Banana Post Workout

Bananas are good to have post-workout, due to the potassium, which actually aids recovery. Unfortunately, a banana alone is not necessarily a good post-workout snack. If you can, try to possibly get dextrose like was suggest above. Post-workout is the one time you can just chow down on something filled with sugar. You want monosaccharides, as they are the simple sugars. What was said above is not really true, about Glucose and Fructose. Glucose/Dextrose, Galactose, Xylose, and Ribose are all monosaccharides. Any of them will do for post-workout.

My suggestion, have a banana, for the potassium, some sort of carbohydrate with any of the sugars listed above, and try to get protein in as well post-workout.

Bananas contain fructose(turns into glucose when they are "brown") which are bad at replenishing glycogen stores. Dextrose is easy to find, just go into your local supermarket and find "Dextropur" in the sugar-section or you could start using low-GI carbs post-wo, such as oats.

Now, what then are the optimal portions to take in regarding your protein/carbohydrate shake? Weight and training intensity are two factors that play a role here. Most sources suggest .25 (cutting) to .50 (mass gaining) per pound of lean body mass.

Protein should be in a ratio of 2 to 1, so if you have a lean body mass of 170 lb, this would mean 42 grams of carbs and 21 grams of protein if you are cutting, and 85 grams of carbs and 43 grams of protein if you are in a mass gaining cycle. This should be ingested within 30 minutes of training, and you should have a good meal within one hour of your shake.