In this informal, instructional video, Eric Roberts explains the science and practicalities of post‑workout nutrition. He begins by defining nutrient partitioning, arguing that eating after exercise directs calories toward muscle repair rather than fat storage, provided overall calorie balance is respected. Roberts debunks the strict “protein‑shake‑within‑30‑minutes” myth, emphasizing that total daily protein and calories matter more than exact timing, though consuming carbs and protein within 30‑120 minutes can optimize recovery. He outlines the physiological roles of glycogen (carbohydrates) and amino acids (protein) in restoring energy and initiating muscle repair, and notes that the insulin spike from carbs helps shuttle nutrients into muscle cells. Practical food suggestions include fast‑digesting carbs (white rice, cream of rice, rice cakes, fruit) and protein sources (protein powder—specifically Legion Athletics, chicken, Greek yogurt, eggs, turkey). Finally, he addresses creatine, recommending 5 g daily (any time, but post‑workout is convenient) to replenish ATP stores. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to engage with the channel.
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YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to this video. Crap. Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to this video. In this video, we're going to be talking about post-workout nutrition. I'm going to turn this light off because I don't think we need this light right now. Post-workout nutrition, saving energy. You like that? So we're going to talk about the importance of post-workout nutrition. We're going to talk about that thing you've probably heard where you got to have a protein shake within 30 minutes of your workout or else it's a Waste of a workout, you're not gonna recover, you're not gonna build muscle. We're gonna talk about all that. And then finally, after we get some knowledge about what's going on here, we can then apply it to tell you exactly what you should be having post-workout, when you should be having it, what it should be, what foods, protein shakes, all of that kind of stuff, right? So number 1, the importance of post-workout nutrition. The importance of post-workout nutrition comes from a few different things, but number 1, it's gonna primarily stem off something called Nutrient partitioning. So what that essentially means is just— and by the way, I haven't shaved today, so we've got a lot of things going on in this video. But going back to it, nutrient partitioning. What nutrient partitioning means is basically the nutrients that are coming into your body are getting partitioned to certain areas, certain energy systems, certain functions, certain hormones. There's Your nutrients, the calories that you intake, are going to get used for certain things, right? So post-workout is a great time to partition your nutrients towards the muscle building, muscle recovery process and away from the fat storing and basically doing nothing process. Now I want to make this very clear because I, you know, There might be some conflicting information here. Listen, the only way you can store fat is to be in a calorie surplus. The only way you lose fat is a calorie deficit. So that is our hard line in the sand. But with that being said, post-workout, this is a great time to make sure the nutrients you are intaking gets used for muscle building, muscle recovery, all of the good things that you want to happen from your workouts. Why? Few reasons. Number one, when you are talking about working out, right, your muscles are using fuel. They're using energy, right? Because there's no way you can move the weight and contract your muscle without using energy, without using fuel. And your body has fuel. It has stored fuel. It has fuel coming in from the previous day and the pre-workout meal. Your body has fuel all over, right? But what happens is You use that fuel. So your body says, well, shit, like, we gotta make sure we refuel the fuel. We gotta make sure we get fuel and nutrients back into these muscles. Because number one, your muscles are a place to store fuel. And number two, again, there's no energy there. It's, it's been depleted, right? You are depleting energy. So your body's trying to make sure you get energy, you get nutrients back into your muscles because We need to be able to pick things up and move around and survive. So your muscles need to be able to fire on like instant demand, or else like think about if we were getting chased by a tiger in like survival times, right? It's like if our muscles ran out of energy, then we would just stop because we can't like move, we can't pick things up, or we can't do things, right? So your body wants to make sure nutrients are getting pushed back in there. And so Post-workout is a great time to really take advantage of and optimize these nutrients getting partitioned to the muscle cells, right? The, the muscle tissue in the cells. Because again, you've basically depleted your energy, so your body is going to want to say, number one, we got to restore this energy. So the food you eat is going basically directly to, you know, rebuilding muscle tissue, doing those things. And also, number two, Think about what working out is, right? Working out is a stress on your body. So when you put that stress on your body, your body then says, oh crap, like something just happened. It