The Adler Blog

In the last segment, I spoke about how to set up your macronutrients and calories for a successful diet. Today, I want to try answering the question as to when to eat. To be very clear, overall calories matter much more than nutrient timing, so first of all you need to make sure you have your overall caloric intake in check and know your macros.
Most people have heard that you should eat 3 meals and 2 snacks during the day. This is a good guideline, even though heavy athletes in training can require more meals. Michael Phelps, just as an example, eats about 12,000 calories a day – it would be impossible to fit that into three meals.

So, we have 3 meals and 2 snacks. Are any meals more important than others?
Absolutely! Breakfast and peri-workout meals (meals eaten within a 2-hour window of the workout) are critical for your diet success.

Breakfast literally “breaks the fast”. Your body is catabolic (destroys muscle) during most of the night, so breakfast will shift you back into being anabolic and jumpstart your metabolism. You can never skip breakfast. Even if you are not hungry in the mornings, at least consume some liquid protein with oats.

The meals around your workout are providing the energy and the material for recovery, so make sure to have 2 meals planned. If you don’t eat before the workout, you won’t have much energy to train and your intensity will suffer. Lower intensity means fewer calories burned. If you skip the post workout meal, you are risking losing muscle, since your body will turn to the amino acids for energy.

So let’s put all this into a practical example. We shall reactivate our female from the last post; she gets to eat 1,600 calories, 140 grams of protein, 40 grams of fat, and 170 grams of carbs. Let’s design the critical meals first:

Breakfast matters, so here I would say 35 grams of protein, 50grams carbs, and some 10 grams of fats. This could be a cup of oatmeal with a scoop of whey protein and some peanut butter.

Before the workout I would recommend 35 grams of carbs and 20 grams of protein. The same for post workout. This could be a large bagel, split between the meals, eaten with yogurt.

Now we are left 50 grams of carbs, 65grams protein, and 30 grams of fat for the remainder of the day. I would split these evenly into lunch and dinner, shifting the carb sources away from starches toward vegetables. Fish/beef with greens and some nuts would be possible choices.

As for the “Don’t eat after 5 pm or you gain weight”, that is simply an old wives’ tale. Calories matter and, if you train from 5-6 pm, as most people do, you will need to eat afterwards.

When designing your diet, make sure you take into account the time when you workout. And enjoy breakfast!

Train hard
Maik and Scott