Newbie's question about eating and being sore

Question

I am so surprised about my recent experiment. I was sick for about a half year (I had an ear infection and took a lot of antibiotics to eventually cure it using herbs and garlic, which doctors say is very dangerous, but I had not other chance and it worked for me).

I lost 80% of my strength and I managed to do only about 5 consequent pull ups on first day training after coming back. I ate a regular amount of food and water that day. It took me 72 hours before the sore pain went away after the first training.

Second training was yesterday. After the training, I bloated myself with food, water, even had a protein drink. I went beyond what my body felt as "pleasurable". Today I wake up and I am only a little bit sore. I feel like I could go for another training today, although I won't, I will go tommorow.

So simple summary - average amount of food on weight training = being sore, 72 hours to regenerate. A lot of food after weight training = soreness decreasing to about 48 hours needed to regenerate.

Please guys can you tell me if what I experienced is true, or maybe there are other factors that could affect body regeneration?

Answer 1

The biggest factor is almost certainly that on the first training session, it had been 6 months since you last did any pull-ups, whereas on the second session, it had only been less than a week since you last did any pull-ups. It's almost certain that had you eaten a huge amount of food after your first training session and then a normal amount after your second session, you still would have experienced more soreness after the first session. Food intake does not appear to affect delayed onset muscle soreness.^{1, 2, 3}

Muscle soreness is primarily a response to unfamiliar modes, intensities or volumes of exercise, and so you can expect that as you get back into exercise, you will be less and less sore with each subsequent session.