Fueling for Success: How Nutrition Timing Can Boost Your Workouts

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Are you fueling your workouts the right way? In this episode of Healthspan Digest, host Aaron Shaw dives deep into the science behind pre-workout nutrition and why timing is everything when it comes to optimizing your performance. Whether you’re prepping for a long bike ride, a strength-training session, or just trying to make it through a morning workout without feeling wiped out, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you get the most from your exercise routine.

Aaron debunks common myths about pre-exercise fueling—like whether you really need to eat right before every workout or if fasted cardio is the secret to fat loss. He also shares personal stories from his own experience as a competitive cyclist and healthspan coach, making it easy to understand how nutrition timing can directly impact your energy levels and results.

Key Takeaways:

•Learn how to properly fuel for cardiovascular workouts vs. strength training.

•Discover the truth behind popular myths like “you must eat before every workout” and “fasted cardio is always better.”

•Get practical tips on what to eat and when, especially for early morning workouts.

•Find out why paying attention to the quality and timing of your meals could be the missing link to better performance.

If you’re curious about how to tweak your nutrition for more energy and better results, this episode is for you. Plus, Aaron teases his upcoming episode on post-workout nutrition, so stay tuned!

Subscribe now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and don’t miss out on the next episode of Healthspan Digest, where we continue to explore ways to extend your healthspan and improve your quality of life through smart, actionable strategies.

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Transcript

Aaron Shaw (00:00)
How much time do you place between the time you eat and the time you exercise? And does that timing difference matter whether you're going to do a cardiovascular workout or strength training workout? Well, timing does matter. Fueling for exercise is super important for energy level and the results that you're trying to achieve through your exercise. And in this episode, this is exactly what we're going to dig into. We're also going to dig into some myths. So we've got to like debunk a couple of myths about

the timing of exercises in relation to the nutrition that you have and to make sure that you are following and utilizing the tools that work best for you to get the results that you want. Welcome to HealthSpan Digest. My name is Aaron Shaw and I am from HealthSpan Physio Coaching. I am a HealthSpan coach. And as a coach, I focus on what I consider the five pillars of HealthSpan and that is exercise, nutrition,

sleep, emotional well-being and preventative care.

I coach people who are looking to extend their healthspan. Healthspan is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active, vibrant, durable, feel strong, don't feel broken, don't feel exhausted. And in order to achieve that sensation, we need to be thoughtful about the decisions that we make, the habits that we have in our life to achieve this state of an extended healthspan.

If you or someone you know are kind of curious about where to start or you feel like you need a kickstart, I will make sure that there's a link in this episode description for a free three week exercise and nutrition guide that I put together absolutely free it may be a kickstart that you or somebody you know might be looking for just to figure out like how to get on the health bandwagon, if you will. But let's start talking about nutrition and

exercise and the relation between the timing of that. And I can tell you from firsthand experience, and you may be able to relate to this, that there have been times when I've had the best of intentions to have a workout, whether that's strength training or cardiovascular workout. And I found myself hungry or even hangry, even feeling completely zapped of energy. Sometimes at the beginning of a workout,

And also sometimes I'm kind of midway through and I've really suddenly realized that like, man, I'm just super tired all of a sudden. And my energy kind of disappears, whatever energy I had disappears. I ended up, you know, I ended up feeling, this lack of energy feeling kind of lethargic and just suddenly lazy. Like I could be at the gym and feel like, you know what, instead of getting on the bench to do a shoulder press or a bench press, I should just lay down and go to sleep because I'm super tired. In cycling, again, I was a

competitive cyclists for a long time. And we would call this bonk. And those of us that are endurance athletes can relate to that where we don't have enough fuel and for endurance athletes specifically, we're talking mostly glycogen or sugar, some cardio about some carbohydrates. And once we, we utilize all the stored carbohydrates that we have for performance, then you just feel absolutely like garbage, feel super tired.

foggy headed headache and so on and so on. So we want to make sure as much as possible that we avoid that sensation. We avoid the repercussions of not fueling well in relation to the demands that we're going to place upon our body because nothing's worse. Again, nothing's worse than feeling like, you know, I'm trying to take care of my health and trying to be active. I'm trying to exercise. And when you finally kind of put all the pieces of life together so you can actually be at the gym or

be in your peloton or be on your bike, whatever that is, and then you just feel zapped of energy, that fleeting moment to take care of yourself may be gone for the day or for several days.

