Top Nutrition Tips Get You Through a Hard Morning Workout
Top Nutrition Tips Get You Through a Hard Morning Workout
Chris Rosenbloom, PhD, RDN, CSSD
“A spoonful of peanut butter,” “16 ounces of water,” and “a slice of American cheese.” The common thread among these three things is that they are breakfast choices of three different teen swimmers who complained they didn’t have enough energy to get through an early-morning workout. When asked why these choices, the response was not what I expected to hear. I thought they would say they had no time to eat, or they weren’t hungry early in the morning; a common complaint of athletes who rise before the sun to workout. No, they were worried about consuming anything with sugar. They feared that eating sugar-containing carbohydrates would cause them to “crash” mid-workout. This fear is fueled by some coaches, parents, and trainers who believe that eating sugar before a workout will elevate blood sugar to sky-high levels, leading to a blood sugar crash a little while later.
