Nowadays, the difference between a good lifestyle, along with proper nutrition, and a normal or unhealthy lifestyle is quite obvious, and the difference in different types of lifestyles can be easily observed.
Even if you are one of those people who do not exercise, having a proper diet can lead you to relative fitness. If you are following a sports program, knowing the time of consumption and the type of food consumed plays a very important role in fitness.
In fact, exercise and diet are your wings to fly towards health and fitness, which influence each other and complement each other.
If you have the experience of following a regular exercise program, you have automatically realized the effect of the time of eating and the type of food in increasing the efficiency of your exercises, and you have experimentally understood the nutritional tips that lead to improvement in exercise. In this section, we provide you with some tips about proper diet, which you can follow to be more successful in achieving fitness.
1- To be fit, you must have a healthy breakfast
If you exercise in the morning, be sure to wake up early so that you can eat a good breakfast at least one hour before exercise so that you have enough energy for physical activity.
Experiments show that consuming high-carbohydrate drinks or foods before exercise can increase your strength and allow you to exercise longer. So increasing endurance and strength in exercising can be achieved with good fueling.
If you don’t eat well before training, you may feel bored and get tired early during exercise.
If there is a short gap between breakfast and your physical activity, it is better not to eat a heavy breakfast and go more towards simple carbohydrates. In the previous articles, we talked about simple and complex carbohydrates and their differences, but if we want to review them briefly, we must say that simple carbohydrates increase blood sugar quickly, especially when they are consumed in solution and from They are used before and during exercise. Of course, you should note that the consumption of simple carbohydrates before and during training should be clear, otherwise they will cause your blood sugar to drop and eventually your performance to drop.
But complex carbohydrates are digested and absorbed more slowly and raise blood sugar slowly and have a longer and more lasting effect. But you should note that because they are digested more slowly and need more time to digest, they should be consumed at least one hour before training to prevent digestive complications.
You can use the following foods as a healthy breakfast:
Regarding tea and coffee, if you are used to drinking tea or coffee in breakfast, drinking a cup of tea or a cup of coffee will not cause any problem for an athlete.
Another thing that can be said is that it is better not to try new foods before training or sports competitions because there is a possibility of stomach and digestive system upset when facing new foods.
2- Do not overeat in your meals
The amount of food you consume should be regular. Overeating can easily ruin your fitness over time. It is better to consider the amount of food you need in advance and control your appetite while eating. To calculate the calories you need and get a diet suitable for the family table, you can get help from the nutrition experts of the Iranian nutrition portal.
Just as overeating can cause fatigue and sleepiness, eating less food can also cause a feeling of weakness and fatigue. So what is important is to maintain a balance in your diet.
A typical diet includes snacks and main meals.
The main meals should be consumed at least 3-4 hours before training, because they are heavier and need more time to be digested and absorbed.
Eat snacks at least 1 to 3 hours before training.
3- Eat a healthy snack
Many people eat a healthy snack while exercising. which is usually either a sports drink or a drink that does almost the same job as a sports drink (hydration, providing body ions and electrolytes, and fueling).
In addition, usually in sports that last less than an hour, there is no need to fuel while exercising, because if the athlete has followed his diet correctly, he has almost received the energy needed for an hour of exercise. But eating a snack may prevent you from feeling hungry.
But if the exercise duration is more than an hour, eating (or drinking) a suitable snack can be effective.
Good snack options include:
If there is a long gap between exercise and meal, a good snack can be very useful and important.
4- Proper nutrition after exercise
You need a post-workout snack that is both carbohydrate-rich and protein-rich to aid in muscle recovery and repair and replenish your body’s glycogen stores. Protein is used in muscles to repair, develop and grow muscle fibers, and carbohydrates in food are used to provide energy and replenish energy reserves in muscles. Therefore, it is very important to use a suitable snack after training.