Let's start with talking about why timing matters for exercise. And what I'd like us to do is break up exercise into two types. One is gonna be cardiovascular exercise and one is going to be strength training, resistance training exercise. And generally speaking, your body's gonna want to utilize more glycogen or sugar or carbohydrates for cardiovascular exercise. your body's gonna want that for

you know, immediate energy use. So let's think about cardio and glycogen, cardio and sugar, carbohydrates. The other thing we're going to think about is strength training in protein intake. And with that being said, with those two buckets being defined, your body does not work in absolute pure terms like that. Your body utilizes all macronutrients and all types of activity all the time. It's just a relation of how much

It's utilizing and for what purpose you know where the fuel where is the fuel source coming from for what you're asking of yourself But we're gonna use those buckets as a guide And with that let's talk about the first myth I want to address and that is I've heard people say that you have to eat right before every workout and that is Hopefully this is pretty clear to most people Not true. You do not need to eat right before every workout and in fact, I've worked out

with some people or I know some people that have worked out quite vigorously after not eating for many, many, many, many hours, including some people that will not eat overnight. And then after being awake for a few hours, do a pretty vigorous workout and they're still fasting. They still haven't eaten since dinner the night before. the point with this is that most importantly, every, we are all different and our bodies are all unique. And so the

The thing that we need to focus on is how your body needs to be fueled to achieve the that you are going to, the demands that you're to place upon yourself. But generally speaking, we need to debunk this myth that you need to eat right before a workout. if you have a well-balanced diet, you should have enough reserves of fuel, protein, fat, carbs,

where you can do some type of activity,

Generally speaking, if you have eaten a proper decent meal three to four hours before a workout, you may not need any type of pre-workout snack at all. What is important is thinking about the quality of your last meal, your meal nearest to your workout, and think about, again, are we gonna be doing a cardiovascular workout? And cardiovascular workout would be something that is 30,

minutes, an hour or many hours, or we're to do a strength training, resistance training work.

Either way, your workout is going to be shorter in duration or lower intensity, so this would be a short duration cardio, 30 to 45 minutes, if it's gonna be a lower intensity or medium level intensity of strength training, you may not need to have any sort of snack before a workout at all. I'll give you a personal example. I strength train three days a week.

And my workouts start at 5 a.m. And so I am definitely not eating a proper meal three hours before my 5 a.m. workout. But what I am doing is having about three bites of a snack bar before I go workout. so it's my strength training sessions are 45 minutes long, maybe an hour at the most. And that is enough fuel for me to get through that and feel perfectly fine.

Alternatively, if I was going to do a cardiovascular workout ride bike ride for me, if I was going to do a ride in the morning, my body would be able to tolerate a low intensity and endurance type exercise, cardiovascular exercise of, you know, maybe 45 minutes or so, maybe an hour with the same few bites of a snack, but that is about

At most I would be able to tolerate because I would be really hungry and hangry and my performance would suffer. So the blanket statement that you have to eat before a workout, not necessarily the case, the caveat of course is like, what type of workout are you doing and how does your body react and perform in relation to your most recent meal? And of course the practical part of this is like for me on those days that I work out first thing in the morning,

There is no negotiation. I'm not going to wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and have a meal. So we need to adjust our snacks with the type of workouts that we're doing and how well we are able to perform. That's what's really important.

Let's dive in a little bit specifically on pre exercise nutrition, specifically for cardiovascular training, specifically for endurance training. The thing that we're thinking about with cardiovascular training is we want a fuel source that is going to sustain us for a, well, I'll say it's a long period of time. So ideally this would be 45 minutes or an hour or.

sometimes even longer than that, whether you're running or hiking, jogging, cycling, whatever you're doing. And so doing a cardiovascular type training, we're going to want to have a source of fuel, complex carbohydrates ideally, that will keep us sustained throughout our entire workout. In these situations, having a meal, if you're at the time of day works out, you could have a meal.

three to four hours before doing a cardio session and make sure that it's rich in complex carbohydrates. And really, if you're gonna do a really long...

challenging cardio workout and it's gonna be longer than an hour, I would certainly consider adding a snack close to the time that you start because your body's gonna want, it's gonna wanna utilize that fuel source and just the snack should be something that is.

well balanced but leaning more towards complex carbohydrates.

