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The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
- discreteevent 16y agoLike a lot of these studies they are only measuring one factor - fat gained/retained. So as usual its good to remind oneself to take it with a grain of salt and always keep a sharp eye on what works best for you overall. It beats waiting for some new study next year saying that people over 40 who exercise heavily without eating anything are twice as likely to have a heart attack or whatever. I know that if I go for a run first thing in the morning when its quite cold in winter without having anything to eat at all I can feel pretty bad for the rest of the day in comparison with (on a weekend) eating some breakfast and waiting for about an hour before I go out. In my case I usually pay attention more to how I feel rather than the results of some study.
- robchez 16y agoThis is hardly amazing to anyone who fasts regularly. I saw increases in all my major lifts when I train fasted and eat plenty of good fat (60% of total kcal). I would love to get a hold of the full study for a better look at it. Edit: Reading this article a bit closer, and taking to look at the study, it is clear that the author has some serious bias against the idea that a high-fat diet with fasted training will be of benefit. The people who lost weight were eating 30% more than usual. If they modified there diet to 50% of fat, and not increased calories, you would have seen an even great weight drop.
- sliverstorm 16y ago'fast' is a terrible word, IMHO. Denying yourself food for a handful of hours is not the same as denying yourself food for several days, and yet both are considered fasting. How long were the fasts you took? I am curious because my lifts suffer when I have not eaten breakfast, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the exhausted feeling in my muscles, which I attribute to the lack of food.
- robchez 16y agodenying yourself food for days is starving not fasting HaHa. I fast every day, 16-19 hrs at a time. I train completely for strength rather than endurance, so lift super heavy for 4-5. Max 2-3 sets. If you are going for muscle endurance (8reps+) then some food prior to training.
- bumbledraven 16y agoHow close to your workout is your eating window? I was doing 23/1 intermittent fasting and my coach told me it would interfere with my strength training. I'm also training for strength/max lifts, not endurance.
- robchez 16y agoStraight after. I will train, have a shower then eat. My window is generally 4-8 hours depending how full I get. I have seen only improvement in my lifts since I started this regimen. Lost some serious bodyfat % whilst gained muscle.
- aik 16y agoMind if I ask what your motivation is for training strictly for strength and not endurance?
- brandnewlow 16y agoLinks to where I can read more about this "fast training" stuff? never heard of it.
- Evgeny 16y agoI have recently discovered http://www.leangains.com/ http://www.leangains.com/ and it has some really good information (in my opinion).
- plastics 16y agoLean Gains is pretty good. I can also recommend Rob Wolf's Podcast - http://robbwolf.com/ http://robbwolf.com/ he also explains when to be careful with IF.
- matwood 16y agoGoogle "Intermittent Fasting" (IF). For many people the hunger pains go away as long as they don't eat at all for long periods of time. It can make it easier to lose weight because you end up eating less calories over the course of day or week. Personally, I can't IF at all because of my activity levels. Missing 1-2 meals for a couple days means I start losing weight which is not something I'm looking to do.
- mickdarling 16y agoI am finally able to do regular workouts after recovering from a slipped disk. But, the weight I have put on in the intervening time is hard to work off, especially this time of year. So I am going to try this and see if it improves my burn rate, or at least slows my girth rate. :-)
- sliverstorm 16y agoCome to think of it, this makes sense historically speaking. You can't eat it until you catch it.
- jonhendry 16y agoUnless you saved a bit from yesterday's kill.
- sliverstorm 16y agoAnd even that makes sense. When you have leftovers from yesterday, it's a brief 'time of plenty' and thus a good time to gain weight (build up reserves), hence the weight gain of those who eat before exercising, or eat and don't exercise!
- zoomzoom 16y agoI don't mean to offend, because I know that you mean well with this line of thinking. But it seems really silly to think that our cellular metabolism evolved in conjunction with the imagined hunting patterns of a proto-human. Cellular metabolism is a much older process. Also, the human body did not evolve to perform best when fasting. Certainly we have adrenaline for "kill" moments, but I would bet that eating before a long physical challenge would increase performance during that challenge. You might bur more fat if you don't eat, but I don't think we evolved to burn fat - rather the opposite seems more likely.
- awolf 16y agoI really encourage you to do some research on evolutionary biology. Almost everything you said here is wrong. It's only very recently in human history with the advent of agriculture that large amounts of grains and legumes becme available for human consumption. 99.5% of our human existence was spent as hunter-gatherers surviving on mostly meat.
- zoomzoom 16y agohm, not sure what I said about eating meat vs grains.
- dave1619 16y agoWow, this is amazing. I'd love to try it out, but I'm not sure what I can do in the morning before breakfast. Maybe stationary bicycle. Anybody exercising before breakfast? What kind of exercise are you doing?
- robchez 16y agojump on the stationary bike and go at a slow pace (60-65% max heartrate). I have seen this work wonders on countless people.
- dave1619 16y agoSounds good. I bought the full article and I'm even more convinced about exercising before breakfast.
