Weight Loss Food - What to Eat After Exercise

When it comes to weight loss food, most athletes know what and when to eat before and after exercising but for most of us who are not athletes do we need to watch out what we eat? Should we even eat after exercising?

Eating after exercise is completely healthy because you need to replenish the lost fluids and repair muscles after subjecting them to intense activity. The ideal time to eat post exercise weight loss food is within an hour after the activity however you don't have to eat a lot rather you have to eat something.

A lot of non athletes or moderate exercisers who do exercises to lose weight assume that since they've worked so hard at squeezing 30 minutes of exercise to their busy schedules, they deserve to reward themselves with blueberry cake and soda as their after exercise weight loss food. This is a wrong concept because this negates the calories burned while exercising as there is that tendency that the calories you take in will be more than what you were able to burn.

This is because most of those who workout really have no idea how much calories they burned while exercising. Now you know why no matter how much you work out, you never quite reach the goal of slimming down.

Before you eat anything you should first take in fluids to replace what was lost when you sweat and the best post exercise fluid is of course water followed by juice and food that contains fluid such as soups, fruits, and vegetables. When it comes to food after working out, there are three key elements that should be present in your meal: fluids, carbohydrates, and protein.

Many people don't eat carbs after a exercising in the belief that carbs make one fat. On the contrary the body needs this to replace muscle fuel you have just burned. Protein is also important because without it, your body will cannibalize the muscle tissue as it repairs the muscles.

Also what you eat should depend on the type of exercise you did. Cardiovascular exercise has different needs compared to weight training.

For cardio exercises, many experts suggest that you eat yogurt, fruit salad, toast, brown rice, and oatmeal. While after a session of weight training, they suggest a combination of protein and carbs to repair muscles that are torn after the intense physical activity.

Experts highly recommend the following weight loss food after weight training: potato, chicken, fish, protein shake with one banana, egg whites and toast, and oatmeal with one scoop of protein powder.

You will notice that no fat is listed here this is because this slows down the digestion of carbohydrates and protein making your workout useless.

If you're worried that your schedule does not allow you to eat right after exercising just prepare small snacks the contain the three key elements mentioned earlier as your post exercise weight loss food. Since you are a non athlete there's more room when it comes to timing your food intake because what's important is that after exercising you eat right to sustain your activity.

It's important that you monitor you progress in losing weight. To do that, you must have a weight loss journal that contains what you ate, the calorie count, and of course your weight. When you visit http://www.balancebeamscale.net you will find useful information about the right weighing scale to use. It is important that your weighing scale is accurate because the success of your weight loss routine depends on this and for that you can visit Balance Beam Scale.

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