Your post workout meal is the most important meal.  You just finished depleting your body of many of its nutrient stores so you need to replace them.  Make your post workout meal count by making it your most nutritious meal.

Many people have a cheat meal after a tough workout: pizza, beer, mine used to be ice cream.  Cheat meals are fine from time to time, you work hard so you deserve to treat yourself.  However they should not be consumed following a workout.

The problem with eating a cheat meal right after a workout is that it will increase cravings towards that food.  Right after exercise you body is so deprived of many nutrients: glucose, amino acids, minerals, etc. that it wants to absorb more from that meal than any other meal.

So whatever your post workout meal is, your body is going to want it more.  

If you are financially stable (bills paid, no debt, a large savings account), then you are not looking forward to your next paycheck as much as someone who is broke.  That next check is probably not going to change your life in any significant way. 

If you were broke: empty fridge, gas tank empty, 3 unpaid bills, hole in the roof, then your next pay check would do a lot for you.  You would CRAVE that next check even if it wasn’t going to be for a lot of money.  You would countdown to the second until you got that check even tho it would only be able to fix some of your problems, but that check would still make a significant difference in your life.

Now imagine that when you were broke, you had one of the largest paychecks of your life coming.  You could fill up your fridge and gas tank, pay your bills, and make any necessary repairs.   

That’s the difference between eating a candy bar after a workout vs a ribeye.

So here’s some of my personal experience with this.

Once a week I go on one long run,10-20 miles depending on how much time I have.  Towards the end of those runs I used to crave ice cream.  When I say crave I mean CRAVE.  That’s all I could think about for the last hour of my run.  

I was craving ice cream because the first time I completed 15 miles I treated myself to some.  Most runs after that I did the same thing.  I would justify my decision to eat junk food by thinking that all sugar would go to my glycogen depleted muscles, so no real harm done.

While my hopeful thinking might be true, it was actually causing my cravings for ice cream to increase.  Since my body was in such a depleted state, I was absorbing a lot of nutrients from it. 

So one day I decided to hold off on my ice cream cravings after my run.  I waited until I got home and made a breakfast scramble to give my body what it desired.  The next time I went out for a run, my ice cream cravings were a lot weaker so I held off again.  It gets easier every time to the point that I don’t even think about ice cream at all anymore when I’m running.

So when your body’s nutritional needs are high, eat a nutrient dense meal to fulfill those needs instead of giving into cravings.