Bananas or a boiled egg? When it comes to the food that fuels your workout, which one reaches the winning line first? Alice Ball looks at the debate over macronutrients for effective exercise...
I’m in the changing rooms of one of those boutique fitness classes — the ‘you pay bucks for us to kick your ass’ kind. Despite a stressful morning, I’ve remembered to grab a banana to eat before the torture begins. After all, pre-workout carbs are vital, right? But to my left is a woman with a physique that says, ‘I do this every day’ tucking into two boiled eggs before the class. “Hang on,” I think to myself. “Have I got this all wrong?”
When we work out, our body requires fuel. Food is stored in the body as glycogen and broken down into glucose during exercise, feeding the muscles with energy. We can get glycogen from most food groups, but carbs are thought to convert to glucose more easily than protein or fat. As a result, carbohydrates are considered to be the energy food; which is why we often see marathon runners eating bowls of porridge or bananas before their race. This is known as carb-loading; consuming large quantities of carbohydrates in the run-up to an event to increase the amount of glycogen in the body. The result? They can perform for longer without ‘hitting the wall’.
The body naturally contains enough glycogen to run the course of an hour’s workout or 10 km run. But for distance runners, glycogen sources are often exhausted by the half marathon mark — hence the need for carb-loading.
This story is from the Spring 2018 edition of Optimum Nutrition.
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This story is from the Spring 2018 edition of Optimum Nutrition.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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