what to eat right after a workout

What's the first thing you do when you get back home from the gym? (Or if you workout at home, what do you do right after you're finished?)

If your answer isn't eating a solid post-workout meal, it should be!

Today we're talking about why it's so important to fuel yourself after a workout. Pause for a sec: if you haven't read my "Fueling Your Workout" post, go check that out!

Let's get into it!

The importance of a post-workout meal

We should eat a proper post-workout meal 30 minutes - 1 hour after our training session to help our muscles repair and grow. It’s not 100% necessary to eat in this time window (as long as you’re meeting your food goals for the day), but if you really want to optimize the results of your training, then you should probably start prioritizing this.

When we do strength training, we're actually creating small tears in our muscles (it sounds painful, I know) and when these tears heal, our muscles grow. If we don't prioritize eating the right foods after we exercise, our muscles won't have the nutrients they need to repair!

What makes a good post-workout meal/snack?

A proper post-workout meal should consist of mostly protein and carbs.

Protein is going to be what drives muscle repair, while carbs will restore glycogen in our muscles. Glycogen is what gives our muscles energy for the next workout (and to function regularly in general) — hence why you might often hear that carbs are our main source of energy.

Post-workout meal/snack ideas:

🔹 Protein shakes or bars: bonus if you have both an isolate protein that goes directly to your muscles and takes less time to digest + breakdown, and a glycogen shake/supplement!

🔹 Greek yogurt with honey and granola and/or banana: a classic high protein snack!

🔹 Oatmeal with protein: I love mixing protein into plain oatmeal — this is great for breakfast, too!

🔹 Tuna or turkey sandwich: tuna and turkey are packed with protein!

Recap:

Hopefully, you're feeling excited to come up with some delicious post-workout meals and start to see the benefits of them! Personally, planning my post-workout meal helps me get through my workouts. It's like a reward! 😍

Need more meal inspo? Check out my FREE Healthy Eating Guide!