Exercise making me weak-How to remedy?

[daisylover26]

What do you find is the best thing to eat/drink before a workout to keep from feeling really weak afterwards? And how long before exercising do you eat? I have had this problem for as long as I can remember: anytime I do any kind of cardiovascular excercise for longer than about 10 minutes I start feeling faint and clammy. Then I have some juice or a little piece of candy (which sort of defeats the purpose, right? ) and I feel better. I don't usually experience this when I do more specific body work (like abs or arms, etc). I'm doing more cardio, but I hate how I feel afterwards! Any suggestions?

[absvan]

So what I understand is that you have this problem only when doing cardio and not when lifting. For me its the opposite.

Are you drinking the right amount of water during the day? You might want to check that. I have noticed that when my body has been deprived of H20, I have felt weak.

Any energy drink an hour before workout should help. Anything that has taurine-caffeine should be good.

Eating before workout - Well if your purpose is to burn fat, then you should workout atleast 2 hours after you eat. You have to force your body to get its energy from the fat store and this happens when the glycogen store is empty. But if you are not worried about the fat content then you can have a energy bar that has a decent combination of carbs-protein.

Finally use visualization and tune your mind. Thats important too

Hope that helps.

[maclinda]

Since you're feeling truly weak, as opposed to a little tired, you should have a visit with your physician. You could have an underlying medical condition that needs to be found and treated. Since you note associated symptoms (feeling faint and clammy), be sure and call that to the doctor's attention too.

Hate to be a worrywort, but as a former ER physician, "faint and clammy" is sending off warning bells in my head.

Let us know how you do, OK?

[escapee]

It sounds like you have ultra low blood sugar and low blood presure probably due to certain medical condition (eg: anaemia ) . My sister uses chocolates to treat exactly the same problem when her "stuff" comes ( but not after 10 mins of exercise ). Otherwise it's all dark chocolates. Yeah go see doc and find out the cause.

BTW, according to doc diagnosis, my sister lacks "nutritious food" in her diet. I know she likes tofu ( I have told her not to eat so frequently), vegetables and dislike animal products like egg yolk and fish. She lives with 1 meal per day sometimes to keep in shape.

[John Hill]

You don't have enough complex carbohydrates in your system before you workout. It would be best to eat some carbs like rice, cereal or pasta at least 2 hours before you exercise. It takes about 2 hours for the complex carbs to get into your system.

Eating breakfast everyday is also a great idea to give you an initial boost of energy each day. I wrote an article recently called "the ideal breakfast" on my site, the link is below.

John

[daisylover26]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I think I also lack "nutritous" food in my diet sometimes. Especially lately. I go through spells of never really being hungry and I have to remind myself to eat sometimes. It's weird because it's not that I feel hungry, but I will start feeling weak. And then other times I have a perfectly normal appetite. But, when I go through these spells, I'm pretty sure it's stress related.

But, as I said, I've always had this problem of feeling weak when doing cardio work (even when I'm eating properly). I don't eat red meat, so that might have some effect. I will try increasing my carbs before a workout and see how that helps.

[Boreas]

Eating red meat is probably not going to help, in fact you made a good choice by staying away from it.

If you do eat more healthy before, try eat whole products, like brown rice and everything.

As for feeling weak, it might also be the kind of excersize you are doing...are you running? I find I sometimes feel tired if I am walking outside, but at a gym the machines usually help keep me feeling energized. I think it is because they take stress away from my joints, but keep my heart going.

Another trick a lot of people do is to drink a cup of coffee half an hour before excersize. I have tried this, and it does feel good...If you do drink coffee, go for it...

[ahimel]

I have that problem when I try too hard to burn fat. It's true that if you run out of carbs to burn you will burn fat, but that always makes me feel icky - weak and nauseated and when I hold up my hand, I realize it's trembling.

You can accomplish the same goal by doing intense exercise for longer. Because fat stores energy more efficiently than carbs, your body will automatically increase the fat-to-carb burning ratio as the energy demands increase. Thus fat ends up burned without the icky feeling.

I try to eat some healthy, lightweight complex carbs about an hour before I go running, swimming, or dancing. A PB sandwich on whole-wheat bread, a low-fat muffin, or most any kind of fruit/juice work well for me. I find that fat (like from a pizza or Snickers bar) tends to sit in my belly like a lump, and simple carbs (like from candy or potatoes) tend to burn up too quickly, leaving me with no carbs in my system and leading to the only-burning-fat-icky-feeling.

I bring an apple to dance practice as a pick-me-up if I start feeling that way in the middle of practice. The juice hydrates me a bit, the sugar gives me an instant boost, but it also has fiber and complex carbs to help me make it through the rest of dance practice. There are also sports products intended for use in the middle of a marathon or endurance bike ride that are specially designed to do the same thing - check out a sports good store to see if any of them work for you.