doesn't know that you worked out or you ran from a tiger or whatever the case may be. It just knows there was a stress. So your body says, shit, there was a stress. We got to make sure we start recovering from this stress so we can adapt to this stress. And again, nutrients are a great, great source of that. And so That is number one. That is the importance of post-workout nutrition. It can essentially help make sure the nutrients that you are intaking, especially post-workout, is going to get directly used for muscle recovery, muscle growth, muscle repair, you know, decreasing stress, doing these things. Because when you're working out, your body's at a stress, right? So you want to come down from that stress. You want to start the recovery process. All of these things want So without getting too in-depth, that's essentially why post-workout nutrition is important. So that's gonna be number 1. And again, just let me make myself very clear. Your overall calories and your overall protein, your overall carbs, all of that stuff matters the most, right? So let's just say you don't eat after your workout. It's not like you're not gonna see progress. You just won't optimize your progress. And I think if you're watching this video, if you're going on a health and fitness journey, if you're working out, like, who doesn't wanna optimize things as best as we possibly can, right? So I just wanna make sure you know that as well. Don't think like, oh my God, which we'll get into in here in a second. Don't think if you don't eat post-workout, you're never ever, ever gonna see progress. You probably will, but you're just not optimizing the progress that you could be making When it comes to those kind of things. So that is the importance of post-workout nutrition. Now, let's quickly talk about protein shakes because, again, I just wanna make this very clear. You've probably heard something to the effect of, oh, after your workout you gotta make sure you get a protein shake or if not your muscles aren't gonna recover and you're not gonna see progress, you're not gonna get stronger, and all of these things. And just very quickly, quick story, I used to believe this. Literally after my workouts, probably when I was like 17, 18, 16, 17, 18. I thought I had to get sugar immediately post-workout, and I thought I had to get protein immediately post-workout. So what I did was, in the gym I was working out at, I would go to the— they had a little coffee section there. I would go to the coffee section, I would get like 6 packets of sugar. I would immediately down them with like no fucking water. It was gross. I would then go into the bathroom, turn on the boiling hot water, because at the time I heard something that was like, oh, hot water digests quicker. So I was like, cool, I'll mix boiling hot water with my protein shake, which number one, just didn't taste very good, and number two, it hurt my throat a lot. It like burned my tongue. I don't know why I was doing these things. As you know, one side note here, we all do dumb things and we all learn from them, so you're not the only one. But I was doing this because I was like, man, I gotta make sure I get protein right away. I gotta make sure I get these carbs right away, sugar, and I gotta make sure, you know, everything's in check. Listen, it's not the end of the world. If you don't get a protein shake immediately, 20 minutes post-workout, or your workout's going to be a failure and you didn't do anything and you're not going to recover. It's just not true because like I said again, the most important thing is your overall calories and your overall protein for that day. That is the most important thing on the hierarchy system here right now. With that being said, here's what I want you to think about. We basically just learned that when you work out, your body uses fuel, right? It uses primarily it uses glycogen, and which is just a form of carbohydrate. Carbohydrate, basically. And so it also is gonna use some amino acids, right? So it's like your body uses fuel, okay? Think about if you burn up all of this fuel inside your muscles, your muscle tissue, muscle cells, right? And then you go like an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours without eating, right? Because again, eating, you know, you've probably heard is food is fuel. Food is more than fuel, but— Literally food is fuel, right? So let's say you work out at, I don't know, let's say you work out at 6:00 AM, right? And let's say you work out at 6:00 AM and let's just say because early you don't eat beforehand. So the last time you ate was dinner the night before. So your body's gone all night without food and then you get up, work out, that depletes your energy stores that much more. So whatever, whatever energy you did have is now gone because now your body's used it for the workout. So you've gone all night without eating and then you've also done a workout, no eating. Let's say you don't work out. Let's say you don't eat until 9, 10, 11, 12, whenever you work out, 2, 3, 4, 5 hours after. Dude, you're probably gonna be, again, number one, just not optimizing what you're trying to do. You're not optimizing your recovery. You're not optimizing your workout performance. And number two, you're probably gonna be fucking starving because you haven't eaten throughout the entire night after dinner. You haven't eaten in the morning. You haven't