs to rest and take a day off to recover. If we think about it in the long haul, taking breaks isn’t a bad thing. It is essential for the activity of working out to actually work on your body. Taking breaks helps you prevent burnout and a lot of unwanted stress, it’s not your enemy.
Morning Workouts Are Better
When we work out isn’t as important as the fact that we are working out at some point during the day. It is what you’re comfortable with. Many people have conducted personal experiments where they changed their workout timings and at the end, they all had the same thing to say – that it didn’t make any difference until and unless they worked out at some point.
Workouts Are Incomplete Without Protein Shakes
Protein is actually quite helpful when it comes to muscle repair and building muscles. Post-workout is a good time to consume protein. You can either opt for a protein shake or any other sources of protein like eggs, yogurt, meat, almonds, etc will also work just fine.
Fitness Equals To Six Pack Abs
Many have this misconception that having six-pack abs is equivalent to being fit and healthy. But what a lot of them do not realize is that to achieve that six-pack a person needs to have a very low body fat percentage. And many try to achieve this low body fat percentage by the means of unhealthy dieting and fad diets. This need to have a certain percentage of the body becomes an obsession without one even realizing it and before you know it you get engulfed by stress and anxiety. All of this together will make your body become weak and ultimately unhealthy.
The Lesser Rest Days The Better
The amount of rest each one of us requires varies from one person to another. You may be good with a single day of rest or you may need more than that. It depends on how much you have worked out the previous day and how much your body has bounced back from it. If you find yourself having mood swings, or feel way too dehydrated, extreme tiredness, etc, you may need to listen to your body and take a rest day.
Rest Days Are Meant For Eating Less
The whole purpose of rest days is so that your body can heal and repair the muscles from all the working out that you have done prior to that. This is a crucial step in order to have a healthy workout schedule for these are the days where your body gets up to the strength which you aspire for and need for the upcoming days of working out. Our bodies are more complex than we realize, meaning, there is much more to losing weight and getting fit than simply working out and regulating. In fact, eating enough is very important to the process of getting fit.
Our bodies require the nutrition that comes from consuming a healthy diet. Rest days are there to store up on the energy that our body will be required in the following days, which can make you feel even hungrier than usual.
The More You Workout The Better It Is
We often tend to believe that doing a lot of something that is good is always gonna turn out to be the best for us. We are always told that working out and exercising is great for us. That it helps us to maintain good physical and mental health. But what we don’t realize is that by working out too much we can do more harm to ourselves than good. Working out does indeed make a large contribution to our health and it is essential for everyone to have a healthy workout schedule.
Everyone has a different body type with different issues to be dealt with. This requires everyone to do different levels of and different lengths of workouts. Know what’s best for you, make sure to not overdo it, and keep in mind that more doesn’t always mean better results. You shouldn’t be feeling stressed and fatigued at the end of a workout session.
You Shouldn’t Eat After 8 P.M.
The time you eat is the least important factor in reaching your fitness goals. What matters more is that you don’t go to bed hungry because that will do more harm than good. It will slow down your metabolism and cause harm to your sleep quality.
