The Perfect Pre-Workout Meal (Backed by Science)

I feel really empty and drained cuz I ate five and a half hours ago. If you eat the wrong stuff or in the wrong amount, that can happen. If you eat the right stuff in the right amount, you're going to be Gucci all the way through your workout.

Hey folks, Dr Mike here for RP Strength. Today's topic is to discuss what the perfect preworkout meal can look like. And this is going to be a meaty video because there's a lot to say and a lot of conditions to account for.

the end of the day, we're going to make a ton of sense out of this kind of landscape and give you the intellectual tools to know kind of when to eat and what to eat and how much to eat to give yourself the awesome pre-workout meal that you need because this is one of those things where one sizefits-all is the opposite of the truth. Let's talk about this in depth. So, the first thing to discuss is what is the purpose of a preworkout meal?

Cuz people say pre-workout meal, you got to eat pre-workout meal. What about the meal, you know, before workout? What about that?

And a lot of times people lose the connection with what that meal is actually doing. And it's kind of doing two things. One is it's making sure that you have enough energy, physical energy, and very importantly, mental energy for your muscle growth workout right after.

Because how much energy you can put in and how much training effort you get out of that is a huge unlock to more gains. Massive. That's one of the biggest reasons pre-workout feeding is such an essential topic.

And in a much more minor role, believe it or not, is preventing excessive muscle breakdown that happens during your workout. Cuz during a workout, muscle actually gets broken down a little bit and then after your workout for days later, it gets built back up and then bigger than ever. If we can mute that breakdown, we might have a little bit of long-term gain, but it's a very, very small effect.

The bigger effect is making sure you feel good and energized. So, we're going to be looking at pre-workout meals from mostly that perspective. To that end, how important is a preworkout meal?

I'll say this, as long as you feel very energetic and and strong for your workout, preworkout meal on technical nutritional aspects is just not super important. And here's why. If you ate yesterday and you ate plenty of carbohydrates and your muscular glycogen stores are pretty high, then you can wake up in the morning and just go to the gym after a couple of a glass of water or a cup of coffee and have an unbelievable workout.

Not always, not everywhere. Not everyone can do that, but a lot of people can. So, you don't actually have to eat anything before you work out.

As long as you feel well energized. And sometimes first thing in the morning, you wake up, you have a coffee, you're plenty energized, you don't feel empty and you're good to go. If you have a meal and let's say you have, you know, several hours after the meal and you're a little bit low carb the day before, you can have some extra carbs in that meal.

top off your glycogen stores a little bit, get a little bit of a better workout, more reps, a little bit more anabolic signaling, um more energy for for more sets, better pumps, all that stuff just by a smidge. So, there is some situation there that if you've been kind of low carbing it, having a meal pre-workout with some real serious carbs, increases your blood glucose can top off your glycogen, especially if it's a few hours beforehand, that can be a pretty good thing. It's not huge, but it can be a thing.

That blood glucose thing matters. Also, some amino acids whether you get from a protein in your food can be anti catabatabolic preventing muscle breakdown. That's really good.

The blood glucose is mostly to stimulate your brain because if your brain has plenty of blood glucose, it'll go hard in the paint for you. It'll do the dunks and the layups and isn't that hard in the paint, Scott? That's a basketball thing, right?

Yes. Okay. So, it's when you're a basketball player and you are violent when you are inside of that rectangle that the people get violent inside of.

And so if your brain is not fueled properly, sometimes it just doesn't feel like pushing you very hard. And that's a big problem because then you're not getting great workouts and you're not building as much muscle as you could be. The most important part seemingly some new literature really really strengthening this association.

The most important part or at least a very important part of the value of a pre-workout meal is in the fullness factor. That means that if you come into the gym technically wellfed, but let's say you were IVDed your nutrients, plenty of carbs, plenty of aminos, but your stomach feels empty. Scott, you know when your stomach feels like it's completely drained of stuff, you just want to like cave over and die kind of feeling like Yes, absolutely.

It's the worst. leg day is impossible. The right like you're not going to do legs.