eaten post-workout now. And you've done this workout that has depleted your energy stores. So what's going to happen when you do finally eat? You're probably going to be fucking starving. And if you're starving, guess what? It's probably a lot harder to stick to your nutrition. You're going to have things like, you know, not only get hungry, but possibly get lightheaded. And all these things are going to happen, right? Because your body is like, hey person, you just— we didn't eat all night. And then we didn't eat in the morning. And then we did this workout. We depleted all of our energy, all of our fuel. We're trying to regain this fuel and refuel ourselves, but you haven't gave us any new fuel. So now we're like knocking on the door, man. We're like, hey, you know, we're slamming on the door about to fucking break in. We're like, dude, we're hungry. Give us some fuel. But you haven't eaten in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours after your workout. And again, when it comes to nutrient partitioning, post-workout is a great time for that, right? So now it's like you wait 5 hours, you're starving. Much harder to stick to your diet. Those nutrients won't all get partitioned towards recovery now because it's been 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours. And so, you know, although it's not like the end-all be-all, kind of like what I set up here, it's going to optimize things. So now even though you don't need a protein shake within 20 minutes of working out or your workout's useless, there still is some benefit to having post-workout protein shake, post-workout nutrition. Which we'll get into right now. So what should you have? You now have learned that it's pretty important. It can help optimize, it can help you recover quicker. And again, you know, it's kind of a side note here, but let's say you're eating post-workout. So the recovery process starts quicker, right? The recovery process starts quicker, which means later in the week you're going to recover faster. So now, as opposed to being sore for 3 days straight, let's say, Let's say you're only sore for 2 days straight and your muscles have recovered and you're good to go. Sweet. You can now add in more volume, more workouts, more frequency, more whatever you want to do now because post-workout you've also started that recovery process sooner, which means you're going to recover sooner later in the week. You see what I'm saying here? So now you can add more volume, add more frequency, do whatever you have to do, and you can actually have that because you're optimizing your recovery from The get-go. So that's kind of a side note, but I did want to mention that. Now, what should we be having? So let's think about it from like a, a cellular perspective, but not going way too in depth. There's 2 main things that your body's going to want right now. It's going to be glucose and glycogen because that is the form of energy for the main source of energy for your body is glucose and glycogen, especially for your muscles. Glycogen is the main source of fuel essentially. So What is glycogen? Essentially, glycogen is carbohydrates. So your body is going to want to replenish itself with carbohydrates 'cause it's the main source of fuel. It's the fast— it's also the fastest acting source of fuel. So again, we talk about like optimizing things, so on and so forth. Having carbs post-workout is going to do a few things. Number one, it's gonna restore those glycogen stores, which is gonna restore the fuel, which is gonna tell your cell and your muscle tissue, hey, We now have some energy because remember, the recovery process takes energy. Like nothing works for free here, right? Like you repairing and recovering your muscles, that requires energy. But if you don't have the energy because you just used it all and you never replenished it until 5, 6, 7 hours later, then your body can't start this recovery process because it's got like no energy, man, or it's very low energy. So it's going to delay that process, right? So when you give your body carbs, Post-workout, it is going to refuel those glycogen stores, refuel the glucose, and allow that for your body to start this recovery process. Again, this is where the foods you intake, it's basically going right towards that recovery process, which is a good thing if you're trying to change your body composition. Now, the second thing is going to be amino acids, which is just protein. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. What's gonna happen is, again, without getting too in depth, your muscles want these amino acids and they want to be able to start the muscle repair, muscle building process. 