Which brings us to the next myth that fasted cardio is always better for fat loss. So I certainly have some clients that in the past have really struggled with the goal of trying to do a cardiovascular workout without eating anything, just because they were told that it's going to trigger their body to burn fat. Which it's a complex process and it is not completely wrong,

doing fasted cardio may help with fat metabolism, which is great, which means your body's gonna too, because it doesn't have the glycogen, doesn't have the sugar stores readily available, your body's gonna try to search for that in other means. And so certainly it's gonna look for fat and your body will try to break down fat for fuel as long as you're doing a kind of lower intensity cardio. And that's okay, but it's not necessarily gonna work for everybody. And I can tell you from personal experience, definitely not gonna work for me.

I'm not a fan of being hungry. I love to eat, which is probably in part why I exercise so much. So I can eat freely, so to speak. But exercising fasted, meaning like you haven't eaten many, many hours can lead to a quicker depletion of whatever glycogen stores you have. if you're basically planning a really long road trip and you have like an eighth of a tank of gas in your car and you get ready to go, you're going to have to refuel that. You're going to have to put more fuel in the tank.

The same thing can happen here with cardio. And you may, on the one hand, be in your mind thinking like, I want to burn some fat, which is okay, but you may actually be sabotaging the workout overall because you don't have enough fuel to have an efficient, effective workout.

And when in doubt, snack. So I'm a big, I'm a big grazer anyhow. So I have a pretty robust breakfast-ish mid-morning meals where I get a bunch of my calories and I kind of graze throughout the afternoon and then have a more proper dinner at the end of the day.

But to have a successful cardio workout, you can have a meal several hours before and a snack right before. And that should set you out perfect for a good cardio workout.

So what does nutrition based on a complex carbohydrate fuel source look like? I'll tell you my favorite complex carbohydrate fuel source for me is overnight oats. So whenever I am going to do a big ride, probably, let's say about an hour or so before doing a big ride, I will have a big cardiovascular activity, which for me is always writing. I will have

a substantial serving of overnight oats. It works for me. Overnight oats are whole oats and not like the quick ones that you throw in the microwave for a minute. They do their whole grains, if you will. And this for me, these oats are carbohydrate. And because they're whole oats, your body takes more time to get the energy from them versus just getting a big jolt of energy.

from the quicker oats. So for cardiovascular exercise, it takes longer duration. We want to have a longer fuel source. so I will, my nutrition plan is always complex carbohydrates like overnight oats, you know, an hour or two before starting my event, starting my training session. And then even sometimes half an hour before starting my cardio exercise, I'll even have like half of a snack bar.

So what I'm thinking about during this process is trying to keep my fuel sources topped off knowing that once I start riding, depending on the day, I may be riding for an hour, I may be for a couple of hours, that I want to make sure before I start this road trip, so to speak, that my fuel tank is full. But that type of fuel source, those complex carbs of my overnight oats, which if you're curious how I make that, I made a video that on my YouTube channel, but the other side of that,

instead of complex carbs, if we start thinking about strength training, if we start thinking about resistance training, instead of thinking carbohydrates first, I want us to think about protein intake.

Of course, have a well-balanced nutrition plan, you know, every day all the time. But when we're going to really talk about pre-exercise nutrition for strength training, we're going to think about

protein for the muscle building and recovery part of the workout, and some carbohydrates for energy. Because again, carbohydrates is going to be our energy fuel source. But let's shift gears briefly here and talk about a myth that...

I've heard people say, I think this literature has probably changed a little bit over the years, but protein timing is everything for muscle growth.

It is 100 % true that you need protein to build muscle. I am an advocate of protein. Protein is needed to repair the wear and tear of muscle. is, you know, it's the protein, it's the amino acids that we need to make sure that we are consuming enough throughout the day, all day throughout the day, to make sure that our muscles can recover from the wear and tear that we're gonna ask your muscles to perform.

But this protein intake is much more important to think about from a full day than it is in an exact moment.

I really would suggest shooting for 25, 30 plus grams of protein per meal rather than stressing out about this post exercise window alone.