You're not going to do hardly cuz you feel literally empty in your stomach. They've done some research to show that if you have some food in your stomach, even if it has very few or almost no calories, if it physically fills up your stomach and makes you feel kind of sturdy and literally not empty, but feeling full, feeling full, people have way better workout energy. And that seems to be an old evolutionary mechanism where if you have some food in you, your body's like, "All right, we'll go do stuff.

We have the energy. " But if you don't have any food in you and you're emptying your stomach, your body's like real stingy with the energy. And if you go do something very voluntary and something you actually have to push yourself to do sometimes like working out, your body's like, "I'm good, fam.

I'm not doing don't let out a lot of energy to this. " So the real importance of the pre-workout meal is to check box that I'm not feeling empty. So if you wake up in the morning, you don't feel empty and you go train, hey, you don't even need a pre-workout meal.

But the longer you wait, the more pre-workout meal can help you not feel empty. So, for example, if it's first thing in the A. M.

, you can eat a meal if you like or not. If you feel full, you're good to go. But as the day goes on, your energy levels and fullness definitely begin to benefit from pre-workout meals.

So, for example, if you woke up at 7:00 in the morning and you haven't eaten anything all day, and then at 3:00 p. m. you try to work out, jeez, it's going to be tough.

But if at 2:30 p. m. you got a protein shake, you got one of these Genius shots down the gullet, super quick.

It doesn't fill you a lot. But let's say you got an apple in addition to that. Genius shot plus apple, 23 g of protein, about 20 g of carbs, basically zero fats.

The apple is fibrous, it's voluminous, it has high fluids. It actually fills you up just so that 30 minutes later when you start training, you're like, "All right, I don't feel just like I'm a skeleton in there. " And that can make a big big difference.

So the question to do I need a pre-workout meal is in big part answered by do I feel empty or do I feel like I have something in my stomach to keep me going. And what that something is is a very minor compared to the fact like illegit I'm not trying to tell you to skip protein in your meals. The Genius Shot's great for that link in the description.

A like a two handfuls of popcorn when you're feeling empty is better than nothing when you're about to hit the gym. protein bar. Don't forget macros.

Just make sure you're not feeling empty. That's a huge huge part of it. And obviously later in the day, pre-workout meals matter more because you're not going to go for 12 hours in the day and then feel great working out.

That's just not going to happen in most cases. You're going to feel empty. You're going to have a bad time.

Next question. How long should you give for digestion after eating your pre-workout meal to when the workout's going to happen? Like how long of a time frame is that supposed to be?

It's a spectrum, but I have some shortcuts for you. Three durations. There's a recommendation for what kind of foods to eat and when and how many calories, which I'll get to in a second, and we're going to use this kind of heristic for the rest of this video.

There are three tiers. One is eating your pre-workout meal kind of around half an hour before your workout begins. This is great for like when you have 6:00 a.

m. workout, you wake up at 5:30 or when like, you know, you have a snack at school, after school, you go train. Any of that kind of stuff.

You get off work, you can eat something in the car, 30 minute, 20-minut drive to the gym, then you go. Tons of tons of use cases for this. And if you eat about a half an hour or so, plus or minus 15 minutes before you hit the gym, I'm going to tell you in a little bit what you can eat and how much of it to make you have the best time possible.

There's another use case of about 2 to 3 hours and that's like you know you're going to eat some different foods you're going to treat the situation differently much more time for digestion and then there's another use case of 4 to 6 hours especially closer to 6 hours where like your pre-workout meal is 6 hours before your workout you're going to have to think about it a little bit differently because coming back to that fullness factor you cannot afford to get to hour tminus 30 minutes from your workout and be like hey fellas I feel really empty and drained cuz I ate 5 and 1/2 hours ago. If you eat the wrong stuff or in the wrong amount, that can happen. If you eat the right stuff in the right amount, you're going to be Gucci all the way through your workout.

So, those three tiers, about half an hour, about 2 and 1/2 hours, and about 5 hours, is kind of what we're dealing with. These are going to heavily influence how much you're eating and what types of food you're eating because we don't want two things to happen. Very simple things.

This is the entire problem space summarized. Thing one you don't want to happen is to be trying to do a meal, but you're still massively digesting a ton of food and your muscles don't get a pump and your stomach just hurts until you go to the bathroom to throw up. Scott, you ever eat too much food and then try to train and you're like, this is stupid.

