On Your Cardio Day? Adjust Your Nutrition
Cardiovascular exercises or more commonly known as cardio exercises which contribute in helping to strengthen your muscles and shed off some fat. Cardio comes with a lot of benefits. First and foremost, it strengthens the two vital muscles of the body, namely, the heart and the respiratory muscles. Both muscles benefit from cardio day exercise, in a number of ways. The respiratory muscles benefit due to the promotion of air flow into the body, which strengthen the lungs. Moreover these also help to benefit the heart by increasing its size and the efficiency with which it pumps blood all across the body. Many exercises including walking, running, cycling, swimming and jogging qualify to be cardio exercises.
Cardio exercises increase the blood flow which resultantly keeps the heart all healthy, with lesser chances of falling prey to blood pressure ordeals. Finally, cardio also helps to shed fats long stored in the body, making the body leaner. How to adjust nutrition on cardio days is a question of prime importance, which many keep asking. Another question which is commonly asked by the masses is about whether to adapt to a different nutrition plan on cardio days from the intense workout days. So, the answer to the aforementioned question is a YES. You need to have a different nutritional plan for cardio days, because you must eat what you can burn. Excess results in obesity. Mostly people who plan to lose fat usually expect to see results immediately, which leads to a drastic decrease in food intake and an increase in time spent on the treadmill.
You must take some good amount of carbohydrates before cardio, but carbohydrates with high amounts of fiber should be avoided since these take time to digest. Similarly, avoid protein before doing cardio exercises they also take some to digest. You can full meals before cardio only if the meal time and exercise are well spaced with 3-4 hours. Examples include, grilled chicken, salad, while wheat roll, turkey, cheese with whole bread, or grilled Salmon with brown rice and broccoli. So in order to adjust your nutrition on cardio day the following would help a lot. It is to be made a note of that after a cardio workout wait for around an hour before followed by the intake of proteins and carbohydrates, it must be kept in mind that these carbohydrates should come from vegetables. For example Chicken and spinach might be a good combination, but it’s totally up to you. You can have an entire meal after the work out if it has been 4 hours past your last meal, else some snacks should suffice.
Benefits:
The important thing is to keep your body moving and build up fitness. These are the few benefits you will see if you continue doing cardiovascular exercises.
Improved Condition of Heart:
We all know how much our heart needs to be healthy. Doing cardio exercise daily, your heart pumping rate gets faster on regular basis and it will keep your heart healthy and strong. We observe in our daily routine how people usually get tired of walking up a few stairs, this is because they are neglecting exercises to work their heart muscles, if you do not work upon it then with time it would cause negative impacts on your health. Cardio exercise improves your heart health!
Bye-bye Depression:
Performing cardiovascular exercise changes your mood instantly, it changes your hormonal profile and helps to ease your depression and fatigue.
Utilizes Glucose:
Performing cardio exercise tends to control the blood sugar levels, cardio exercise is best for the patients of diabetes as it increases the ability to utilize glucose in your body.
