 Quick video today. What to eat after your run? Well, it's a pretty simple question, but there are a lot of different answers to it. You can do it in a lot of different ways, but I want to go through the sort of first priorities that you got to consider when you come home from a run. So the first thing you want to think about coming on from a run is hydration, okay? Because if you drink after you eat, it takes longer to get that water back into your system. So ideally, if you're able to just immediately after your run rehydrate, that's ideal. So that could mean you know, you can weigh yourself before and after your run naked to see how much water you're lost and try to replace that. Or you learn over time. But basically, water is is great. And if you've sweated a lot and if it's hot out and then you typically also lose a lot of sodium and other electrolytes and it's probably a good idea then to add a little bit of salt to your to your water. I actually have a scale like a micro scale that I weigh my salt with in order to get accurate numbers on how much salt I'm ingesting. So water, rehydration, electrolytes, first priority. Get that in immediately. And then you can go changing your clothes. Maybe you go for a shower, I don't know. Then it's time to eat. Bear in mind, if it's a long time between you finish your run until you eat, suppose you're outside and you have to drive home or perhaps you take a long shower or something like that, you could definitely put some sugar into your water when you rehydrate to get that sugar back in as well because replenishing glycogen store is really key. Glycogen is the stored carbohydrate in your muscles that you're using when you're running. Especially after hard workouts, you want to get that in as quickly as possible. Especially if you have a workout later on the same day or even the next day. So yeah, putting in some sugar in your water or even having a banana or something like that. That's a good idea. And then you can have your shower. Then, okay, you're done. You've changed your clothes. You've had your rehydration and now you're ready to eat, right? Well, what's the priorities? Well, you need food, but particularly you want to have a lot of carbohydrate. Carbohydrate is spent when you're out running, especially if you're running hard or long and you need to replenish the glycogen stores as quickly as possible. And there's a window right after you run, right after you exercise. There's a window of time where you're better able to replenish those stores. So, utilize that window and get in some serious carbohydrates right after you run. You can eat bananas. You can eat potatoes. You can eat different grains, legumes. There are many different sources of carbohydrate. I particularly enjoy fruit and in that case, bananas are really easy because they're dense in calories, dense in carbohydrate, easy to get, cheap. You can make it smoothie or whatever. But other sources are fine as well. Just get that carbohydrate in. And of course, along with that carbohydrate, if you're eating food and not just refined sugar, which you shouldn't eat as a full meal, I'm not against refined sugar. I'm just saying you're not going to have a meal of refined sugar. So along with those carbohydrates, there's going to be other nutrients, right? And if you're eating a plant-based diet, which I think is optimal, you'll be getting a lot of different nutrients in and that's good because you need to replenish and help the body now to recover because it's during the recovery process that you're actually building your fitness. When you're training, you're breaking your body down. And then afterwards, you recover, you build back up. So along with all those phytonutrients from the plants, along with all those vitamins and minerals and the carbohydrate, there's also fat and protein. Fat is not so urgent right after a run. It's important in your diet in general, but I would say it's not something you have to prioritize to add lots of fat. Probably just keep it high in carbohydrate mostly. But the other thing is protein. Protein is key because it's important. It helps or it's involved in the rebuilding process of your body, basically the recovery process. But it's also interesting because it stimulates certain pathways that produce adaptations in fitness. So it's not only replacing what you lost, but it's also stimulating, for example, muscle protein synthesis and driving training adaptations. So you want to have a decent amount of protein. Studies show 20 grams of protein per meal gives a lot of bang for your buck, but 30 grams is probably even better. 40 grams even could be beneficial for sure. So if you're eating banana smoothie, for example, you could add in some protein powder. I use, well, I'm not going to show you, but I use a pea protein isolate usually that I just put in my smoothie with my bananas. And I have some salt in there maybe as well. Perhaps I'll put a tiny bit of olive oil in. I'm sort of creating a post-workout recovery smoothie, essentially. If you're eating something else, for example, legumes, they have a lot of protein. Meat eaters will be getting a lot of protein from their meat, of course. But there are other downsides to eating meat, so I don't recommend doing it, apart from the fact that it's unethical in my opinion. But that's another topic. I recommend just plant foods, lots of carbohydrates, plenty of calories, depending on how far and how hard you ran obviously, and some decent amount of protein as well. And that's it really. That's what you eat after a run. And then, of course, your next meal is also important three, four, five hours later. It's also important. And most important of all maybe, recovery-wise, after you've eaten and rehydrated is to rest. So just sitting down, lying down, relaxing, allowing your body to actually build that fitness and eventually sleeping is really key. I hope that helps. If you have any questions, you can send them to me at my website, MGJ Coaching. There's a link in the description. I offer coaching and training plans customized for runners anywhere in the world. So please contact me if you're interested in that. And in the meantime, I hope your running is going well and I wish you a happy day.