How Important is Nutrient Timing for Building Muscle?

First, we must establish what it is we are referring to with “nutrient timing”. We will define “nutrient timing” as prioritizing protein and carbohydrate intake around one’s workouts. Nutrient timing became popular after the publication ‘Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition’.

Then we have all the other things we must take into consideration, like who you are, what your goals are, when you work out, how often you work out, the types of workouts that you do, if you are dieting, how aggressive of a diet you are in, etc…

Let’s take myself for example. I am an “lifestyle bodybuilder” and “recreational athlete”. I’m able to maintain an above average physique by consistently dieting and/or maintaining a maintenance calorie level, I train only 1 time per day 5-6 days per week. Divvied up between lifting and conditioning. For someone like me, nutrient timing may not be the most important thing, but it could help to capitalize on another 1 or 2% in my gains. As it would allow me to partition nutrients to times of the day that they are going to allow my body to best use them. As I have a more limited number of daily calories available to me.

But, what about let’s say a sports athlete or stage competitor? Someone who is probably training 2 times a day, at intense levels, with only a few hours between bouts. For this individual yes, I think nutrient timing is can be a very important thing to take into consideration. An athlete like this is going to be using up large amounts of energy in each session. Meaning that they are going to need to time their nutrient intake so they can optimize uptake and perform at their best. But for the athlete or the stage competitor it is about stacking every last little 1% that is available. After you have been training and dieting for so long, gains and progress are very difficult to come by. So, making sure that you optimize every bit of your training and nutrition a crucial part of what they do.

Okay, so what about the average individual? The average individual in my opinion does not need to worry about nutrient timing. The average individual is not at a point in physique development nor are they at a low enough body fat level or calorie intake that nutrient timing is going to make any noticeable difference.

There was a study done in 2019 ‘The Effects of nutrient Timing on Training Adaptations in Resistance Trained Females’, it looked at the effects protein and carbohydrate timing played on muscle growth in 43 resistance trained females between the ages of 18 and 30. The study lasted 6 weeks. Breaking the participants into 3 groups “Control Group”, “Pre-Workout Consumption”, and “Post-Workout Consumption”. The Consumption groups both consumed a shake that contained 200 Calories by way of 16g carbs, 25g protein, and 3.5g fats, taken in either 15 minutes pre or within 1-hour post-workout.

The results found that both the pre and post-workout consumption built more muscle than the control group. Individually the differences between groups were statistically insignificant. However, when you add the results of the two consumption groups, there are very much statistically significant differences. When added together the two groups built a total of 1.76lbs of new muscle mass as compared to the control group .33lbs of new muscle mass, over the 6 weeks of the study.

This suggests that having nutrients either per or post-workout is going to lend itself to building more muscle. So why would I not just recommend this to everyone?

This is because the average person is not going to need to micromanage their nutrient timing to this extent. The average person is going have more than enough nutrient intake to support their efforts in the gym. This is given they are following a diet consisting of micronutrient dense whole foods, (proteins, carbs, and fats). The fact of the matter is that most of the energy used, and the nutrients needed for the workout at hand are coming from the meals and intake of yesterday. Digestion is a slow process, and it takes time for the body to use what you just took in. So the meal you eat an hour before working out is going have barely started being digested, and will not be supplying your body with energy for that workout.

What you are doing with nutrient timing is keeping a constant supply of nutrients coming in around those windows at which processes like Muscle Protein Synthesis are at their highest. As the body uses up the amino acids, and fatty acids in the blood and the glycogen stored in the muscle of energy during the workout, the body replenishes those stores with the food you ate prior to working out. So that we can go back into an anabolic state or a state of building and repair.

See we are never in just one state, build or burn, it’s not one or the other. We are in a constant state of flux in which or bodies jump back and forth between building (being anabolic) and burning (being catabolic). Your goal is to keep the scales weighing on the anabolic side. If anabolism outweighs catabolism, then you build, and vice versa. Even if your goal is to burn body fat. If we are anabolic, we are building lean mass, and to build lean mass we need energy. And building lean mass is a very slow drawn-out process. What energy system gets used during long drawn-out processes? The oxidative system. The system that runs on… wait for it ……… FAT! So, the body is going to use fat to provide ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), the bodies energy currency, so that it can fuel the process of building, repairing, and maintaining muscle.

Anyhow, the average person simply is not at a low enough calorie intake that managing exactly when nutrients come in is going to make that big of a difference. They simply are not going to deplete things like stored muscle glycogen at the rate of someone like a sports athlete. As long as they get those nutrients in each day the average person is going to be able to build muscle and create a lean physique without the added headache of micromanaging nutrient timing.

Of course, as always, it’s up to you. As is everything else you do with your fitness and nutrition. There is no one best way to do any of this, except for the way that allows you to best adhere and create a lifestyle out of it.

So, whether you decide nutrient timing is important enough to worry about or not, that is up to you, your goals, and how you can best adhere to your routine and your calorie intake.

You can’t take a one size fits all approach to fitness and nutrition. We are individuals with individual needs, wants, and requirements. Acting as if what works for one person is going to work for another is absolutely asinine. Experiment! Try stuff out! Learn what works for YOU! Learn what YOU like! Learn what YOU DON’T like!

This journey is ALL ABOUT YOU!!