The Best Post-Exercise Drink: Chocolate Milk [Exercise]

Forget sports drinks, the best beverage to have after a workout or hard race is chocolate milk, studies say.

Some Lifehacker readers have mentioned this tip before in our tips box and related posts about what to drink when exercising, and these two new studies provide further confirmation that chocolate milk—particularly low-fat chocolate milk—is an ideal recovery drink to have after exercise.

In the cited University of Texas at Austin study, athletes who drank low-fat chocolate milk after a hard workout (as opposed to those who drank sports beverages with just carbohydrates) developed more muscle and less fat, as well as improved workout times. Another study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found cyclists who drank chocolate milk had twice the maximal oxygen uptake (the most amount of oxygen an individual can use during intense exercise, an indicator of your cardiovascular fitness) as those who drank calorie-free beverages or carbohydrate sports drinks.

So, in the 30-minute recovery window after exercising, have a nice cold drink of low-fat chocolate milk to boost your performance and overall physical shape. Photo by Team Traveller.