Your friend or your enemy?
Each macronutrient has its own function within the body, where proteins ensure recovery and building of muscle tissue, fats play an important role in your hormonal balance, carbohydrates are an important source of energy for your muscles, brain and liver, among other things.
Insulin
''Insulin ensures that glucose (sugar) is absorbed into the body cells where it is used as an energy source. Normally the body ensures that there is just enough insulin to process the glucose. This way your blood sugar level always remains within certain limits."
An unhealthy life full of sugars can cause insulin resistance. This means that the body is no longer sensitive enough to insulin, causing your sugar levels to continue to rise.
Slow carbohydrates
These are the complex carbohydrates, your body has more difficulty processing these complex carbohydrates into energy. The advantage of this is that your blood sugar level rises less quickly, and therefore crashes less quickly. You will also be satiated much longer.
Complex carbohydrates are therefore a healthier choice, also because they contain many more nutrients. Think of:
- Whole-wheat products
- Sweet potato
– Rice
- Breakfast cereals
- Oatmeal
Fast carbohydrates
The difference is in the speed of absorption, fast carbohydrates immediately increase your sugar level, after which it drops again quite quickly. Not very sustainable for your energy level, so you tend to quickly eat more sugars again. As a result, you have an insulin peak more often during the day and therefore a greater chance of being overweight (insulin resistance).
Fast carbohydrates are found in:
- Sweets
- Ice
– Jam
- Honey
- Soft drink
– Fruit juices
– White rice / pasta
– Breakfast cereals such as muesli
Weight training
Carbohydrates provide energy, which you need to continue to perform. That is why it is recommended to get 40 to 70% of your daily intake from carbohydrates when you do strength training. The more carbohydrates you consume, the greater your energy storage for a workout.
This means that as an adult man who consumes 2500 calories, this amounts to at least 250 grams per day, which can amount to 400 grams of carbohydrates. (40% of 2500 = 1000 calories = 250 grams of carbohydrates).
Guidelines:
– Take 1-4 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight 1.5 to 5 hours before training.
– If you do an intensive cardio training of 2.5 hours or longer, you will go closer to 3 to 4 grams per kilogram of body weight. For comparison: for an intensive strength training of one hour, you should expect around 1 gram per kilogram of body weight. During an intensive cardio session you need more carbohydrates as an energy source.
– Be careful with large meals, it is better not to eat them too close to training.
Conclusion:
In short, strength training and carbohydrates should not be underestimated. It is certainly one of the most important nutrients to complete tough workouts.
Pay attention to which carbohydrates you consume, choose the slow version rather than the fast one, which are sugars that do not contain any good nutrients and are actually only useless for your body. Especially if you are serious about strength training!
Try to place your carbohydrates as much as possible around your training, this is where you will need them the most!
A topic that is much discussed, where one person suffers from eating bread, the other prefers to have as much bread as possible in a day. My tip? 'do whatever works for you'.
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