Ammonia Smell After Working Out

You are changing clothes at the gym or at home and you notice a distinctive smell of ammonia. What is that all about? Is it a problem? What does it mean?

During exercise your body will most naturally attempt to burn carbohydrates first. When carb stores are depleted, your body will go after protein (amino acids) and fat. This is a very general statement that is subject, at least partially to the kind of exercise you are doing; high intensity for long periods of time, lower intensity in what some call the aerobic zone or some combination.

If you smell ammonia, it is the result of your body generating ammonia (which is a waste product) from the burning of amino acids. The real question is whether or not this is a problem.

If you are on a low carb diet, then you are already experiencing the side effects (and not necessarily bad ones) of such a diet when working out. You may feel more fatigued when working out, possibly even experiencing headaches. This is your body telling you that it is depleted of carbs to burn and it needs to find other, and less efficient, energy sources. Protein is one of them, and then there is fat. 

(I will review in my next blog post more specifics of how the body moves between burning carb stores, protein and fat and under what conditions.)

Burning protein is generally not a great idea to have happening in the long term. Your muscles and an increase in musculature is what fires your metabolic engine. Too many people worry too much about the scale when attempting to exercise and sacrifice muscle growth in order to lose weight, at any cost. And it is a huge cost. Losing muscle will generally slow down your metabolism and work against what you area trying to, and this is get healthier.

If you have a really hard workout and smell ammonia, there is nothing to worry about, again, in the short term. Do the following: increase your water intake, Remember the minute you are thirsty, you are already into the beginnings of being dehydrated. Take an apple or complex carb rich snack before and even during long, hard workouts. Do NOT fear that those carbs are going to somehow hurt your workout or inhibit you achieving your fitness goals.

There is a body of thought that goes something like this: workout early in the morning WITHOUT eating any carbs. Your body will then begin to burn fat sooner in the workout. That might well be true, but you will also be burning protein. That is what you have to be concerned about. The added carbs you take in before a workout (as long as you are not eating a bowl of pasta!) will be burned off as fuel anyway. Remember that when working out early in the morning, you are already the minute you get out of bed in some level of dehydration. Hydrate always first thing in the morning.

Again, don't omit the water. Hard workouts are good. Remember we are not only addressing carb burning and weight loss when working out. More importantly we are interested in strengthening our hearts and increasing our resting metabolism.

If for no other reason, getting that ammonia thing under control will give you a better chance to talk with that guy or gal you have been noticing at the gym, without them running away from you!