- chime 16y agoGet a good elliptical. It will work out your entire body (unlike stationary bikes) and not hurt in case you have knee problems (like treadmills). Put the elliptical in front of TV if you like and do 30-45mins every other day. I was 193lbs in August. I'm 174lbs now. Though I'd say I'm more of an exception because I gain/lose weight really fast. Nevertheless, I highly recommend a good elliptical - both my wife and I love the one we got.
- DrStalker 16y agoThe other huge advantage to the elliptical machine is your body works far harder than a bike while feeling like it's doing a lot less - I checked this with a heart rate monitor and an all-out effort on a bike did the same as what felt like only medium effort on the elliptical.
- vital101 16y agoI second this. My wife and I also have an elliptical, and it's much easier to handle in the morning, rather than running. Although in the spring/summer/fall I tend to enjoy running outside in the morning over the elliptical.
- dreaming 16y agoPresumably I can get similar benefits for exercising just before dinner? Morning exercise is about the last thing I want to do...
- jamesbritt 16y ago"Morning exercise is about the last thing I want to do..." It's almost the last thing I want to do. The last thing I want to do is exercise after I've started my day. I simply never do it. Good to hear about eating after exercising, too, since I have to go running first thing when I get up. If I first have coffee or eat breakfast I lose all my "go running!" magic power due to the mysterious hypnotic beams emanating from my laptop.
- StavrosK 16y agoI saw a comment on reddit the other day, which I don't remember exactly, but it said (paraphrasing): "In the morning (when waking up after a night's sleep), your <something> reserves are depleted so exercising before you eat will burn fat (no, you won't burn muscle)." It seems to me that the commenter knew about this effect just fine.
- detst 16y agoThis comment was also made here on HN not long ago (maybe that's where you read it). I believe someone also stated that it's not good for your back to exercise too soon after waking. I believe your "<something>" is glycogen. The basic idea being that if you have no glycogen to burn, you'll burn fat.
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- StavrosK 16y agoI am 99% sure that they did say glycogen. It was glyco-something, anyway. It might have been on HN, although I think I remember fittit. Regardless, that's not important. Also, it's probably true that it's not very good to exercise after waking, but nobody said you have to exercise after waking, just that you have to do it before eating breakfast :)
- DrStalker 16y agoglycogen is your short-term in muscle energy storage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis#Metabolic_pathways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis#Metabolic_pathways explains why exertion with no glycogen burns fat.
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- DrStalker 16y agoI've dropped 20kg (44lb) since august, and I have found that eating well has a much much greater effect than exercise does. I've kept track daily of both weight and key tasks: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArDlY2B14P1IdFA2NElDaV9VbDV5RlBPOGdpOHRXTUE&hl=en_GB http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArDlY2B14P1IdFA2NElD... It's pretty easy to see the exercise has died down to just enough to keep metabalism up, but the weight loss has been very steady. There's been no difference for me between pre-breakfast and post-dinner exercise, but huge difference based on what I eat and when. I would expect different results if I was trying to burn calories directly through exercise, but I spent a month planning how to lose weight without spending lots of time in the gym because I knew I wouldn't stick to that :-)
- eru 16y agoInteresting spreadsheet and congratulation on your dietary improvements! Exercise doesn't really help you with losing weight, but it helps you with losing fat and/or gaining muscle. In the last few months I've exercised a lot and ate a lot. I've gained around 7kg of mostly muscles. I don't know whether losing weight is a useful goal at all. Aiming to lose body fat while keeping lean body weight (=muscles, bones, everything that isn't fat) seems much more sane to me.
- DrStalker 16y agoStarting from a BMI of 40 there's no way I'd attempt to put on that much lean muscle. :-)
- eru 16y agoYes. Have you considered also tracking your abdominal girth? I read about some studies showing that this (or the ratio of abdominal girth to hip circumference to make it work between different people) is a better indicator of health.
- tomjen3 16y agoWhile this is interesting research, I hope they would use their time to focus on how to get these benefits without the exercise part. It's pretty clear at this point that no matter what people will not exercise, no matter how many times we hear about how smart it is. Imagine the shear number of people that would help.
- lsb 16y agoAs hackermom said above, "exercise" doesn't have to be some boring gym workout; cycling or running to work is exercise too, and makes for a far more awesome commute (if you live within 10 miles of work).
- eru 16y agoYes. Also I find short and intensive freeweight exercise to be much more bearable than endless cardio.
- jules 16y agoBut that doesn't burn as many calories does it?
- eru 16y agoI don't know. I exercise for gaining strength, not for burning energy. Look up High Intensity Interval Training to see how short high-intensity bursts compare to long low-intensity efforts (i.e. cardio). (For the lazy: http://duckduckgo.com/High-intensity_interval_training http://duckduckgo.com/High-intensity_interval_training) Gaining more muscles does raise your base metabolic rate, though.
- jules 16y agoIf you forced those people to do exercise say 10 times, many of them would start to like it.