It's bad. Bad. It's bad.

I like, you know, the macaroni grill, Scott. Oh, no. Yeah.

I ate dinner with my parents once at macaroni grill and then they dropped me off and I was like, I'm going to go do a push workout. I was an undergrad. I still remember how the incline dumbbell felt when like every time I'd go down my face would get red and the macaroni grill would start coming up my throat and like every rep it would go a little higher and then I racked the dumbbells it would go back down.

I was like kill me can't do this anymore. So you don't want that. You don't want digestion actively still be occurring at a high rate feeling way too full during your meal that your energy doesn't get right to your muscles right away.

It takes some time. And the opposite you don't want either which is when you're about to lift and you're like dude I can't do this. I need food.

A typical way this happens, many of you might be able to relate to this personally in the comment section, is when you get in a in a like you're on a road trip or you're friends with a bunch of people in college or just like around town and or you're going to an expo like the Olympia or the Arnold and there's like four or five people in a car and everyone's on the way to the gym, same car, right? Same minivan or whatever. And there's always one person that's like way too full.

It's like you guys, I'll I'll I'll be in the lobby. I'm going to start 30 minutes later. I got to adjust.

And there's always at least one person that's like, "What are they selling at the front of the gym that I can put something in my stomach so that I don't like throw up from hunger when I'm at the gym and fold over onto the squat bar? " And usually you get to the gym, Scott, you know how we have luck with some gyms where we want like either some kind of protein snack or some kind of carbohydrate, but it seems to be some of the gyms we go to have only insanely high dose no carb preworkout and like only protein shakes. And you're like, but the carbs are a thing you need for energy.

Yeah, they never have it. Why don't you have carbs? And you can never just get like half a bagel or a bagel to throw down there with some Gatorade and then get going.

There's no bananas. There's just like rocket fuel, 10,000 heart attack guaranteed. And then some like bar with 50 g of fat and 2 g of protein.

You're like, damn it. So, the gym is like often times a really bad place to buy pre-workout food, believe it or not. And so, you always have those those folks that just end up screwing up that other way.

So, two things you don't want. You don't want to be too full and you don't want to be completely empty. That's the number one way to pick out what you're going to be doing with your workout meal, with your pre-workout meal.

Now, let's dig in. What does that mean? We have three sizes of meals on calorie-wise based on timing.

These are very rough estimates, but they're going to make sense. If you're eating your meal around half an hour before your workout, which could even be right before, something like an eighth of your daily calories is a good idea. So, if you're talking about like a 2,000 calorie diet, you know, 250 calorie snack is totally fine.

Much more than that, you're not going to be working out. You'll just be sitting there burping. And then much less than that and it just might be like, you know, like one raindrop in the ocean and you're still empty and you're still totally drained and you still can't train.

So, about an eighth of total daily calories is really good there. No matter what your calories are, you adjust from there. If your meal is about 2 and 1/2 hours out, two, three plus minus, then you can eat like a fifth or a fourth of your daily calories.

In most cases, that's like a typical meal, which actually makes this one really easy. Like whatever typical meal you have, like breakfast, you have it at 9:00 and then at 12:30, you go to the gym. Perfect.

Perfect. Have your normal breakfast, which is like a fourth or a fifth of your day calories. If you're taking in four or five meals a day, which most people are watching this channel, then you're good to go.

The last type is when you have like up to 6 hours before the workout is the last chance you have to eat. And then a third or sometimes even half of your daily calories are what's going to have to be required to take such a long time to uh digest and then absorb and then make you feel excellent without making you feel empty yet. You got to ride that fine line which is going to take a lot of calories.

So I'll have some food recommendations in a second, but some of these are going to be pretty intense. But really this for a pre-workout meal and it's like yeah man if your pre-workout meal is 5 and a half hours before your workout you got to be eating real solid Scott you know like um the typical American breakfast is derived from hardworking farmers who would like eat on the farm eat at the farmhouse go out and do like one entire day's worth of work with basically no food and then come home and have supper and go to bed. That makes sense though now.

