Early morning training

Many people exercise or train (exercise with the goal of competing) very soon after waking up. Blood sugar is 20% below normal and cortisol (which breaks down muscle tissue) is high when you wake up. Whether you realize it not (i.e. even if you do not feel any hunger at all), your body is STARVING when you wake up. This is also true any time you have not eaten for more than a few hours, and is particularly true when you have not eaten for more than 5 or 6 hours. If you are rolling out of bed, putting your shoes on and are running or lifting weights ten minutes later, food is not really an option since it will make you sick to your stomach. However, if you do nothing your training will not only be significantly weaker than it could be, but your hormonal balance will shift so far to muscle breakdown that your ability to recover and exercise well the next day will be reduced as well. WHAT TO DO: Drink 2 cups of water to rehydrate yourself immediately upon waking and consume some calories. These calories could be any maltodextrin-based supplement diluted into the water you are drinking, or, if you have a bit more time before your exercise starts, you can blend together 1/2 cup of oats, 1 banana, 1 Tbsp nut butter and 1 cup soy milk or nonfat regular milk and drink 1/3 of this power-shake before your workout and drink the rest right after your workout during the recovery window. The less you consume before your workout, the more important it becomes to include dilute calories (about 100 Cal / hour in water) during your workout so that your body is not using ITSELF as a fuel source during the workout. KEEP IN MIND that putting too many calories into your body at any one time overshoots blood sugar levels, resutling in insulin levels that drive down blood sugar, reducing performance to even lower levels than if you had not consumed any calories to begin with. This is what happens when you feel tired after lunch when lunch has too much refined carbohydrate or sugar in it. The same reduced energy occurs in athletes that spike their blood sugar right before or during exercise. It is also important to include some protein (such as in the form of powder) in your calories when you wake since the body is not only low in blood sugar but blood amino acids levels as well. There are eight amino acids the body can not make, and by the you wake up your body is breaking down muscle tissue to get those amino acids. No matter how many carbohydrate or fat calories you eat in the morning, your body will continue to break down muscle tissue until you get a little protein into your system. Although protein is not as important as carbohydrate in terms of performance, they are equally important in terms of reducing muscle breakdown. A ratio of 3:1, 4:1 or 5:1 carbohydrate to protein all fall into effective ranges. Scientific studies have NOT been done showing any of these ratios to be better than the others.