The alternative is being converted to fat stores at rest. The anabolic affects occur by spiking insulin. Insulin stimulates muscle growth upon binding to the muscle cell surface. Post-workout carbs show a lot of benefit for your performance and your absorption for glycogen stores.

They need to be consumed in a ratio as your pre-workout carbs. The last macro to worry about for nutrient timing is fats. Fats are very difficult to digest. They slow down the digestion of proteins and lower the glycemic index of carbs.

They slow down your digestion of proteins from one to seven hours depending on how much fat is consumed with the protein. Fats need to be consumed away from your workouts. This way they do not affect the nervous system functionality and glycogen stores of which carbs are trying to promote.

There are exceptions for endurance athletes training for several hours due to the specific energy system they are training because they will be burning more fats during that state. Now that we have talked about the different timings of the different macros, I find it important to also tell you how important nutrient timing is to weight loss.

When you total up all the variables to consider when losing weight, timing falls third in line. Caloric balance and macronutrient amounts take the top two spots. A deviation from either one of these will make or break a diet plan.

As long as you get your calories and macros right, timing is a much smaller concern. For those trying to obtain the loss of those last few pounds need to be more conscientious about their intake timing in order to make the biggest difference. If you want the best possible results, then nutrient timing could be something to consider.

And if you are considering it, follow the macros per meal breakdown Macrostax provides in the app. One you set a time of day to workout, Macrostax will assign pre and post workout meals with higher carb and lower fat amounts like we talked about to help you optimize your nutrient timing.

Made with 💙 in Boulder, CO. Come work with us. Back to blog. Nutrient Timing — What to Know and How to Optimize Your Results.

Posted: May 24, Author: Taylor Smith. Two questions are often asked about nutrient timing: 1. PROTEIN There is evidence that show similarities in the development of muscle metabolism and protein feeding.

FATS The last macro to worry about for nutrient timing is fats. Free Recipes. Get recipes straight to your inbox! All of our recipes are nutritious, macro-friendly, and of course, delicious! Get Recipes. Personalized nutrition plans that are easy and affordable.

Help Center Blog Shop Help Center Blog Shop. About Us. For those cutting, it can be beneficial to have fewer meals because you can eat more at each meal. This is one of the benefits of skipping breakfast — enabling larger lunches and dinners. The majority of my clients over the years skip breakfast when in a cutting phase and many choose to skip it when in a bulking phase.

There is a caveat to this: for those who train fasted in the morning, I have them take a whey protein shake first to minimize the risk of muscle breakdown.

More details on this in the meal timing section. For those bulking, it can get to a point where it is not comfortable or practical to eat just two meals a day because of the volume of food that needs to be consumed.

Though there are likely no benefits to eating more than four meals a day, it is perfectly fine to do so if you wish. Whether you care enough about the incremental differences between 2 and 3 meals, and 3 and 4 meals, is something you have to decide for yourself.

Physique professionals may wish to opt for the higher end to maximize any potential benefits. You do you. Nutrient timing is not as important as we once thought it was. There are three fairly simple rules to follow when it comes to meal timing during the day.

As long as you follow them, you should be totally fine. I myself, as well as many clients, prefer to train first thing in the morning without having eaten a meal prior. If you choose to do this also, make sure you have a whey shake 30—60 minutes before you start lifting heavy so that when your body seeks amino acids the building blocks of protein , it takes them from your bloodstream rather than breaking muscle down to get them.

Whey protein is better than EAA or BCAA supplementation in this scenario. It is fast-digesting a good thing in this context at a rate of 8—10 g per hour, therefore, if your first meal of the day is more than 3 hours after your first scoop was taken, take a second scoop.

I prefer to have 50 g of whey in the morning rather than splitting it into two shakes. If you find yourself struggling to train with the same intensity you usually do, have 30—60 g of carbs with the shake.

This can be as simple as eating a banana or two or anything you find easy to digest. Toward the end of a cut, when your liver and muscle glycogen stores are low, this could help you maintain training intensity.

If you eat twice per day, make that lunch and dinner, and roughly hours apart. If you eat three times per day, make it breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As long as meals are evenly spaced, there is likely very little benefit to worrying about more specific protein or carbohydrate timing.

Here are some detailed meal timing examples of when to eat, relative to when you train. This setup is the most popular with clients. They all have full-time jobs and most have families, so they choose this because it allows them to train before the rest of the day takes its toll.

My preferred setup is the left column. This is popular with folks who can take a slightly longer lunch than the typical hour and have a gym close to their office or in the same building. The key to success is often preparing lunch the night prior. Training in the evening is completely fine, but if you find that stuff often comes up which prevents you from leaving work early to do it, consider training in the morning.

