Exercising after Eating

It’s often recommended to eat before exercising to top off your energy stores. However, some people may experience side effects when eating too close to exercising. These can usually be avoided by allowing sufficient time for digestion, though this time period varies by the type of exercise.

How long should you wait

When consuming a meal, food enters your stomach and is slowly processed and released into your small intestine in small amounts.

It normally takes 2–4 hours for food to completely move from your stomach to your small intestine. While it’s generally pointless to wait until food is fully digested before exercising, it’s best to give it some time to settle in your stomach.

For most people, 1–2 hours is sufficient after a moderate-sized meal, while waiting at least 30 minutes after a snack is fine.

At that point, food has digested enough to avoid stomach upset with that said, as the intensity of the exercise increases, so does the risk of side effects.

 Food quantity and type

When it comes to eating before exercise, meal size and composition play a significant role. The larger the meal you eat, the longer it will take to digest, increasing the amount of time you should wait before exercising.

Additionally, the composition of the meal affects digestion time.

Meals that are higher in fat, protein, and fiber tend to be digested slower than those containing a larger proportion of simple carbs and more processed proteins, such as those found in some protein shakes and supplements.

High protein foods include intact animal proteins such as beef, pork, chicken, and fish.

Therefore, it’s best to avoid eating large meals that are high in fat, protein, and fiber shortly before exercising to avoid any possible negative side effects.

Potential side effects

While the side effects that may occur from eating close to a workout are highly individual, the most common ones are digestive symptoms and performance issues. Some the digestive symptoms may include; bloating, nausea, cramping, reflux, vomiting, diarrhea, sluggishness, just to mention a few.

Data suggests that endurance athletes like runners and cyclists are at the highest risk of experiencing these side effects due to the nature of their sport. Lower intensity sports such as golf, walking, and archery are much less likely to trigger digestive symptoms.

Moreover, most of these side effects can be avoided by allowing some time for digestion before training.

Typically, 1–2 hours is sufficient after a moderate-sized meal, while waiting at least 30 minutes after a snack is fine.

However, you may find that you can comfortably train shortly after eating, or on the contrary, you may require waiting several hours to avoid side effects.

Therefore, you should experiment to determine your ideal digestion period before exercising. To optimize your energy stores, it’s generally recommended to eat something before exercising.