Fuel Your Workouts with these Easy Recipes

Pre (before) and post (after) workout nutrition is something we’ll be talking a lot about on Athlete Daily/ Why are those times so important? The human body needs carbohydrates to support high intensity training. FACT. Carbs help you do more work in the gym. More work = more muscle! We’ll dive more into that soon enough, but today is just about food. Carbs in fact.

We are creatures of habit for the most part when it comes to what we eat on a regular basis, but every so often, we like to change it up and have some fun. These two recipes below are among our favorites when it comes to fueling our training. Enjoy!

Banana Bread Cookies

COOKIES!!! Yes please! These babies are full of yummy carbs, making them a great snack around your workouts. These have been a go-to for us whenever we have a weightlifting meet or a weekend CrossFit competition–we’ll make a big batch of these to have on hand in between workouts, as the bananas and oats make them pretty easy to digest if you don’t feel like eating a heavy meal. Cookies will keep in a covered container for a few days, or they can be frozen and reheated. (Don’t underestimate being 30 seconds away from eating warm, delicious cookies pre-workout!!!)

Banana bread cookies

3 large bananas, mashed
2 cups gluten free oats
3/4 cup – 1 cup almond milk (to achieve desired thickness)
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1.5 tsp vanilla extract

Optional Add Ins:
Cacao powder / cocoa powder
Dried cranberries
Cocoa nibs
Peanut butter chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Place oats in a blender or food processor and blend until the oats have the consistency of flour. It’s OK if they aren’t perfectly ground
3. In a large bowl combine the mashed bananas, milk vanilla extract, and ground oats with an electric mixer or food processor until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips along with any other add-ins (above) by hand.
4. Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray. Drop dough by large spoonfuls onto cookie sheet; flatten a bit with a rubber spatula. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until cookies are set. There’s nothing in them to worry about under cooking them! 🙂 Remove from oven and cool on wire rack. When I make these, I typically use bigger spoonfuls for my cookies, (because who doesn’t want big cookies?) meaning less cookies. But typically this makes about 16 cookies.

The macros per cookie (if you made 16 cookies) are: 15g carbs, 2g protein, 2g fat following the above recipe with none of the optional add ins. If you want to make these double chocolate chip cookies, add about 1/3 cup cacao powder in with the bananas and the oat flour and mix well. Macros for double choc. chip are 16g carbs, 2g fat, 2.5g protein. (The macros will vary slightly depending on what brands of ingredients you use.)

Have 2-3 cookies with a scoop of protein blended with water for an easy and delicious pre workout meal!!

Plantain Pancakes

Who doesn’t like pancakes? These are made with plantains instead of bananas, as plantains are starchier and don’t seem to fall apart as easily as some pancake recipes with bananas do. They are super easy to make and have on hand for after you workout!


1/8 cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour
100g yellow plantains (the spottier they are, the better!)
~1/2 cup almond milk to achieve desired consistency
4 Egg whites
1 Tbsp semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional.)

Optional add-ins: cinnamon, blueberries, protein powder.

1. Heat skillet to med-low heat.
2. Combine flour, plantains, egg whites, and almond milk in a food processor/ninja/blender and mix until blended.
3. Stir in chocolate chips (if you are using them.)
4. Cook for 4-5 minutes until you see bubbles
5. Flip and cook 2-3 minutes on the other side


The macros for the entire recipe with the chocolate chips are: 56g carbs /24g protein /6g fat. The carbs-to-protein-ration is what makes them ideal for consumption post-workout, as we typically want to have a 2-1 ratio of carbs to protein.

If you want to beef these up some, maybe them have at dinnertime (because breakfast for dinner is THE BEST) you can add in more plantains increase the carbs, or you can add some protein powder to increase the protein content. We used Progenex Vanilla Recovery and the Belgian Chocolate with this recipe and they came out equally AMAZING. Not too sweet either. (The macros will vary slightly depending on what brands of ingredients you use.)