Last month we talked about some general concepts relating to carbohydrates and how they can influence exercise performance and recovery. First, a few words about what not to do: stay away from sugars found in fruit and table sugar. Specifically fructose and sucrose. Fructose is a monosaccharide, a simple sugar, and is found in fruit and fruit juice. Sucrose is table sugar, a disaccharide: a molecule formed when two sugar molecules are linked together, glucose and fructose. Sucrose is half fructose and you should keep that in mind. I received a question (prompting me to write these last two articles) about the popular notion of consuming a high sugar meal or feeding immediately after exercise to purposefully stimulate an insulin release. Which would, theoretically, replenish depleted glycogen stores quickly and speed-up the recovery process. This idea has become increasingly popular over the last year or two among serious weight trainers. The thinking goes, since insulin also increases Creatine absorption, why not use sugar in combination with Creatine Monohydrate after the exercise session to help boost intramuscular creatine levels? We at Parrillo Performance feel this is a bad idea with potential problems galore. Besides, we have a better ‘vehicle’ to help you upload your Creatine as fast or faster than the ever-popular grape juice/Creatine cocktail so popular among top bodybuilders.

For some background let’s rehash some biochemistry. During exercise your muscles use mainly carbohydrate and fat as fuel. Sometimes, during prolonged activity (like distance running) you will burn protein stores. Protein oxidation in exercise occurs after glycogen stores are significantly depleted. For high intensity activity such as weight lifting (as opposed to long duration exercise like aerobics), carbohydrate is the primary fuel.