How many hours after a meal can I exercise?

If you don't eat, you can't supply the nutrients your body needs. But after eating, due to excess nutrition, fat accumulates in the body, making you fat. Therefore, in order to better consume the fat in the body, many people will do some exercise after meals. However, if you exercise immediately after a meal, it will lead to poor gastrointestinal digestion, so you need to pay more attention to exercise after meals. So, how long after a meal can you exercise? What kind of exercise should you do?

Exercise not only strengthens the body, but is also an excellent preventive measure for various chronic diseases. Most people like to exercise after meals. In fact, running or exercising directly after a meal is not advisable, as it will irritate the stomach and intestines, causing nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps and other uncomfortable symptoms. At the same time, after eating, the body's digestive system needs a lot of blood to help digest food and absorb nutrients. If you exercise immediately, your body muscles will also need a lot of blood to participate. The blood supplies the digestive system and muscle tissue at the same time, which can easily lead to digestive dysfunction and indigestion, and also affect the effect of exercise.

So how long after a meal can you exercise?

In terms of exercise intensity, light exercises such as walking, pacing, square dancing, and Tai Chi can be performed half an hour to an hour after a meal. Moderate exercise such as jogging, weight loss exercises, and cycling can be done one to two hours after a meal. High-intensity sports such as long-distance running, skipping rope, playing football, and playing basketball should be performed two to three hours after a meal.

In terms of meal size, if you eat a large amount before exercise and the food you eat is mainly protein and fat, which are difficult to digest, it is best to exercise more than two hours after the meal. If the meal size is small and the food is mainly carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits or liquid food, the interval between eating and exercise can be relatively shortened according to the intensity of exercise.

In order to avoid gastrointestinal discomfort caused by exercise after meals, you can rest for half an hour after meals, and then do some more relaxing exercises after half an hour, such as walking, brisk walking, etc. If you want to do more strenuous exercise, such as jogging, playing ball, etc., it is best to do it one hour after meals. We should always pay attention to the fact that any exercise should be based on health.