Lucozade and other energy drinks- Every time I go to the gym and at the old gym I used to work Ive noticed it is almost customary for people to purchase or bring an energy drink from the vending machine to “get them through” their workout. Energy drinks are, in my opinion, a triumph in marketing to the masses. The masses don’t and shouldn’t take them before or during your typical gym-goer workout. If you have eaten appropriately throughout the day, you should have more than enough “energy” in your muscles cells in the form of glycogen. When you exercise, your body releases stored glycogen and fatty acids to be used as energy to power you through your workout. By consuming an energy drink you are giving your body fuel, but failing therefore to tap into your bodies own fuel supply, which if you are overweight, will be plentiful! WATER is the only thing you should be taking on board. The only appropriate time where you would consider energy drinks would be a long endurance event. But there is even a school of thought that if you train your body well enough, you can use fat as a fuel source for several hours. And it would also make sense for a diabetic to have an energy drink on them as a precaution in case their blood sugars drop. (although ironically, often what we see in diabetics who exercise is actually an INCREASE in blood sugar, because the body releases glycogen but doesn’t have the ability to produce insulin to keep blood sugars stable , so sometimes see a rise. ( But that’s for another post!) So ditch the energy drinks, save yourself some money and lose some more fat in the process!
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 09:00:00 +0000