Eat to Recover
Eating a protein-rich meal as soon as possible after a
hard workout hastens muscle recovery. Intelligently-increased
workloads make an athlete stronger, and anything that helps you
recover faster allows you to do more work. When you feel the
burn during intense exercise, you are damaging your muscle
fibers. The pain that you feel 8 to 24 hours after a hard workout
is due to muscle damage. It is now fairly well established that
your muscles recover faster if you eat protein as soon as
possible after a hard workout or competition.
You’ll be happy to know that a study from Indiana
University in Bloomington shows that chocolate milk helps
athletes to recover faster from hard exercise than drinks that
replaced only carbohydrates or fluid (International Journal of
Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, February 2006). Milk
is full of protein, but so are, fish, shellfish, meat, chicken, whole
grains and beans, and so forth. Eat any source of protein that
tastes good to you.
Checked 9/29/08