When Should You Eat Your Carbohydrates?

When do you need carbs?

You should prioritise your carbohydrates around training, this should be when you take the most of them in and then distribute the rest throughout the day.

Carbohydrates are the bodies primary energy source and the brains preferred energy source.

This means by getting them in and around your training you will be able to perform at your best and have better workouts.

Work out how many carbohydrates you’re having a day, let’s say this number is 200g

Decide a percentage of carbohydrates you want to put around your training window.

This can be anything that benefits you, if you’re highly active throughout the day you might want to have a little less around training so you can still eat enough to fuel your day.

Let’s say we want 35% of carbohydrates around our training window this will be 50g of carbs. You could have 35g pre and 35g post.

You could also look at using intra workout carbohydrates if you’re struggling to get them in around training.

Once you have tried this amount, assess how you feel and if you can increase the amount.

It’s a lot easier to add more in then to take them away.

So let’s just say that has worked out well for us.

Now we have 130g of carbohydrates left.

Let’s say we have 3 meals and 1 snack left.

You could evenly divide this per feeding or you could have more with your meals and lower on the snack.

As an example 35gs of carbs per meal will be 105g of carbs and then your snack could be 25g of carbs.

Now you have your baseline for your carbohydrate intake it’s about making adjustments to benefit your performance in the gym, recovery from your workout and energy throughout the day.

The adjustments you make from here are totally down to your individual feedback.

I've worked with many clients who have benefitted from more carbohydrates throughout the day rather than around training.

For some too many carbohydrates around training can actually have a negative impact on their training so it's important to find that balance between what feels right for you and what is bringing the benefits you're looking for throughout the day.

Hope this helps, any questions comment below!