It makes perfect sense. You're like, "This breakfast is 1,500 calories. " Like, yeah, the farmer was burning 3,000.

He had two meals a day. One was,500 in the morning and one, 1500 later. It just you just have to have a lot of sausage and biscuits and gravy in order to dope out those nutrients over, I don't know, 15 hours of farm work.

So, if you have a workout in 6 hours, you have to be eating a lot of food in order to make that right. And I'll tell you right now, your pre-workout meal for a 6 hours later workout should make you feel pretty damn uncomfortably full in in the minute you eat it. Like right after you're done, you should be like someone should be like, "Hey, working out?

" You're like, "Get the hell away from me. You must be crazy. " That's good because a couple hours later, you be like, "I'm feel a little full still, but not too bad.

" And a couple hours later, you're like, "Yes, let's go. " Boom, boom, boom. You ate eight hours, you're hungry again.

We have a problem again. Next, what kind of macros should be in that pre-workout meal? This is also a three- tiered list based on the same criteria.

So, if it's a right before the workout, 30 minutes before kind of meal, you want one uh these ratios are very rough. Just just ideas, just food for thought. A 1:3 ratio of protein to carbs.

So, if you have 23 gram protein genius shot, then you're talking about, you know, uh exactly 69 gram of carbohydrates and the carbs can do this thing and everyone's having fun. But, you know, 60 to 70 g of carbs, maybe a few bananas or something like that. That'll do you real real good or some Gatorade or something like that.

Can you do a 1:2 ratio? Sure, you bet. But remember, carbohydrates do most of the fueling and the protein is just there to make sure your muscles don't fall off.

So that 1:3 ratio is going to make a little bit of sense. 1:2 is a totally fine ratio. However, here's the most important part.

Minimal fats. You just don't have time to digest fats. Fats, as almost a rule, take longer to digest by a long shot than the other nutrients.

And when they're present with other nutrients like proteins and carbs, they really slow down the digestion absorption rate of those proteins and carbs as well. they affect everything else. So, if you need energy and not excessive fullness in 30 minutes, you're going to having trace fats, the Genius shot has zero fat, you know, and a couple of apples and a banana pretty much have also zero fat.

And then you're good to go. So, minimal fats is the key thing to take away from that meal close. So, like if someone's like, "Hey, like I have really highfat, high calorie snack for you and you got to train in 30 minutes.

" That's probably not a good idea. The next one is that 2 to three hour meal, that standard meal before the workout. You're going to look for a ratio of kind of like 1:2 or 1:3, let's call it 1 to 2 and 1/2, similar ratio as you were for proteins and carbs for that meal that's 30 minutes away from the workout.

So, you know, like you know, you have 50 g of carbs and maybe 100 g of uh so good. 50 grams of protein, 100 g of carbs, something you would typically do like normal bodybuilding meal and 2 to three hours away. Now that's more food, more protein and carbs, but you need a little bit of fat to slow that digestion down.

You will be getting fat from normal food anyway. So maybe like 0. 5 ratio of fat.

So for example, if you had 50 g of protein, 100 g of carbs, and then about 25 g of fat, that meal 3 hours before your workout, you know, adjust it for calories, of course, if you're a smaller king or queen. That's real solid. You don't want zero fat at that meal cuz 3 hours later if you go through a high protein high carb meal, zero fat, you're starving again cuz the fat really slows down digestion.

If it's not there, you just burn right through that food. And if you have extra high fat, like 50 g of fat, well then you're still kind of like burping up food when you start warming up on leg press and no one's having any fun at that point. Here's where it gets a little kooky.

4 to 6 hours before the workout, that meal, especially closer to six, you have a 1:2 ratio, probably not much higher, of proteins to carbs. So, if you have, you know, 70 g of protein in that meal, you might have 140 g of carbs, but you're not doing 200 g of carbs. There's no reason to load up that much.

The fats, they're critical. Then, you're looking for more of a 1:1 ratio of proteins to fats. So, it's like 1 to 2:1 proteins, carbs to fats, which means, yeah, you might have like 60 or 70 gram of fat in that meal.

People look at that from the bodybuilding world, they're like, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why? " Because fats slow digestion like nothing else.

