Jeong Se-yeon, director of ‘Let’s eat food’
If you have low muscle mass or high exercise intensity, it is good to have a simple meal 1 or 2 hours before the start of exercise. However, there are some foods that are not good to eat before exercise, so you need to be careful.
First, each sweet potato. When I see people exercising with steamed sweet potatoes instead of rice, I want to stop right away. There are not a few people who get upset after eating sweet potatoes, because they cannot fully digest sweet potatoes, so sweet potatoes and gastric juice do not mix well and flow together. Sweet potatoes are high in fiber and difficult to digest, so if you eat them before exercise, you risk getting reflux esophagitis. Potatoes are a better alternative before exercise. This is because potatoes have a much higher water content than sweet potatoes and require fewer carbohydrates to digest. It contains 70 to 90% of moisture per 100g of potatoes, and the carbohydrates for the same weight are about half that of sweet potatoes.
The second is milk. Milk is high in fat, so it takes a long time to digest. This is because of the unique properties of a protein called casein, which makes up 80% of milk protein. Casein has the property of coagulating when it meets acid, so when it meets stomach acid, it becomes difficult to digest. Therefore, soy milk is less burdensome than soy milk, and alternative milks such as oat milk and almond milk are less burdensome than soy milk.
The third is brown rice. Brown rice has a much lower glycemic index than white rice. Because it raises blood sugar slowly, it helps with diet and is good for managing diabetes and hyperlipidemia. However, the fact that blood sugar rises slowly also means that it takes a long time for carbohydrates to be broken down into glucose. So, it is not suitable for eating before exercise. If you can eat 2-4 hours before exercise, eat brown rice, and if you need to eat rice 1 hour before exercise, it is better to eat simple porridge or rice flour.
Last is the salad. I also eat salad every day, but not before working out. Raw, uncooked foods that are high in fiber, such as salads, are very slow to digest. In addition, salads are usually eaten cold, and the main ingredient, vegetables, are cold, so for digestion to work well, the stomach must have enough blood supply. However, when exercising, the blood flow goes to the muscles and the stomach is likely to become cold. Then you suddenly have an upset stomach. Before exercise, it is good to add honey to vegetable juice made by slightly steaming vegetables.
There will be many people who start exercising in earnest ahead of summer. I want to increase the effect of exercise by eating food that does not burden the stomach before exercise.
Dr. Jeong Se-yeon of Oriental Medicine runs ‘Let’s Eat and Eat Jeong Se-yeon Oriental Clinic’, which treats with food, and introduces the efficacy of various foods through the YouTube ‘Jungrare Channel’. As of April, the number of channel subscribers is about 723,000.
Jeong Se-yeon’s ‘Don’t eat 4 things before exercise!’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISP4K7PfvTc)
Jeong Se-yeon, director of ‘Let’s eat food’
