It's Just a Workout -- No Olympic Refueling Needed

Energy bars. Performance drinks. Gels. Gu. Sport Beans. Shot Blocks. All doused with a whey protein shake. By the time you're done with the concoctions being marketed to help you work out, there may be a half a day's worth of calories consumed and not much to show for it -- aside from a bit of extra flab.

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Live Discussion: Ask the MisFits Your Exercise Questions at 11 a.m. Tuesday

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The landscape these days is thick with sometimes conflicting advice about how, what and when you should eat and drink to get the most out of your workout: Exercising on an empty stomach burns more fat . . . eating fat before a workout burns more fat . . . eating right after a workout burns more fat . . . not eating after a workout burns more fat. Gatorade and the other sports drink companies make it seem as if casual sweating requires an Olympic refueling.

For the vast majority of us, however, life can be simpler. Unless you are preparing for a competition or an endurance event or exercising hard for a long time, deciding what and when to eat is not complicated.

The "what" is plain old food, the stuff the nutrition bureaucrats and my far more entertaining friend and colleague Sally Squires keeps lecturing about: fruit, vegetables, grains and protein, in reasonable balance.

The "when" is whenever it feels right. Don't like to exercise on an empty stomach? Have a small snack an hour or so beforehand. Inclined to stomach cramps? Skip the pre-exercise fueling. Don't have time to eat afterward? No worry. The standard trip to the gym won't run you down enough to demand immediate attention.

When it comes to liquids, stick to water unless you are pushing beyond 90 minutes or so.

"An average health club workout -- you break a sweat and 20 or 30 minutes on a bike, 20 or 30 minutes of weightlifting, the whole thing done in an hour -- 60 minutes of exercise, even at a fairly high level, you are not going to deplete your system," said Jo B. Zimmerman, a trainer and doctoral student in the University of Maryland's kinesiology department.

The marketing for must-have potions plays on vanity (if we're drinking what Peyton Manning drinks, we must be doing something right) as well as fear that without these things we won't become as strong or as fast or as lean as we otherwise might.

Of course, sports drinks and energy bars and gels can be useful -- if you sweat a lot or exercise hard.