Eating and Vigorous Exercise

Sometimes, people may have the interpretation that exercising after you eat will be better because you’re working off the food. From what I’ve read, it is good to walk, but vigorous exercises aren’t recommended.

That’s because your stomach is trying to digest the food.

If you do some high intensive exercises, all your blood will flow towards keeping up with the exercise, and will leave your stomach sitting there aimlessly waiting and hoping. That actually causes a delay in digestion, and your food may just sit there and rot away. Sometimes, it even takes a few hours for your food to go down.

If you’ve ever experienced slight nausea/queasiness after you’ve eaten and then exercised, that may be caused by lack of blood in your stomach. This is exactly the same cause for anxiety related nausea, which is also when blood flows away from your stomach and into your hands and feet to prepare for you to fight or run away.

I’ve read that the best time to exercise is actually before you eat a large meal.

I’ve read that if you exercise beforehand, you’re actually doing great preparation for your body to do better with digestion and can process fats better.

Symptoms that you’re exercising too soon after Eating:

Nausea or upset stomach. If that’s the case, take a ginger capsule or two and should fix up the problem straight away.

Sluggish and Tired. This happens particularly after eating a lot of carbs like pasta or rice, is that you may feel as if you’re too heavy or slow when you can usually do the same exercises without any problems. The best foods I recommend eating before exercising is fruits and a small handful of nuts. The recommended hours to wait after eating to exercise is this: 3-4 hours for large meals, 2-3 hours for small meals and 1 hour for small snacks.

What you should do before you Exercise

Eat a healthy and full breakfast, particularly if you usually work out during lunch times or afternoons. This should give you the energy you need! Remember that if you don’t eat anything, it may be just as bad as eating too much as you may feel weak and tired as well.

Drinking green tea has worked out very well for me, I find that if I’m dehydrated, I’ll feel weak and tired as well. Drinking that cup of tea right before you walk will give you the water you need to do the exercise without really needing extra (unless you’re sweating way too much).

Try small snacks like a banana, smoothies or a couple of desserts made from your own kitchen like the chocolate brownie spheres.