'Cause think about again, a workout, right? How do you adapt? You build stronger, more defined muscles. There's a stress, you working out, you have to recover and adapt. The adaptation is building stronger, more defined muscles. So within your body, your muscle cells are trying to get to that adaptation process of building more defined muscle, building, you know, It's called hypertrophy. Just like, again, without getting too in-depth, that's what's trying to happen. Your body's trying to repair those muscles. Amino acids are going to help repair those muscles. And what are amino acids? Protein. So when you intake protein, your body's going to recognize, oh shit, we got some amino acids now. Sweet. Let's start this muscle repair, muscle recovery process. Let's, let's do these things right now. Again, the food you eat going straight towards that recovery process. So Carbs and protein post-workout is gonna help this recovery process. Now, a few other things. When you eat carbohydrates as well, and protein as well to an extent, but carbohydrates, you're gonna spike your insulin. Now, insulin is not a bad thing. Insulin is just like kind of a nutrient transmitter, right? Transmitter. A nutrient transporter. It transports nutrients, right? So what's going to happen is you're going to get these carbs, you're going to get this protein, right? But also you're going to spike your insulin. So when you spike your insulin, guess what? This is going to now push those carbs and that protein, the glucose and amino acids you just in took from your post-workout nutrition, and it's going to push them towards your muscles that much faster. Because again, when you spike your insulin, it transports nutrients, and your body is going to again say Well, we just worked out and our muscles are very low on glycogen, very low on energy. So insulin pushes these nutrients to your— to the muscles because your muscles need them right now. Like, go, go into the muscle, you know, start that recovery process, get the energy back up and do all that stuff. So it takes it and it moves it into the muscle cell, which is good because you want to start recovering from that process. And so that is a very beneficial thing when it comes to having Not only having these nutrients in your body now, but now you have this thing that transports them to your muscle cells to allow them to start this recovery process. And so all for both those things combined, your 2 main sources you should be looking for are carbohydrates and protein. Now, how long? There's no steadfast time, but I would seriously try to get in carbohydrates and protein within 30 to 60 minutes of your workout. to 120 minutes max post-workout. I really don't like going with, you know, 2 hours without eating. I would say within 30 to 120 minutes post-workout, trying to get these carbohydrates and trying to get this protein. Now again, when you're talking about carbohydrates and protein, typically speaking, you want pretty quickly digesting things because that way you can get to your muscles quicker and so on and so forth, right? So just a few of my favorite things are going to be for carbohydrates are going to be white rice, Cream of rice, rice cakes, any sort of fruit. Those are basically my top 4 or 5 carbohydrates for a post-workout. For protein, you can have protein powder, which by the way, if you want to try some protein powder, by far the best tasting protein powder I've ever had, they're from Legion Athletics. I like— there's so many good flavors. I like their cinnamon cereal. I like their birthday cake. I like their Cocoa Pebbles. There's like a fruity cereal. So many good flavors. If you wanna try it out, just head to the link in the description of this video. I'll put it here below. But you can have protein powders, you can have chicken, you can have Greek yogurt, you can have eggs or egg whites, you can have ground turkey, you can— any source of protein will be a good thing because, again, it's those amino acids that your body's going to use to kickstart that recovery process. So, that is post-workout nutrition 101, man. And the very last thing I'll say because I know I'm gonna get questions on it, so I might as well just bring it up. People are gonna ask me probably about creatine. Should you take creatine post-workout? You can take creatine whenever, and again, this is Legion's Recharge. You can take creatine whenever. I do like taking creatine post-workout because, again, without getting too in-depth, when your muscles go through contractions during your workout, what happens is there's something called ATP, which is like, again, not getting too in-depth, Which is the body's like, that's how you actually have energy. So like for example, glucose, I said, is the main source of fuel that kind of breaks down into ATP, right? That ATP gets used and what can help replenish that ATP is creatine. So when you're done a workout, if you are replenishing your glycogen and replenishing your creatine, that's going to help store. That's going to help again, kickstart the recovery process, make sure you have enough stored fuel for the next workout or, or, you know, either whether it's, the next set or later that day, whatever, right? Creatine's going to help you recover from that as well. And so I do like taking creatine post-workout. So if you have it, you can take it any time of the day. It's really not a big deal. So take it whenever, as long as you take it. That's the most important thing. I would take 5 grams per day. Like in this Recharge right here, we have 5 grams of a creatine, micronized creatine monohydrate. So that's why I like Legion. It has everything already done for you. But so creatine post-workout can help because you are restoring The creatine phosphates, which you do use during exercise as well. So when you take a post-workout, you can restore that just like everything else. And that is post-workout nutrition 101. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them below. I hope this video helped you at least learn something. If it did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and let me know below. All right.
