Q: Could u help me with this?I do hiit cardio and weight training 6 days a week separately(3 times hiit and 3 times weight training on different days).One hour before hiit i take some protein supplement and eat a fruit or a fruit juice only so as to get some energy for doing it after.I ve heard its better doing it on an empty stomach.When i finish it i take protein asap and after one hour i have my meal to recover(i ve heard hiit continues to burn calories after one hour of being done).Is it ok? Also,i dont know how many hour after weight training i should eat and if is it ok to eat a large or a small meal.What u would suggest? Thanks in advance.

A: Sounds like you have a very good program going already! Great job! My advice would be as follows... To me HIIT is really no different from weight training. It may look like cardio, but if you think about it it resembles weight training much more. Each HIIT 'set' is 30 seconds long or so, just like in weight training. You push yourself nearly to failure in both HIIT and weights. Both HIIT and weights stress the anaerobic metabolic pathways much more than aerobic (which is stressed by regular cardio). Finally, with each one you take a break (though a fairly short one with HIIT) before continuing with the next set. So my advice on nutrition both before and after HIIT is identical to the nutrition advice before and after weights. That advice is:

• 30-60 minutes before HIIT or weights, have a meal with relatively fast-digesting protein (whey protein powder, for example) and a good amount of nice complex carbs (oatmeal, brown rice, sweet potatoes). I would not go with stuff like fruits or juice at this time. Complex carbs will provide you with an energy source for the duration of your HIIT or weights workout. Time this meal so that you can hit the gym as soon as you don't feel weighed down by the food. Depending on you and the foods you choose, it'll usually be between 30 and 60 minutes or sometimes longer.
• HIIT will in general be a shorter and somewhat less stressful workout than a full-blown weights workout, so the pre-HIIT meal would correspondingly be smaller than a pre-weights one.
• Immediately after the HIIT or weights, you will have another meal very similar to the pre-workout one. Many bodybuilders recommend to force an insulin spike here with a lot of simple sugars + whey protein. I don't think that makes much of a difference and it may create some possible health concerns in the long-term -- you can read my thoughts about that in the Protein Supp article. I think it's also OK to have protein other than whey at this point, though whey is fine as well. The key though is to have this meal pretty soon after your workout, whether HIIT or weights.
• Once again, because HIIT tends to be a shorter and an overall less stressful workout than weights, the post-HIIT meal is smaller than a post-weights one.
• Finally, to address your note that HIIT burns fat one hour past the end of the workout... I've seen many people say that and I don't like it for the simple reason that if you do HIIT to failure or to near-failure (as you should), the main fat burning will happen in the following 24-48 hours as your muscles recover. This is identical to how weight training burns fat. I would provide your body nourishment immediately after workouts to stimulate early muscle recovery and then let it do its job over the next 24-48 hours in burning the fat as the muscles recover.

Of course, these pre- and post-workout meals are part of your overall diet, not some extra additions to it. So if you use the calorie calculator in my Nutrition article, the resulting calories include these meals already.

As I said, it sounds like you already have a pretty good program going (hopefully you're not neglecting good nutrition) so th advice above should be considered fine-tuning. These adjustments may only make a small difference in your results, but every little bit helps.