And that means when you get out of the gym and you've just had a workout and you realize, no, I forgot my protein shake, do not freak out. Your body's going to be just fine. Assuming you have a pretty good balance, nutritional profile. Otherwise your body is going to be perfectly fine. Do not worry about it.

And as a little side note on protein intake and exercise, I'll also say that I think far too many people are consuming an amount of protein that would seem to indicate that they are some sort of bodybuilder, living a bodybuilder strength training lifestyle when in actuality they aren't doing any sort of exercise whatsoever. So if you happen to fall in this bucket where you are buying the

these all these premade protein drinks in all the stores now and they're all 20 to 32, 35 grams of protein. That's okay. It's not a bad thing. But if you are consuming massive amounts of protein and you're not actually exercising, you're basically spending to put race car fuel into a pinto and you're driving 10 miles an hour. It makes no sense whatsoever.

You need to make sure, or think about matching that protein profile of your nutrition plan, but match it with a lifestyle and an actual need for that amount of protein. Because if you're not exercising, protein isn't going to make you stronger. It'll give you the potential to, but just please make sure you are strength training in addition to consuming high quality protein on the regular, built into your diet and for...

post-workout.

So the pre-workout nutrition plan for strength training may look like this. Two to three hours, maybe four hours before going to the gym and doing a really vigorous workout, have a meal. If you are going to work out, like as I said previously, like if you're going to work out first thing in the morning and having a full meal isn't part of the, there's just no way you can do this because of the timing of the day, have a snack.

and make sure that that snack, I would consider at least having a snack that should be balanced with some protein, but also some carbohydrates. So it needs to be mixed for pre-workout. You're going to want the protein for your muscles because you're going to be breaking them down. So you're definitely going want to have some of that protein.

But you still need carbohydrates. Carbohydrates is going to be the fuel to get you through that workout. So if you do little to no carbs, before a workout, before a strength training workout, you may be, it may be harder to achieve the thing, you know, to get the best results from your workout. Cause you may just not have enough energy to perform as well as you could. So explore having both, you know, protein forward pre-strength training nutrition.

but do not compromise on carbohydrates. It just doesn't have to be quite as robust carbohydrate wise as cardiovascular training.

So clearly we can see thus far that timing of nutrition is super complicated. It varies. Everybody's different. I'm sure that everybody who's listening to this right now can say, yeah, but I do this and it's a little bit different. It should be different. You should be fueling yourself in a way that's unique to you. You could be doing an early morning workout, have no fuel, be totally fasted and do a 45 minute workout on the treadmill. You could do an hour workout in the gym and be perfectly fine fasted.

You could, on the other hand, be the type of person that cannot work out unless you've had a proper meal two hours before you go to the gym or two hours before you do a cardiovascular session. That's perfectly fine as well. The key here is to reflect and make sure that you have this sense of energy throughout your workout. And the risk is if you have ambition to exercise and you're finding that you're getting yourself into a workout and you just.

don't have the mojo to continue with that because you just feel kind of pooped out and tired, then you need to take pause, reflect, and say, let me look at my nutrition profile here. Like, am I, kind of put some fuel into my system and get more performance out of it. And that would look like more carbs for a cardiovascular exercise. And ideally that would be a couple hours before you would do some complex carbs. Right before.

You could do a snack that is again carbohydrate focused. Alternatively, when you are thinking about strength training, think about that pre.

pre-workout meal being more focused on protein. Still some carbs, but think about protein. that could be, and certainly if you're like an evening kind of a workout, strength training, you could have a full on, a proper meal. mean, you could have a tuna fish sandwich and a little side salad or something, and then go work out in a couple hours. Or the traditional bodybuilder,

workout dude's kind of meal, is chicken, broccoli and rice or something similar to that. You could do that. And then a couple of hours later have fuel from that that'll help you with full performance to make sure that whatever you have for a workout in the gym, have you'll have the fuel source to get you through that. And because it'll be maybe leaning more towards protein, you will actually

get more results from the efforts you put in. You'll have the carbohydrates in a meal that will give you the fuel source and you'll have the protein in it to rebuild the muscles that you've been breaking down during your workout. Nutrition is complicated. If you want any guidance specifically on nutrition, I do have custom exercise and nutrition plans, especially if you want to overcome a nagging injury, if you want a full life makeover. If you're middle-aged like me and you're kind of banged up and you have aches and pains and you really want to

