When it comes to exercising, it is not just your workout that is going to have an impact on how you look and feel. It is everything else that you do, i.e., the build-up to your workout and the recovery as well. The last thing you want to do is undo all of your hard work in the gym because you’re not eating right. It is imperative to ensure you get all of the correct nutrients your body requires after you have exercised. This is just as imperative as choosing the right food pre-exercise as well. With that in mind, in this blog post, we are going to reveal everything you need to know about what you should eat post-workout.

Why do you need to eat after you have been working out?

Before we give you some specific suggestions regarding the different types of meals that you can eat after you have been working out, it is first vital to establish why it is critical to eat after your workouts. When you are exercising, the glycogen stores you have in your muscles are used up for fuel. This means that your muscles are then partially depleted of glycogen. There can also be some damage in terms of the protein within your muscles. So, once you have finished exercising, your body will attempt to rebuild the stores of glycogen and to regrow and repair the proteins. You will assist your body in this process, enabling it to be achieved faster, if you consume the right nutrients after you have worked out. Doing this will aid your body in terms of recovery, restoring glycogen stores, increasing muscle protein synthesis, and decreasing the breakdown of muscle protein.

Getting some carbs and protein into your system

It is imperative to make sure that you get protein and carbs into your system after you have been working out. Let’s start with carbs. Consuming carbs is vital in terms of helping you to replenish those glycogen stores that have been used up for fuel while you were working out. For effective glycogen resynthesis, you are advised to eat between 0.5 and 0.7 grams of carbs for every pound of body weight you have. Do this within half an hour of your workout. In terms of protein, this is important because it helps to build and repair your muscle. As discussed, muscle protein can breakdown during a workout. The rate at which this happens depends on the level of training you’re carrying out and the sort of exercises you are partaking in. Nevertheless, even the world’s fittest athletes experience some breakdown in their muscle protein. This is why you need to make sure you consume enough protein after you have been working out so that you have the building blocks that are needed for new protein tissue to be created.

What sort of foods can you eat after you have been working out?

As mentioned, you are looking to add some carbs and protein to your diet once you have been working out. There are a number of different ways that this can be achieved. For example, when it comes to protein, some of your options include the likes of tuna, a protein bar, chicken, salmon, cottage cheese, Greek yoghurt, eggs, or plant-based or animal-based protein powder. When trying to add some carbs to your meals, you can opt for leafy and dark green vegetables, as well as pasta, potatoes, oatmeal, rice, rice cakes, fruits like kiwi, banana, berries, and pineapple, quinoa, chocolate milk, and sweet potatoes. With that in mind, there are a lot of different and delicious meals that you will be able to enjoy as your post-workout meal. Some examples include a protein shake and a banana, wholegrain toast with some almond butter, tuna and crackers, salmon with sweet potato, or an egg omelette with avocado spread on toast. You could also keep it simple but tasty with some roasted vegetables and grilled chicken. Feel free to use some herbs and spices to make your dishes more exciting!

So, there you have it: an insight into some of the different foods that you can eat after you have been working out for the best possible results. Eating after your workout is imperative because it helps to enhance recovery while also increasing muscle growth. However, this is only going to be the case if you choose your meals with care. Use the advice and suggestions that have been provided above to make sure that your post-workout meals are a success.

When you ask some body builders about the reason why they bulk up ,most of them will say it’s because they want to look good. Yes, there are people who perform physical training to improve their health, and there’s no doubt that physical wellbeing is directly linked to better mental health, and is even used as a way to deal with depression, but… A lot of people just want to improve their looks.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Whether you have a goal to improve your looks or become healthier, along the way, you will achieve both, so there’s no problem with taking that approach.

Now, there are people who’d like to take things a little further and specialize their muscles, and looks, to look a little more on the hulk-side. And that can be achieved if you train and take extra steps to achieve vascularity and muscle swelling, also known as a pump.

What’s Vascularity and Pump

It might be weird to talk about how some people actually want to achieve these two factors, but you would be surprised. I open this section of the article like this because it might be weird for newcomers who know nothing about bodybuilding, vascularity, and muscle pump, so keep that in mind.

Vascularity can be described as the condition where bodybuilders, muscle trainers, and athletes (or even normal people) achieve highly prominent and visible veins. So, when your veins are really present in your arms (or other parts of the body) and you can not only see them but feel them in your body’s skin layout.

Muscle pump is when the muscles become swollen and enlarged due to physical effort, mostly linked to weightlifting and muscle training. This enlarges muscles with blood, and usually expands and stretches the muscle tissue, thus, leading to hypertrophy.

It’s Benefits

There’s a reason why people want to achieve both muscle pump and vascularity, and you can check them in more detail over here https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19520337/muscle-pump-builds-size-and-strength/.

Still, in my experience and research, I’ve found out a rather logical current of thought regarding both conditions: hypertrophy. Many probably don’t know this, but hypertrophy is a condition that is achieved when muscle tissue is stretched (pretty much damaged) from physical effort. Pump and vascularity are good visible signs of hypertrophy, and they actually happen when your muscles have swollen.

This hypertrophy is properly dealt with during our sleep, and the healing process use components we get from food such as proteins, minerals, and macronutrients. These compounds, as well as the quality of sleep you get, decide how effectively your body deals with hypertrophy.

After the muscles have been healed, due to the stretching of the muscle tissue, they end up becoming stronger and larger, thus, creating muscle mass along the process. The logic is simple: the more tension you manage to put in the tissues, the stronger they become.

Of course, reaching more vascularity and muscle pump becomes harder the stronger you get, so you have to adapt yourself to your physical activities and come up with good training methods. You can also add some of the best supplements for pump and vascularity to the mix for better and faster results.

Although supplements can be very useful because they can provide you with more energy and endurance during your workouts, it all depends on how you work. Your training routine, as well as the rests you put in between, are very important, but what’s most important is knowing what’s the effort bar you have to follow when it comes to weight, repetitions, and sets.

The Right Mindset

There’s something very important when we talk about training, and that is having the right mindset. Of course, things like discipline and consistency are key factors to determine how fast and effectively you get results, but there are other things to consider.

What I would like to ask for you is to make sure you are not slacking off, but also, make sure that you are not putting yourself under too much pressure. It’s a difficult balance to achieve, I’m sure of it, and considering that everyone has different power levels of strength as well as endurance and experience, it’s even harder to achieve.

That’s why during the first months of training, you should not look to get results right away, but get to learn yourself and your body. Learn how much weight you can deal with different exercises, and learn how many sets and repetitions you can go. Get to know how much rest you need in between exercises, and learn if you can handle less rest as time goes by.

Ideally, you want to rest around 90 seconds between exercises and put enough weight for you to feel tired after 13 to 15 repetitions, but it all depends on the person. Your goal is to achieve hypertrophy, but without putting too much pressure on your muscles that could cause damage. You should also try to exercise your muscles at least twice a week if you want to get results and let them rest when needed.

Finally, add enough calories, carbs, and protein to your diet depending on your goal (weight-gain or weight-loss) and make sure to rest properly.