Knowing what to eat and when to eat around your workouts is another game of trial and error. You will need to experiment to find the right balance to stay nourished without feeling nauseous.
Shorter workouts (60 minutes or less): As long as you’re not hungry, you can probably work through these without anything special before the workout. When I do need to eat more than something small, I try to eat at least 30 minutes, preferably 60 minutes prior.
Longer workouts I intentionally make sure to fill up before going and ideally an hour before hand.
What to eat? I try to keep it simple with real foods. I am not scientific about it, but do try to include all 3 macro-nutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrates). Carbohydrates for quick energy, protein to support repairs, fat for slower energy, both fat and protein help me feel fuller as well. As for the amount, this tends to be smaller than most of my normal meals to make sure I don’t over fuel.
My typical morning includes an apple, a couple hard boiled eggs and a couple pieces of light string cheese. This is easy for me to put together in the morning and something I can eat while I’m on the way to work. My dinner varies between different recipes I find, a couple staples are chicken salad wraps and buffalo turkey wraps.
There are a lot of Pre-Workout options out there, once you get a baseline, if you feel like you’re missing out, you’re welcome to try something different, but I wouldn’t start that route.
Carb-loading is a thing, though not something I have concerned myself with yet. I’ve heard it’s more of a slow increase of carbohydrates the few days before, rather than gorging on pasta the night before a race. I will make sure to have a good dinner the night before and I don’t shy away from a few extra carbohydrates to help top up glycogen, though I have not gone out of my way to carb-load, so you probably don’t need to either.