Food Theory: You Should Eat CANDY Before a Workout?! (TikTok)

I feel like the only reason MatPat has a family is so he can use them as unpaid test subjects for his theories

Silly Matpat, it's not the psychological affect that you get from the sour candy, It's the calories your burning whenever you sand your tongue off with sour patch kids!!

Have you considered using 1-2 warheads at a time throughout the workout to level out the intake? a big spike at the beginning means big crash, but I think spreading it out may mean less crash and more consistency

I used to have a strong sour tolerance when I was younger from the sheer amount of Warhead candies I would eat. My sour tolerance was so strong that LemonHead cany tasted sweet to me. I sadly don't have this tolerance anymore. (Though I still like sour candy)

As someone who works out a lot and has been in the game for about 9 years at this point this is just my viewpoint on candy in working out. Does it work? Yes. But like Matt said, the crash hits hard. So what a lot of people will do is before working out you would eat a slow digesting carb like oats, about 30 mins - 1 hour before depending. Then, if you start hitting that wall, then while you workout you eat that candy (Personal choice is gummy bears) to give you that sugar spike you want and when you do crash, you won't crash during the workout. Again, this is just my view of this topic but I do love seeing videos like this and want more!

matpat takes tiktok’s more serious than I take an actual serious conversation

I'd like to say the real value of candy when working out is that the energy boosts. Since they're such quick, easy access energy I find it more effective to eat in the middle of the workout to replenish energy. Of course, if your goal is to lose weight, this is not a good option, but if your goal is to gain muscle I find this to he a great way to get you through your final sets.

I'm excited to say that I think I actually legitimately can answer Matt's question on this. The fact that is actually sour candy is arbitrary most of the time it's just whatever the lifter likes best. It originated from powerlifting culture, in fact there's even a fitness life style YouTuber called Max chewning who came up with the line of sour candies because powerlifters tend to use sour candies to supplement their workouts. The reason is powerlifter than particular it because their workouts can be upwards of two to three hours and they're mainly very high intensity outputs of a few reps. The candies are away to keep allowing us to do that high output. It's strictly in order to make sure our muscles can still lift a lot of weight it's not necessarily good for anyone who's looking to have a good workout or trying to lose that in fact it might be doing the opposite is purely to hit our strength numbers for competition. I will admit most of the people I know do tend to go with sour candy❤.

I’d like to see them study the impact on muscle hypertrophy with weight training rather than only calories burned with cardio.

Food Theory idea: what is the optimal house you could make out of food? As long as it is edible and socially acceptable as food/drink, it can be used. And you can use any number of ingredients you want.

The warheads reminded me of back then that whenever I made an intense face after eating Warhead Extremes, my mom would say "Why do you keep eating them if you don't like them?". Mom, I do like them! I love them! Just because I love them doesn't mean I can keep a straight face while eating them, they are insanely sour!

I could see an additional reason for going with sour candy in particular, though it is specifically for early morning workouts. The punch that comes from whatever gives it the sour flavor (I believe I have heard that it is malic acid for warheads at least?) can potentially wake you up more in the morning, adding a bit more immediate alertness and potential energy on top of what the sugar is already doing (both in sour and regular candy)

I'm also curious if your choice of warheads (a hard candy) over sour patch kids (or other gummy candy) had any kind of impact

As a "gymbro", the results are what I expected. There is one error made on the video though, PWO does not contain glucose like sourcandy. There might be a difference here depending on brand and country but looking at most PWOs they don't even need to print thier calories on the container. And those that do print that are about 50 or so cals per serving and that's mostly protein. There is something to be said about adding sugar to you waterbottle during workouts however.

8:46 matpat sounds like big smoke

9:50 Actually MattPatt, this does Ring a Bell.

This was a meme within the gym community for a long time dating even before TikTok since powerlifters were the usual people to snack on Sour candy in between their sets in the gym.

Matpat is the only person who would cover this type of ridiculous tiktok theories

I a lot of gym goers (including me) don’t workout to counteract bad foods, but just because it is fun to push your body to its limits and to feel confident in your own skin.

The first time I heard about using candy for exercise was Jim Stoppani who would eat a few pieces at the end of the work out along with his protein supplement. He said that the fast glucose spike would help refuel your muscles so the protein wouldn't be used for energy and be focused on repairing the damage of the workout. Plus it had the psychological effect of rewarding you for doing the work in the first place.