Maybe it was the new goggles.  Maybe it was the full night of sleep I finally got the night prior.  Maybe it was being properly fueled for the activity.

THAT is what I want to talk about in this post…being properly fueled for activity.  Whether you are a mid-life female such as myself trying to fit the recommended 300 minutes light to medium cardio or 150 minutes intense cardio and 30 minutes strength training 2-3 days per week into your schedule or a competitive athlete training for a high school sport all the way to someone training for the Olympics, we need proper nutrition to perform at our peak.  Not only do we need proper nutrition, we need to time the intake of those meals and snacks so they optimally work in our favor.

Keeping in line with my mission for my blog posts, I’m going to keep this brief and provide a general guideline for foods and timing intake prior to activity.

30-60 Minutes Before Exercise (mostly carbohydrates)

·         Fruit, fruit juice, or applesauce

·         Sports drink, gel, or bar

·         Chocolate milk

·         Yogurt

3-4 Hours Before Exercise (carbohydrate and protein)

·         PB and J or PB and honey sandwich + milk

·         Yogurt + pineapple + breakfast bar (my breakfast on the day of my swim)

·         Smoothie made with yogurt, banana, and nut butter

·         Oatmeal made with brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts, berries, and milk

·         Overnight oats using chia or flax seed, fruit, nuts, and milk (and oats, of course)

·         Cottage cheese + peach + crackers

·         Beef jerky and cheese + dried fruit and chocolate + water

·         Tuna sandwich + apple

·         BLT made with turkey bacon + grapes

·         Lean hamburger on bun + side salad + orange

I’m excited about my new TYR Vesi goggles (I can finally swim without water leaking into my goggles again…yea!), and as promised in an earlier post, I will talk about sleep in an upcoming post, but for now, despite all the misinformation about exercising on an empty stomach, I hope this post encourages my followers to make sure you are properly fueled for exercise.  If you don’t believe me, try it just once.  You will be amazed at how much energy you have to perform at your peak!

*This post is not sponsored, and this was not the post originally planned for today, but when inspiration hits, sometimes you just have to adjust on the fly!