Fiber helps, slow digesting carbs help, but fats help in a much bigger way. Which means that if you have a higher fat meal 6 hours before workout with plenty of protein, a ton of carbs, you're going to enter that workout feeling completely digested, absorbed, hunky dory. But if you have way fewer fats, you can just bust through all of that food and about 4 hours later you are starving and you are empty again and you wish you had had some fats.

So the meal might look a little interesting. People are like, "God damn, you on a highfat diet? " you're like, "No, I just can't eat again until about 6 hours before my next workout, and I want to make sure I have energy and I'm feeling full right then in that workout.

" Which means fats are used to delay digestion, absorption, and keep you doped up perfectly enough so you can do your workout. Now, food types. This is almost the last thing before we go to some examples.

We've got when to eat the food, we've got how many calories. We've got macro ratios. Now, let's talk about the food types themselves because some foods digest slower, some digest faster, some keep you fuller longer, some don't.

So, we're going to be very specific. Three options here based on that timing for that 30 minutes before the workout, right before the workout situation. You want fast digesting carbs, fast digesting protein, fast digesting or good god, fast digesting, and trace fats, almost no fats cuz fats digest slow, which means like a really good pre-workout meal 30 minutes out is like a genius shot or whatever protein of your choice and a Gatorade or a Genius shot and a banana or a Genius shot and a slice or two slices of white bread that just poof just disappears into pure sugar almost when it hits your lips.

That's a really good idea. Again, you do not want to be excessively full right before you go to the gym and start lifting weights and throw everything up. 2 to three hours before the workout, you want moderately digesting proteins like chicken or beef, most like protein shakes that are milky and creamy, that sort of thing.

You want moderately digesting carbs, you know, rice and pasta, whole grain bread, that whole usual stuff, real traditional bodybuilding foods. And you want to use some healthy fats. If you use more fats, your carbs can be quicker digesting.

So, for example, you can use more olive oil, but have like white rice. Or you can use brown rice, but have less olive oil. Both are roughly the same digestion time.

Not any really pnicity things here. If something's a little faster or slower, it's not a big deal. Just don't have like two genius shots in a Gatorade and 3 hours later wonder why you're rebound hypoglycemic.

You want to put some stuff in your stomach that takes a little while. Normal food stuff is awesome. Now, 4 to 6 hours, especially closer to six before a workout, if that's your last meal before training, you want moderately or slow digesting proteins.

We're talking about some fatty steak or some salmon, for example, real slow digesting cuz they're full of fats. Moderately or slowly digesting carbs. We're talking about piling on veggies.

We're talking about whole grains, beans, all that really good stuff. And if you have some fats in the meal, it's going to be critical because those fats are going to keep you full for a long time. So plenty of fats like we already described kind of one to one with protein.

Obviously mostly healthy fats, nuts, nut butters, olive oil, canola oil, avocados are great. So we'll have a meal in a second as a sample, but you can get that ass to the burrito place, get you some guac, you're going to be really, really well sorted. If you have slightly faster digesting carbs in the meal, cranking up the fats a little bit is good.

If you have slightly slower digesting carbs in the meal, you can crank the fats down to within your kind of preference and tolerance. But either way, you're going to be having slow digesting stuff and lots of fats to make sure that 6 hours after you're actually feeling really, really good and it's time to train and you're there for it. Again, feeling full is a huge deal, scientifically illustrated to be a big difference maker in how good your workout goes.

So, even if you're coming up to a workout within just 30 minutes, you're like, "Oh, liquids are usually good, but you're feeling real empty. " You're drinking some Gatorade doesn't really fill you up. It really just doesn't.

So, if you need to throw back a couple of pieces of fruit or even like half a candy bar or a protein bar or something just to get some fullness in your stomach, it's probably a better idea than just only having liquids, but I'm too close to have solids. I don't know what can happen. Something can blow up in my stomach.

Nothing's going to happen to you. You need to make sure you quell that full sorry, quell that empty feeling, but not go overboard and just be burping up a lot of stuff. So, bananas are great for this close to the workout thing.

