Eating for training
Eating Around A Session
The anabolic window is much wider than you were told
General information about training and eating, not personal advice. It is not medical or dietary advice and it cannot account for your circumstances. If you are pregnant, have a medical condition, take medication, or have a history of disordered eating, talk to a GP or a registered dietitian before changing how you eat or train.
The old advice was that you had roughly thirty minutes after training to get protein in or the session was wasted. That is not what the evidence supports. The window is measured in hours, and what actually matters is whether you hit your intake across the day.
Before a session, most people do better having eaten something two to three hours beforehand, weighted towards carbohydrate and protein and lighter on fat and fibre, which slow digestion and can sit heavily under a bar. Training fasted suits some people and not others; what tends to be true is that the later sets are worse, and the later sets are where the work is.
Afterwards, eat a normal meal with protein in it when it suits you. If you genuinely cannot — a session that ends late, a commute, no appetite — that is the gap a shake fills. That is the honest use for one: convenience when food is not practical, rather than something that does a job food cannot.
If food is becoming something to control rather than something to eat, Beat runs free helplines and online support at beateatingdisorders.org.uk, and a GP is a reasonable first conversation.