In the past years the fitness industry saw a shift towards excessive attention to detail. The new standard became ‘eat many small meals throughout the day’, sometimes known as a typical bodybuilder diet.

Unfortunately I now think it has swung too far in the other direction, where we have the (only slightly less annoying) myth that ‘meal frequency and timing don’t matter’, or even that ‘calories don’t count as long you eat within an 8 hour window’ – a natural consequence of people jumping on the intermittent fasting bandwagon without understanding (or caring about) the science.

As is the case with most of these things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Here are some nutrition and timing guidelines:

• Aim to eat 3 meals with 1-2 snacks spaced evenly throughout the day. (By snacks we don't mean chocolate bars and a bag of crisps, we mean sensible balanced real foods)

• Aim to eat within two hours of finishing your training.

Don’t train completely fasted. Have a whey shake or BCAA (Branched Chain Amino Acids) drink at the minimum. (This isn’t counted in the meal frequency guidelines above.)