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Can You Eat Any Food After a Workout and Lose Weight? If you want to lose weight, no, you probably shouldn’t just eat anything and everything right after a workout, said Melissa Romero, MS, a registered dietitian and NASM- certified personal trainer at the Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Health and Wellness Center. Burning more calories than you consume isn’t the only factor that goes into losing weight (age and hormones play a part as well), but it’s true that eating high-calorie, not-so-nutritional food won’t get you the best results. You might burn 250 calories in a workout, Melissa explained, “but then you go and eat a 400-calorie brownie or an extra slice of pizza. So your calories consumed are ultimately going to exceed those that you burned,” making weight loss difficult. That’s true even when you consider things like the EPOC effect (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), which says that you continue to burn calories after a difficult workout. “After you work out, your resting energy expenditure does go up, so your muscles are using more energy,” said Linda Nguyen, MD, a gastroenterologist with Stanford Health Care. “But what you eat still goes into that energy balance.” The higher resting calorie burn doesn’t mean that your body automatically uses up any calories you eat after a workout, Dr. Nguyen explained. “They’re still calories that go into the equation of calories in, calories out,” meaning that they can still, potentially, contribute to weight gain. You Shouldn’t Eat Just Anything After a Workout If You Want to Lose Weight - 2 Experts Explain Written by Maggie Ryan for POPSUGAR Fitness There’s a misconception that you can eat pretty much anything after a workout and it won’t affect you in terms of weight loss. That’s not quite true, but you can see where it comes from: It actually is recommended you eat some carbs and protein after a workout to replenish your energy stores and encourage muscle growth, and you do have a specific window where that fuel will be most helpful. You should eat after a workout regardless of your fitness goals, but it’s not because of this anything-goes, calories-don’t-count-because-I-worked-out idea of an “afterburn” effect. We talked to two experts to figure out what’s actually going on. “Romero recommended a carb to protein ratio of 3:1 for your post-exercise snack. Try foods like a protein bar or shake.” Nutrition Quarterly · 2020 – Volume 1 10 What We’re Reading