fine tune your exercise and nutrition plan. I'll leave a link down at the bottom of to my elite coaching plans, which is like a one year makeover of that picture interest. But needless to say, nutrition is complicated and it's complicated because there's no quick fix answer that says here's the perfect nutrition plan and here's a perfect nutrition plan that matches

strength training and cardio is a whole lot of it depends, but we still need to debunk some stuff. And sadly, the debunking of this stuff makes it more complicated because there's no hard, fast rules such as do need a protein shake after every single workout? No, you don't need one immediately after your workout. you, this whole concept of an anabolic window, you know, where you put down the weight of your last set in the gym and just like, man, I've got 20 minutes to grab a protein.

Protein shake or else this whole workout works for nothing? No, that's garbage. It's not the way your body works. It's more complicated. That window where your body can get the most benefit from it lasts much longer than 30 minutes or an hour. Should you have a nutritious meal within an hour after a hard workout? For sure. You've created some wear and tear and you've depleted your energy sources. So yes, have a post-workout either shake or snack or meal.

within an hour or a couple hours, but if you don't have a mega dose of protein immediately post-workout, it's not the end of the world. I am going to record an episode specifically on post-workout nutrition. That'll be a separate separate topic to get into that will surely irritate some people probably because I'm going to kind of also debunk some myths around the details of that.

So let's do a quick recap on some of the myths that we just covered. You do not have to eat immediately before every workout.

Fasted cardio isn't always better. If you can do fasted cardio, more power to you. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's better. Protein timing does matter before a workout, but I really would like us to think about our total protein and just macronutrient percentages over an entire day, not just an immediate tiny little window that's do or die.

This concept of an anabolic window, as you may have heard, is a lot longer than what was thought once upon a time.

So the main advice on timing for different types of nutrition, for different types of exercise really comes down to what works for you. And that is in part, sounds like a total cop out, unfortunately that is the essence of how your body works in a broad sense. Specifically, the take home for this is going to be thinking about complex carbohydrates for cardiovascular exercise.

thinking about protein with strength training

And because it is so complex and because it is so individualized, I want our plan to be the following. The one thing that we can do today to extend our healthspan, to have an awareness of how fueling affects our workouts, pre-fueling affects our workouts, we need to do a little exercise that is going to be documenting our energy. And what I want you to do is to, this is at your next workout. I want you to complete your next workout.

whether it was a cardio session or a strength training session and rate your level of energy that you felt you had throughout that workout on a scale of zero to 10. And I know that during the workout, it's going to kind of ebb and flow and you have hard sets or whatnot. So you may feel tired intermittently, but when you were done, if you could sum up and say the average level of energy I had throughout that workout was what number? Was it a two? Were you really kind of dragging through the whole thing?

Was it a seven or an eight? We felt pretty energetic through the whole thing, but mark that down with that number.

You're going to document that and then you're going to look back and document what you had for nutrition in the 12 hours leading up to your workout and break that down into, you know, whatever snacks or meals you had and how close to your workout those were. But by going through this exercise,

Several times you will be able to start to correlate your energy during exercise, your ability to perform physically during exercise to the way you are fueling yourself and when you are fueling yourself. And that may mean you experiment a little bit with the timing of nutrition and the mix of carbohydrates to protein for nutrition to see how that affects your physical performance.

And as I've discussed here, debunking some myths, it is perfectly fine if the way your body functions best doesn't fit into a bucket or a spreadsheet or a bullet point list that you've seen online. What's most important is that you are tracking how you perform with your nutrition and how you feel about it. And so the key here, of course, is investing the time to track that. So you can actually have your own personal evidence. So that is the one thing you can do to learn more about

nutrition timing for yourself before exercise. If you have any other questions or any questions at all about nutrition, about exercise, please leave me a comment. I do plan on doing an episode specifically on nutrition post exercise, kind of digging into that a little bit.

So until the next episode, eat a balanced, healthy, whole food diet all the time. And then you can kind of finesse a little bit with the pre-exercise nutrition to kind of see what works best. And of course, if you have any questions about coaching plans or specific topics you want me to talk about for upcoming episodes, leave me a note and I'll talk to you next time.