In this specific case, a slow-release protein shake like casein may be better than whey prior to bed. A pre-prepared small chicken breast would do equally well if not better, and the banana is just an example of some quick and easy carbs.

Some people find that carbs make them sleepy. Breakfast eaters that feel lethargic mid-morning should consider eating fewer calories from carbs, and more calories from fats at breakfast time, and reversing this at dinner.

Breakfast skippers should do this but with lunch. As an added bonus, this may help you sleep better in the evening. A small percentage of clients find that a large meal before bed disturbs their sleep.

If this causes you to sweat or just otherwise feel uncomfortable, eat one or two hours earlier or reduce the calorie content of your evening meal. I do it, many of my industry friends do it, and many of my clients do it also. However, there are a few different types of intermittent fasting I.

Leangains is a style of intermittent fasting developed by Swedish nutritionist Martin Berkhan. It combines skipping breakfast with fluctuating calorie and macro intake — more calories and carbs are consumed on the training days; fewer calories and carbs are consumed on the rest days.

Fat intake is lower on the training days, and more on the rest days. Martin popularized the term by telling people to eat all their food within an 8-hour window. So, Leangains preceded I.

Marketing and practicality, in my opinion. This is an attempt at getting more favorable calorie partitioning.

More calories and carbs on the training days when they can be utilized for growth and recovery, with a low fat intake to minimize the risk of any storage.

The rest days just flip it, so that the balance for the week is maintained. Probably not. Still, I offer a pattern similar to this with clients because it breaks the monotony of dieting. The majority of clients choose to do this but it is their choice, not my demand.

My advice: try it, see if you like it. Why include them? They provide a helpful break from the monotony of dieting by introducing some variety in possible food options across the week. Will they be beneficial beyond that? Probably not for beginners and early intermediates, possibly for those more advanced.

So only implement these strategies if they help improve your adherence, not hinder it due to the added complication. Calorie cycling is the name given when different days of the week have different calorie targets.

If you find yourself keeping to your diet during the week but struggling at the weekends, consider building more flexibility into your plan to allow that. So for example, to maintain the daily average calorie intake, you could eat calories fewer on the weekdays so that you can eat calories extra on the weekends:.

I recommend avoiding fluctuations much greater than this as it will make adherence harder and likely compromise results. Cheat days are the name given to days where people eat whatever they want. They have no place in a diet and I strongly suggest you avoid them. The most common pattern of people screwing up their diets or getting fat when they bulk is staying tight during the weekdays and blowing it all on the weekend.

It is perfectly possible to do this over one day as well. This means that over the weekdays you will have built up a kcal deficit. But if you eat or drink kcal extra over the weekend, you are back where you started.

Macro cycling is the name given when different days of the week have different macros targets. I recommend you avoid extreme splits in macro intake as that could also compromise recovery and hamper adherence.

As carbs balance the calorie budget, this means the training days have more carbs than the rest days. See examples at the end of this section. Refeeds are the name given to days where more calories and carbs are eaten. The idea is to replenish muscle glycogen and help boost performance during cutting phases.

Some people do this every training day like with Leangains , but when most people talk of refeeds they are referring to a once per week, carb-heavy day, which is often above caloric maintenance. Often fat intake will be limited on these days in a bid to minimize storage, though whether this has any effect is unclear.

Note : I will purposefully spare you the math in this section. But if you wish to see the formulas used, hover or click for the calorie cycling math 1 and the macro cycling math 2. Note how personal preference is the reason behind the choice for all of these examples. He decides that he wishes to sacrifice some flexibility on the weekdays so that he has a calorie buffer on the weekend.

He chooses to split the kcal additional budget between fats and carbs evenly, so he adds 20 g of fat and 55 g of carbs to these days. Thelma wants to make her life easier, not more difficult by adding a layer of complication, so she decides against calorie or macro cycling.

As she prefers a little more fat in her diet, she chooses to swap 20 g of carbs for an additional 10 g of fat. She wants to do both calorie and macro cycling, as she feels it will add variety in her diet each day which will make things easier to adhere to.

Got a question? Ask me below. Please keep questions on topic, write clearly, concisely, and don't post diet calculations. Privacy policy.

Skip to content A Nutrient Timing Guide To Maximize Fat Loss and Muscle Growth. In this chapter the key principles you will learn about nutrient timing are: Doing nothing stupid or extreme that could compromise the rest of your efforts, Optimizing things in a way that helps you adhere, Avoiding complicated strategies unless you need them for your sport.