If you’ve been neglecting your pre-workout food and focusing too much on your exercise routine, you will start at square one. Believe it or not, the food you eat before you hit the gym impacts your results since it boosts and assists your body with muscle growth and repair.
Likewise, it’s even beneficial to prioritize a snack with high protein content. Doing so helps your body maintain muscle mass and increases your immune function. So if you’re looking for the best pre-workout snack, you could always try yogurt. Since yogurt is already brimming with protein content, it’s the best snack to energize you before your routine.
Moreover, yogurt also has other benefits up its sleeve, so continue reading below:
It Contains Vitamins and Nutrients
In one serving, yogurt contains plenty of vitamins and nutrients such as iodine, zinc, riboflavin, potassium, vitamins B5 and B12, and protein. Iodine is best at removing heavy toxins in your body, whereas zinc improves the flow of red blood cells during your exercises, promoting blood flow to your muscles.
To reduce muscle soreness or pain, you can count on riboflavin and potassium to do the work. The same goes for B5, as this vitamin helps the body ease muscle soreness. Vitamin B12 keeps your blood cells and nervous system functioning well, producing more red blood cells, delivering oxygen to your muscles, and enhancing muscle growth.
Protein is the most crucial element since it mainly repairs your muscles. Since you’re going to exercise, your body needs more protein content than usual to address the gap between breaking down muscle fat and creating more lean muscle, thus the need for higher protein foods.
With a quick trip to the grocery store, you can already get your hands on yogurt or get yogurt made explicitly for pre-exercises. Yogurt products have various dietary goals and restrictions, so plenty of options exist. Check out this list of high protein yogurts recommended by fitness experts, or try out the ones in the grocery store are, nonetheless, the best ways to improve your routine.
It Maintains Lean Muscle Mass
Yogurt helps your body maintain weight loss and promotes lean muscle mass. According to a 2013 study involving 3,440 people, those who consumed at least three servings of yogurt every week gained less weight than those who only ate one serving per week. Likewise, those with more yogurt servings also had more minor changes in their waist circumference.
These results were also similar to a two-year study conducted with 8,516 adults. Those who had seven servings of yogurt were less likely to be overweight than those who only had two or fewer servings of yogurt. Additionally, those with more yogurt maintained lean muscle mass, which helped them lose weight.
It Helps You Achieve a Healthy Gut
Yogurt contains probiotics, which means it has beneficial bugs in its system that live in your digestive tract and help eliminate harmful microorganisms. Likewise, these probiotics will help you achieve a healthier gut by destroying the microorganisms before they can cause intestinal infections.
With these properties, yogurt is worth trying for a few weeks, especially if you’re experiencing health issues such as bloating or diarrhea. If you’re still adamant about adding this to your routine, you can always check in with your doctor for professional advice. Nothing beats the help of an experienced professional regarding your health.
It Positively Impacts Your Immune System
Your immune system is positively affected by yogurt as well. Not only do the probiotics work to help you achieve a healthy gut, but it also helps send signals to your immune cells or T cells (white blood cells that fight germs).
With yogurt, your T cells become more active in warding off harmful microorganisms. Additionally, yogurt can strengthen your T cells to better battle infection and illness in the long run.
It Boosts Calcium Absorption
Although the calcium content in yogurt can vary, there’s no denying that it still has enough to boost calcium absorption and strengthen bones. In a study made by Osteoporosis International, researchers tracked 4,310 Irish adults aged 60 years and older while gathering information about yogurt and bone density and deterioration.
In their study, those that ate yogurt daily had a 39% risk of osteoporosis in women and 52% in men. Likewise, yogurt eaters performed better in physical fitness tests than those who did not.
Additionally, Eamon J. Laird, the lead author of the research, stated that yogurt is the best combination of the beneficial effects of nutrients, vitamins, and probiotics. He also noted that although some yogurts are high in sugar, these were the only dairy products to produce a beneficial effect for boosting calcium absorption.
Final Thoughts
Overall, yogurt equips you with the necessary vitamins and nutrients to benefit your muscles and positively affect your immune system, gut, and bones, even more so when it’s high-protein yogurt! Moreover, you can even add these to your routine with one click of an online purchase or a fast drive to the store.
Nonetheless, a pre-workout snack is crucial to exercise, and yogurt offers the most benefits!