What and when do you eat to maximize exercise?
It depends on what fuel you have trained your body to burn. Are you using sugar as fuel or fat?
If you’ve been training your body to only burn sugar then you need to frequently snack. Maybe before, during, and after exercise. Like most Americans, with our convenient, high carb food supply and decree to eat three meals a day plus three snacks, we have a consistent supply of sugar in our blood. All foods, including protein, burn like sugar except fat. Fat burns in a completely different way.
Sugar causes inflammation and disease. It is short term energy with no endurance. You can only have about 2,000 calories available to you when burning sugar.
If you’ve been training your body to burn fat, then you can exercise for long periods of time and still have great energy. When burning fat, you could have 12,000 calories available to you. Also, your muscles are peaked out with glycogen (sugar) so you can still have explosive strength for sprinting or lifting. You don’t need to snack to keep your energy up.
By the way, burning fat reduces disease and inflammation. It also turns off disease causing DNA. Converting your cells from sugar as their fuel to fat is called “fat adaptation.
