Not only is scheduling exercise into a busy lifestyle challenging, planning performance enhancing and muscle strengthening meals and snacks around exercise can be as well. Eating too much food, or the wrong food, before exercising can hamper your performance or cause indigestion, sluggishness, nausea and even vomiting. On the other hand, if you haven't eaten for several hours and try to work out, you may feel fatigued and unmotivated. The type and time of meal is important both before and after exercise. For example, a large breakfast would not be recommended if you are going for a morning run, but it is fine for a jog before lunch.

Basically, your goal should be to have available fuel in your body from nutritious food that is no longer in your stomach at the time of your workout. Carbohydrates are easily digested by the body, but foods high in protein and fat may linger in the stomach for some time, depending on how much you ate, and can lead to cramping and stomach ache. Large meals can take up to six hours to empty from the stomach so try to avoid overdoing it if you are planning to work out in the near future.

However, snacks, depending on their content, take about an hour to leave your stomach. Eating a complex carbohydrate-based snack two hours before exercising can leave you with plenty of energy and a calm stomach for a great workout. A good rule is to avoid food within two hours of a very hard workout, but you can tolerate a lighter snack within one to two hours of a light workout.

Obviously everyone is different, so try experiment with your eating schedule to see what works best for you. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

If you exercise first thing in the morning, some fruit or a small amount of juice and water should be adequate for your energy needs. If you exercise mid-morning, then a breakfast high in carbohydrates, such as bowl of oatmeal or whole grain toast with a bit of peanut butter are good choices. People who work out later in the afternoon, from noon to 3 p.m., probably do not have to eat anything before a workout, provided they have eaten a well-balanced lunch and breakfast. However, if you exercise closer to dinner, a light snack, like a bowl of yogurt or banana is good choice. I can't tell you how many people have taken my 6:00 pm classe, felt sick or weak, and then told me that they hadn't eaten for 7 hours. Bad idea! Exercising after dinner is perfectly fine too, just make sure to wait an appropriate amount of time and go for a bigger lunch and smaller meal at dinner. As I said before, these are general guidelines, but ones that I have found to be very successful for me and many of my clients.