Friday Q&A: What Should I Eat After Working Out?
15 Dec 2025 · 9 min
JJ Virgin answers what to eat after working out. Aim for 25g carbs and 25g protein after heavy resistance training, prioritize clean lean protein and healthy fats, and consider digestive enzymes to help your body absorb nutrients.
Questions this episode answers
About 25 grams of carbohydrates and 25 grams of protein, lower in fiber and fat for faster absorption.
Start with at least a 12-hour fast, progressing to 14–16 hours overnight as you advance.
She advises caution/not recommending digestive enzymes for people with a history of hernias or ulcers.
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You know, here's the deal. Unless you're like some kind of crazy elite athlete, meal timing is not as important as actually the overall quality of your diet and the overall timing of your diet.
Here's jj Virgin Triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New.
York Times best selling author.
It's time to reignite wellness.
Alrighty, it's JJ with Q& A Friday and I've got a question from Adrian Lapresti. Adrienne, I hope I said that right. Says, after heavy resistance training, do you recommend a recovery protein shake? So here's the deal. And I just listened to a great interview that my buddy, Dr. Alan Christensen did with my buddy Ben Greenfield, and it was all about meal timing. It was actually one of the best I've heard on exercise recovery. And you know, here's the deal, unless you're like some kind of crazy elite athlete, meal timing is not as important as actually the overall quality of your diet. And the overall timing of your diet. That is making sure they're eating from that trifecta of clean lean protein, healthy fats and slow low carbs. And then of course, making sure you're eating because what you eat is what you eat is super critical. When you eat is just as critical, maybe even more critical. So we want to make sure that you're getting in that time restricted eating. I like to have people have at least a 12 hour fast and as you progress, getting that to a 14 to 16 hour overnight fast, getting the snacking gone, et cetera. So first thing is to make sure that you've got the right macronutrients on board, clean lean protein. And here's a super critical one. If you are over the age of 35 or under any kind of stress. So I think I pretty much have just identified everybody here. If you are doing that, then you probably will benefit from digestive enzymes. The only people who I don't recommend these to are people who have a history of hernias, but other or ulcers rather. But anyone who's got that. Other than that, I would highly recommend and I'm going to do a shout out for my safety net plus taking a good enzyme that will help break down a protein because you can't use it unless you break, break it down and digest it, right? So you want to make sure that you're getting protein for the amino acids for your muscle protein synthesis and repair. You want to make sure you're getting fats that are anti inflammatory to help reduce inflammation. Also keep those cell walls flexible and then you want to make sure you fiber to feed the gut. Microbiome and carbs of course for glycogen, for fuel during a workout. Because the deal is during a workout you want to hit it hard, right? You want to hit it hard. So and the question here was of course heavy resistance training, that means you're going to be using sugar for fuel during that time. So you got to have carbs on board stored into your glycogen stores so you can access those babies, get them out and work out hard. Now in a perfect world, if you can do it, you know, first you never want to go into a workout having just eaten because you only have so much blood in your body and if it's going towards digestion and not towards working out, you feel a little sick, nauseous. But you also don't have the ability to really hit it as hard as possible. But this is where you kind of have to see how you do, see how you feel and the level that you can work out. If I'm going to go do a really heavy hard workout, I find that I'm better if I have a little bit of a small carb and protein hit beforehand. But quite often in the morning I like to get up, have my coffee. I like to start with some bulletproof beans. Those are my favorite beans to use. Coffee is an ergogenic aid, helps you work out harder and then go in there, do some burst training. I say burst to blast fat and then I'll have my shake. And protein shakes to me are the ultimate post workout recovery shake, especially the paleo shake that I have. That is it's got collagen because it's from basically dehydrated bone broth and it's got all the amino acids, collagen and branch chain amino acids. So it's just like the perfect post workout recovery shake. So post workout in the perfect world you'd be having about 25 grams of carbs and 25 grams of protein and really lower in fiber and lower in fat. So it just gets straight into your bloodstream, straight into your muscles. Just go, go, go. So that would be the perfect. In the perfect world, the big thing here to remember is that you don't want to go. You don't want to ever go work out with a full stomach. Remember how mom used to say, don't go into the pool. You just ate? Well, you know, probably floating in the pool is fine, but going and doing a big workout is not fine. So there's the deal. All right, that is my answer for my Q and A Friday. So reminder, if you've got a question, I have got answers. And if I don't have them, I got a lot of really smart friends who do. So here's how you can leave a question. You can either jump on my podcast testimonial pages, and you can get those by going to JJ. Subscribe to JJ.com, go to iTunes, and you can leave a question there, or jump on one of my social medias, Instagram, jj, Virgin, Facebook, JJ Virgin Official. And you can leave it there as well, and I will be shouting you out and answering your questions. All right, thanks.
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