If little/no carbs were consumed for 8-12 hrs after a late night workout, but 40+ protein and 10+ fat were supplied, what would be the metabolic response during the overnight fast?

Would fatty acids from the body's visceral fat be used to nourish the energy depleted muscles? Will the carbs consumed pre-workout be of benefit during the overnight fast?

If little/no carbs were consumed for 8-12 hrs after a late night workout, but 40+ protein and 10+ fat were supplied, what would be the metabolic response during the overnight fast?

Would fatty acids from the body's visceral fat be used to nourish the energy depleted muscles? Will the carbs consumed pre-workout be of benefit during the overnight fast?

Doubtful. Most PWO recommendations are 0 fat, and it's likely that dietary fat (100 cal worth) would replenish it on its own.

The purpose of the PWO is to replenish glycogen, hence the carbs you need, plus the protein to help give muscle protein back.

The other issue with a late night workout is it will likely prove detrimental to your sleep, creating additional issues with body fat deposition.

Most lifting workouts don't use nearly as much glycogen as people assume. IME, the big carb PWO thing is a bit exagerated. It's a good time for carbs if you are consuming them, but not an absolute necessity (depending on goals and personal genetics of course).

Its not a good idea to consume fat in your PWO (esp if your trying to loose weight) and the carbs PWO is down to the individual.


Sometimes I have carbs (1:1 P/C) sometimes I dont. Even with Creatine and I found no difference taking carbs or not.


Some ppl recommend a ratio of 1:2 P/C too.......but I think its down to the individual.

Its not a good idea to consume fat in your PWO (esp if your trying to loose weight) and the carbs PWO is down to the individual.

Depends on the dietary strategy and the goal.

Quite a few successful plans do not have people consuming high amounts of carb PWO. For instance, Dr. Jeff Volek's TNT Diet if you fall in the category of having more than 10 lbs of fat to lose. Quite a few carb cycling plans have you avoiding carbs and consuming fats even on certain workout days.

Nothing wrong with it, but depending on the overall diet, fat PWO isn't the end of the world.

I don't have fat immediately myself, but I don't worry about it an hour out.

For a typical balanced diet, though, a common strategy is to consume a good portion of your carb intake after workouts.

Would fatty acids from the body's visceral fat be used to nourish the energy depleted muscles? Will the carbs consumed pre-workout be of benefit during the overnight fast?

Circulating fatty acids will replenish intramuscular fat, but nobody really knows how fast that process is or how much that fat gets burned in exercise. The mobilized fat will do little or nothing to replenish the glycogen in the liver and muscles (which gets burned a lot in exercise). There is a process (gluconeogenesis) which can convert non-carbohydrates (including glycerol - which is from one end of a lipid molecule) into glucose, and some of that glucose can be converted into glycogen (by glycogenesis). But this is pretty minor compared to the contribution carbohydrates from nutrition.

So your body will prioritize glycogen replenishment up to about 4% of your glycogen store per hour, and the carbs you eat supporting the workout will be available for this.

Most lifting workouts don't use nearly as much glycogen as people assume.

That depends a lot on volume. Any time you see a workout with lots of volume of legs and back? Glycogen is getting drawn down.

That depends a lot on volume. Any time you see a workout with lots of volume of legs and back? Glycogen is getting drawn down.


Agreed, but most people are not up to the point where they completely deplete their stores in a workout and don't need the huge spikes to recover. They will replenish over the course of days just fine without the big carb infusion all at once with it's associated insulin spikes.

At least as I understand from what I've read.

Agreed, but most people are not up to the point where they completely deplete their stores in a workout and don't need the huge spikes to recover.

Huge spikes are never good in recovering, because the glycogen replenishment is slow. (That's what the 4% per hour speed limit is about.) What you want for optimum glycogen replenishment is a constand low elevation of blood glucose.

Now what happens in practice is that you eat some carbs, and that gets a blood glucose response which depends on a bunch of things, but it's not magically matched to glycogen replenishment - so it's not like if you burn 800 Calories of glycogen then the first 800 Calories of carbs you eat will go back to glycogen, much as we would really like that. While your body is taking up the glucose to make glycogen, it is also allowing some of the glucose to do the other glucose things, like fueling your brain, or making fat.

What you really want from workout carbs is two things: a small amount of fast carbs to get the blood sugar off the floor immediately and to interact with the gut and keep you from puking (think dextrose = glucose). So it's useful to have a small spike; but then the rest you would like as the slowest carbs you can find.

It turns out that the interaction between carbohydrates and exercise is complicated, and one size doesn't fit all. Training state has a good deal to do with this. (Which is why exercise training can change the sugar parts of your blood test a lot, and this is a good thing.)

Now intense exercise and moderate exercise are also different - when you do prolonged moderate exercise, blood glucose goes down. When you do intense exercise, blood glucose can actually increase. The usual relationship between insulin and blood glucose isn't true during intense exercise because the body turns off insulin, but turns on insulin non-dependent pathways for metabolizing glucose. These insulin non-dependent pathways have a higher capacity than the usual insulin dependent pathway, but they are not as efficient. Like anything else in exercise, the body's response to the exercise depends on previous training in the individual. So when you put two people through the same workout, you could see blood glucose go up in one and down in the other.

About the only way to really know what you have going on with blood chemistry and exercise is to draw blood and chemically test it.

Now there are some things you can do to reduce the uncertainty of your body's sugar chemistry during exercise. Train and maintain a high lactate threshold. This means you will recycle carbs well, and burn more fat. Since you burn more fat, your carbohydrate swings are less intense.

Another thing you can do is once in a while (not often) do a workout that really does get you close to gycogen depletion (bonk). Then you have an idea of what you have to do to get that much carbohydrate depletion; and you can revise your estimates of carbohydrate consumption for your normal workouts accordingly.

why is fat supposedly bad pwo? I may have a little low fat milk and egg yolks after my workouts just because that's how my breakfast goes.

why is fat supposedly bad pwo? I may have a little low fat milk and egg yolks after my workouts just because that's how my breakfast goes.


The theory is that fat slows digestion and therefore absorption of nutrients by the muscles.