So far, we have seen when to place each meal within the day according to the time at which the others are eaten. The choice of when to eat a meal, however, should not simply be linked to the frequency with which one eats. There are, in fact, times when eating is most beneficial. We will see here that the placement of meals within the twenty-four hours should also be a function of the training you do. Pre-workout meal intake is a very controversial subject and experiments carried out to find out how to optimise it have yielded conflicting results. It is the writer’s opinion that it is not so much how much, how or whether one eats before training that is important, but rather having the liver and muscle glycogen reserves full or at least highly bioavailable. In fact, if the athlete does not have a metabolism accustomed to fat oxidation and has been fasting for several hours before training, the pre-training carbohydrate meal can only benefit him. On the contrary, by giving it up, his performance will be inferior. If, on the other hand, the athlete has accustomed his body to the oxidation of fats, the pre-workout meal will not be so important. In all cases, the pre-workout meal has side effects, the main one being the demand for energy from the digestive system so that it can perform its function to the best of its ability. More specifically, the training load implies the diversion of blood from the digestive system, where it normally flows, to the muscles. The extent of this diversion can sometimes be as much as 80%. In other words, of all the blood that normally flows to the digestive system, up to 80% may be diverted to the muscles during the application of physical load. The obvious consequence is that the digestive system, not having sufficient nutrients available to draw energy from, will not be able to perform its function optimally. This, in turn, may lead to gastrointestinal disorders and inefficient recovery. Having made this clear, if the athlete does not have a predominantly β-oxidative metabolism, the pre-workout meal will certainly be appropriate (perhaps not to be taken immediately before the session, but an hour or two before). The side effect of digestive fatigue, where present (if the meal is small or adequately spaced out from the session, it may not even be there), will be more than compensated for by the increased availability of energy. In this case it is very difficult to give general guidelines on how long before exertion to take the meal, its caloric extent and the glycaemic index, as each athlete may respond differently. However, if we want to make a recommendation, most experts recommend taking 1 to 4g of low GI carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight one to four hours before exertion (Burke, 2001), but of course this may not be compatible with diet.