What should I eat after a workout?

A normal balanced plate with your share of the day’s protein, about 30 to 40 g for a 170 pound person. The window is wider than gyms make it sound. In a review of 23 studies, the benefit of eating protein right after training went away once total daily protein was counted.

The gym version of this is a shake within 30 minutes or the workout was wasted. It came from a reasonable idea, that muscles are primed to rebuild after training, and then got stretched into a stopwatch.

In 2013, Brad Schoenfeld, Alan Aragon and James Krieger pooled the studies on protein timing, 23 of them with 525 people for muscle size. At first glance, timing looked like it helped a little. But the timed groups often ate more protein in total too. Once the researchers accounted for that and other differences, the timing effect disappeared, and total protein was the strongest predictor of muscle gain.

We’d eat your next normal meal within a few hours of training, with a full share of protein, and only bother with a shake if it’s more convenient than food.

The post-workout window is like a store that’s open all afternoon. There’s no rush to get there in the first 30 minutes.

How wide is the window?

In the same year, Aragon and Schoenfeld wrote a review on exactly this. Their practical advice was that the meals before and after training “should not be separated by more than approximately 3–4 hours,” and that for large mixed meals “a case can be made for lengthening the interval to 5–6 hours.” If you ate a real meal a couple of hours before the gym, the next one can wait until you’re home and cooking.

And a big post-workout meal isn’t wasted. In a 2023 trial, 36 young men did a full-body weight session and then had 0, 25 or 100 g of milk protein. The 100 g group kept building muscle for more than 12 hours, longer than the 25 g group.

What does the plate look like?

The same as any other plate, with the protein at the top of your range. For a 170 pound person on 2,000 calories over three meals:

The chicken and rice plate is the classic gym meal. Its Muscle meter is full, and it’s the white rice that holds it back, with little fiber or minerals and fast carbs, so its Nutrients and Glucose meters sit lowest. Swapping the rice for beans fixes it, and half rice, half beans gets an A+ too while keeping the rice. The egg breakfast is a good plate that’s a few grams short of the Muscle line, so it stops at B.

What to do

• Eat your next real meal within a few hours of training.
• Get your protein share: a palm or a palm and a half of chicken, fish, beef or tofu, or eggs and Greek yogurt.
• Add a starch and a vegetable like any other plate.
• Hit your daily protein range, which counts for more than the timing. The plate size calculator shows yours, and the Gyroscope app personalizes it.