Exercise is one of the most essential tools for maintaining your long-term health and well-being. After a workout, it’s important to ensure that your body has everything that it needs to recover. The timing and composition of your post-workout meals can have a significant impact on your recovery process.
Making sure that you’re eating the right nutrients at the right time can help you to recover faster and to gain more benefits from your workout.
Why you need protein after a workout
During a workout, your muscles experience some damage. This actually isn’t harmful in the long term—in fact, it’s the process of repairing this damage that causes the muscle to become stronger.Muscle cells are filled with proteins. After a workout, they need to repair damaged proteins, and also build extra proteins to become stronger. For this healing process to occur, your muscle cells need amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. You get these from the protein that you eat—your body breaks down the proteins in your food into amino acids, which are then used by muscle cells to build their own proteins. Because of this, it’s important to make sure that you’re eating enough protein to allow your muscles to recover and get stronger after a workout.
The general expert recommendation is to get 20 to 40 grams of protein during your post-workout meal. This amount is contained in a regular-sized serving of lean meat or fish, or in about five eggs. You can also make a protein shake or smoothie using protein powder, in order to get the post-workout dose of protein that you need.
Plant-based foods, like tofu, beans, and lentils, can also be good sources of protein, but they may be low in one or more specific amino acids. If you prefer plant-based protein, combining multiple different sources is recommended, in order to ensure that you’re getting all of the different amino acids that you need.
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