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- hackermom 16y agoThis is no news, really; in fact, we were even taught this part in basic metabolism in biology class in 7th grade. In the morning, the body has depleted its reserve of "immediate energy" in the blood stream and tissue - glycogen, mostly, assuming you have a carbohydrate-rich diet - and will instead have to source energy by instantly burning your fat deposits if you call upon the body to do so by increasing your heart rate and breathing etc. (read: exercise - even a 30 minute walk will do the trick). This is called lipolysis, btw., and is a fundamental part of the human metabolical system. Remember: the human body is primarily a FAT-BURNING MACHINE. add.: Someone sitting next to me as I wrote this asked me, "how long ago was 7th grade?", as a reference of how "re-inventive" this study was. 7th grade was 17 years ago.
- eru 16y ago> the human body is primarily a FAT-BURNING MACHINE. How would our metabolism have to be different for you to come to a different conclusion? (I just want to know, how strong your statement is.)
- hackermom 16y agoLipolysis is the inherit, main metabolical function of our liver and muscle cells. We cannot make use of monosaccharids without "switching" our cells into another mode. This is done by the pancreas secreting a hormone, insulin, into our blood stream; the hormone signals to our cells to stop burning fat and just store it instead, in order to focus on processing the sugar in the blood to prevent a sugar coma. Sugar is in essence a poison in the blood stream, and a too high presence of it will end your life at shortest within minutes. Also, we cannot store sugar for any mentionable duration of time - it's not a long-term energy source the way fat is. This is also the case for almost all other animals on the planet, mammals in particular. If the roles of sugar and fat would be reversed - sugar being storable, lipolysis needing to be acquired through switching of cell function - we could come to a different conclusion. Today we have empirical evidence, through years of study of people living on rigorous LCHF diets, that the human body does not require a single gram of sugar a day to function; it can slowly adapt and switch entirely, both brain, core and limbs, into being solely a fat- and protein-consuming machine. We can from this perspective consider sugars as being available as an alternate form of energy that we can process by secondary function, at a cost - the cost of insulin in our blood stream, and all the problems that can come with the production of such (various cardiovascular diseases have been linked to this, as well as the cases of insulin resistance and lack of insulin production from the pancreas from being "burnt out" being the two major problems).
- jamesaguilar 16y agoI wonder if this also applies to exercising right before dinner, which is what I do.
- jamesaguilar 16y agoI wonder if this also applies to exercising right before dinner, which is what I do.
- rkwz 16y agoAfter exercising, how long should one wait till breakfast?
- matwood 16y agoOnly as long as you need to wait to feel comfortable eating. With weight training I usually drink a post workout shake high in carbs and protein then within the hour eat a well rounded meal.
- rkwz 16y ago>>Only as long as you need to wait to feel comfortable eating. Could you please elaborate a little bit? It sounds a little vague to me.
- danielh 16y agoSome people can eat something immediately after exercising, some can't. When I run in the morning I usually rest for a few minutes to cool down, take a shower and then have breakfast. But you can eat immediately after you finished exercising if you feel like it.
- jules 16y agoIf the theory is right it's better to wait longer, as it takes time for your body to re-stock the glycogen reserves. So you are still burning fat after you finished exercising.
- matwood 16y agoWhat you're getting into now is EPOC and used to be thought to be caused by HIIT. Basically, doing short bouts of high intensity exercise you could drain your glycogen reserves and raise your base metabolism (and thus calorie burning) over the course of 12-24 hours. This theory has been mostly debunked. Also, keep in mind that while depleting your glycogen stores may help your body focus on using fat instead of other sources of energy during exercise, it doesn't change the fact that the only way to lose weight is to eat less than you use. Too many people look at these studies (GI, insulin response, and HFCS immediately come to mind) as silver bullets. The only real silver bullet is eat less than you use. There was an article not long ago about a guy who only ate twinkies and lost weight by counting calories. Physically, losing weight is pretty basic stuff, but it's so hard to do because it requires a tough combination of mental and emotional skills and often requires people to change their deep seated (often decades long) relationship with food.
- skizm 16y agoFor added fun wash your mouth with a carbohydrate solution (don't swallow) before exercising: http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2004/12000/The_Effect_of_Carbohydrate_Mouth_Rinse_on_1_h.17.aspx http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2004/12000/The_Ef...
- threejay 16y agoUsing a cho based mouthwash is pretty much asking for dental carries. Couple that with a little exercise induced xerostomia and you should be good to go.
- threejay 16y agoI delivered newspapers from the ages of 8-18 every morning from 5a-6a. I was skinny as a rail and had more mental clarity than anytime since. If only I could go back to those days...
- nolite 16y agoSounds great if you're looking to finish your workout with a hypoglycemic attack.. fun fun
- jules 16y agoFor the people who do strength training: how much do you exercise and how quick are the results? (in kg of muscle/year or in strength improvement or whatever is the standard)
- jacques_chester 16y agoI train 3 to 5 times per week (Olympic lifting). Like most people I had a period of fast improvement which is tapering now.