Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy and we're about to jump into a two-part series on what to eat for breakfast before a big workout or a race.

I remember the first time I thought about doing an Ironman triathlon.

It was in the early 2000s.

I was watching the NBC Iron Man coverage,

and I remember witnessing some sleepy-eyed guy

rollover a bit before 4 a.m. to make his breakfast,

which was a huge mashup of oatmeal, fruit, toast,

and scrambled eggs as he sat there hunched over in his pajamas jamming forkfuls of calories

into his gaping maw, he motioned to a heaping pile of energy bars a few feet away,

referring to that pile as breakfast number two. Well, at the time, I was a competitive bodybuilder

and not only used to eating eight to ten meals a day, but also well accustomed to planning

out elaborate pre-competition rituals designed to enhance performance and blood flow to the muscles,

including everything from extreme sodium loading followed by water

depletion so that my muscles would pop to dark chocolate, caffeine, and red wine backstage,

so my vessels would pop. So the concept of waking up at the wee hours to shove fuel into my

body wasn't really a foreign concept or something that seemed all that

weird. But since then, over years of competing, studying, and coaching, I've learned that there's

a great deal more to a race morning breakfast or fueling a big workout than simply getting as many

calories as possible into your body without puking. So in this special two-part series,

you're going to learn how to truly crack the code on your pre-race meal or your pre-big workout meal and how to never guess again. If you find yourself wandering through the aisles of a grocery store the night before a marathon, a triathlon, an obstacle race, or a big workout, or navigating the continental breakfast section of a hotel

a few hours before going to tow the starting line.

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