The post-workout meal is the best feeding of the day. You can chow down on a big plate of protein and simple carbs, knowing those nutrients will be partitioned into your muscles.
Some recent clinical information seems to show that for best results, you should keep that meal low in fat. An experiment detailed in the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise put two groups of athletes through two-a-day workouts. One group ate high-carb meals between workouts while the other group consumed high-fat meals. By monitoring gene activity, researchers were able to determine that the group who ate a lot of fat between workouts experienced a reduction in the enzyme p70S6K1, which promotes protein synthesis, thus impairing hypertrophy.
In other words, save your healthy fat intake for meals that do not surround your workouts.