They still have some stuff in there to make you feel full. Rice Krispie treats, white bread slices, all the way down the line. Um, however, if you're not empty feeling and you actually feel a little bit full, but you know, like, and I'm going to run out of energy halfway through this workout.

Um, carbohydrates and proteins, you take a Gatorade, sip a few sips, pour a Genius shot in there, clip it back in, shake it once, you have your intra and, uh, post-workout meal right there. Sip on it all the way into the gym and all the way through. Liquids are awesome for that.

Do not show up to the gym with hunger pangs and empty feelings and think liquids can solve that because they usually can't. All right, let me give you guys options for each one of these scenarios of what you could realistically actually eat. Just as an ideas, an idea to get you guys thinking and being like, oh, okay, like that makes sense.

So, first option, there's actually four cuz the first option is tricky. It's the zeroth option. The first option is you eat a well- balanced diet the day before you train.

You wake up and you go right to training after 8 to 12 ounces of either some kind of fluid or a caffeinated beverage. You feel full. It's the morning.

Everything's great. You have energy. No problem.

You're good to go. You don't even need a pre-workout meal. Number two, 30 minutes before your workout, you have Genius Shop protein.

23 g of protein, 0 g carb, 0 g fat. Link in the description. And um you have a Genius Shop protein and a banana and then 8 ounces of water and you're golden.

I mean, holy In 30 minutes, you're going to be lifting the earth. Another example, this one, about 2 and 1/2 hours before your workout, you have a whole grain bread sandwich. You have some turkey in there.

You have a little bit of cheese in there. You have some veggies in there. And you have a glass of skim milk to make sure you have enough protein.

And then 12 ounces of water. You're hydrated. You're fueled.

Everything's great. Normal meal. Super quick, super easy.

Works out really well. Now, here's the fun one. Sort of.

The last option is 5 hours before your workout. like you're going to need to you're going to need to feed yourself to be still energetic and ready to train 5 hours later. You might have like a double meat burrito with guac and with cheese and an extra side of brown or white rice to buffer those carbs a little bit, plus getting like 32 ounces or even more of water or some kind of low calorie or calorie free uh caloriefree fluid so that you can load all that glycogen and all that salt.

That burrito is going to pull fluid. If you put in the fluid, that burrito is going to hook you up. It's going to keep you super full up until the training when you're going to feel great and you have to have those fluids because the fluids on top are going to hydrate you and you're just going to be like getting crazy pumps, crazy energy, all the best stuff, tons of vascularity.

Whereas, if you don't have a lot of fluids, the salt in the burrito pulls all the fluids out of the rest of your body and into your GI tract, which means you have a real distended stomach. You feel like and you can't get a pump and you feel awful. So definitely make sure you're pairing your hydration to your eating, which is to say, anytime you eat more food or the training session is further away, you have more hydration that comes in with that meal.

Lastly, to wrap all of this up, just some important insights, really some take-home stuff here. Feeling like you're able to train hard is probably the number one goal with pre-workout eating. So whatever it is that gets you to that place without making you feel sick or without making you feel empty is probably really good.

And all these particulars are really kind of second order things. So if your is ever getting really OCD and technical and eat exactly 21 g of carbs in this meal, just go put something filling and has protein or just filling. You'll get the protein later in your stomach and go.

The closer you are to your workout, the smaller the meal should be, the faster digesting the nutrients should be, and the less fat you should have. And have a little bit of fluid, but nothing crazy. You don't want to throw up fluid all over the gym floor.

Larger meals that are going to be slower digesting, that are going to have higher fat amounts and have lots of fluid in them, are going to be the go-to choice when your workout's not for a while. And everything just scales completely fluidly in between. The closer you are to your workout, the less food you have, the less fat you have, and you know, more you don't want to overdo the liquids.

The further you are from your workout, the more food you're going to have, the higher the fat is going to be, and the more fluids you're going to want to preload to get nice and juicy for your workout. If you need any kind of help with nutrition, we got the RP Diet Coach app for you to take care of all those needs. If you need extra extreme advanced help from some of the best professionals in the field, we have RP coaching to take care of you.

And if you just want to feel happy and just like have someone to talk to that'll care about you, good luck. Let me know if you ever find that because I ain't got nobody. See you guys next time.