by katie veltri kjvelch@aol.com
Is it better to work out in the morning or night? The average person’s routine consists of getting ready for work, eating breakfast standing up, going to an 8-9 hour workday and then hitting the gym afterwards. Believe it or not, many find it much easier to work out after a long day than to get up an hour or so earlier in the morning. What happens in most cases, however, is that when we get home from an exhausting day of work and working out, we tend to eat a really heavy dinner, which just sits. If you’re finding that you have reached a plateau in this routine, then you may want to think about switching it around. Working out is wonderful for your body, no matter what time of day or night, but it’s easy to fall into a routine that works for you without producing the exact results you desire.
After coming home from work and the gym, your body’s natural reaction is to be extremely hungry, most likely because you haven’t eaten anything since lunch at around noon. So, if you think about it, that’s seven or eight hours without providing nourishment for your body. What happens when you abide by the popular “three meals a day” regimen is a slower metabolic response. When you don’t eat for so many hours and then burn more calories, you become famished and eat more than you should. Then you don’t expend enough of those calories and your body will either bloat or feel heavy, causing your sleep to suffer because your metabolism is trying to burn while you’re in a resting state.
When you wake up, you will most likely want to eat something light because you still feel full from the night before. If you’re going to continue working out in the evening, then it is important that you eat some sort of healthy snack, whether it be nuts, fruit, or granola; that way, you will have energy to work out harder, speed your metabolic rate, and when you get home, you won’t overindulge.
Try eating a small dinner before your workout and then eating something light after you get home. Of course that can be kind of tricky to arrange if you have a family to come home to. So play around with it and see what works for you. Waking up an hour earlier is something I highly recommend experimenting with, though, because the benefits are more numerous than you’d think.
One of the great things about switching your routine around to the morning is that your day starts off on an adrenaline rush and endorphin high. Your metabolism slows down from the moment you wake up (it’s at its fastest when you wake) so when you work out in the morning, you’re enabling it to work even faster for the rest of the day. A slower metabolism means a higher chance of storing fat because it’s not breaking down food productively.
When you eat more times throughout the day, you have a better chance of maintaining that metabolism efficiently. I actually have a friend, a fitness fanatic, who said, “It would be ideal to eat every five minutes.” That is a little extreme. I also have come by many women that eat fewer calories and only one large meal a day. This causes the yo-yo dieting and weight gain/loss because it’s slowing their metabolism. So, the point I’m trying to get at is that waking up in the morning and running, lifting weights, or taking a class is better for getting your metabolism into shape. I’d also like to add that it’s not just about weight loss or muscle tone, it’s about being able to sleep better at night. It’s about not feeling like it’s just another day. It’s about feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of your day with motivation and enthusiasm.
Nutritional Tip:
Instead of drinking orange juice for your daily vitamin C intake, try slicing an orange up and having a glass of water with it. Orange juice contains a lot of sugar, which can be counterproductive.
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