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analia
New Member
| Joined: | 7 January 2011 |
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| Posts: | 8 |
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Posted: 15 January 2011 03:42 pm |
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hi,
well,this topic is getting really confusing for me as I used to read that doing cardio with empty stomach is very effective as blood sugar is low and the body needs to consume body fat as a fuel.
but lately,I've read some articles in which it is recommended not to do it because of 2 reasons:1-you get tired sooner and you can't do your best 2-the body might consume muscles as the fuel instead of fat (that's not the exact phrase,but it was the reason)
so,what's best?doing cardio on empty stomach or not?
thanks
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 15 January 2011 06:39 pm |
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Dr Joel Fuhrman (author of Eat To Live) asks me to eat when I'm hungry. Most mornings I am not hungry so I delay eating until my morning workout. True hunger is felt in the mouth and throat (not in the stomach - that's a 'detox' feeling that needs to be endured).
If my body was out of glycogen and fat and was ready to canibalise muscle tissue, it would send me a hunger signal (again, felt in the mouth and throat). By waiting until midday I now often reconnect with the feeling of hunger which I would never get to experience if I ate throughout my waking day.
At the extreem, there are some people who get good results by eating just once a day. This is called "intermittent fasting" and can actually be healthier for you.
However, if your personal experience shows you that your fasted workouts are not "working out" for you, there is no harm in eating beforehand. If you are actually hungry in the morning, you should eat something. Also, perhaps you are not yet ready to confront "detox" symptoms like stomach cramps and fatigue mentioned above - if so, you can hide them by keeping your digestive system working non-stop. This is not ideal but it will work.
Finally I guess it is worth pointing out that I'm mostly talking here about the concept of eating when hungry as it relates to workouts. If there is a benefit to fasted workouts, it probably is not substantial enough to be worth worrying about. The important thing is to get those workouts in and make them as intense as your body is happy to endure.
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analia
New Member
| Joined: | 7 January 2011 |
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| Posts: | 8 |
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Posted: 15 January 2011 07:04 pm |
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well,I'm not sure if I've got the meaning of feeling hunger in the mouth and throat.I'm not sure whether I've experiented it.
Usually I feel very hungry about 30 minutes after waking up and I get my breakfast(about 250 calories) and in 45 minutes I'm in the gym,working out.
as sometimes it becomes longer than 2:30 hours,sometimes I even feel hungry in the gym too! that I ignore.but I can't imagine intermittent fasting.could it be healthier than small portions of eating?
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 15 January 2011 08:45 pm |
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yes intermittent fasting could be healthier than keeping your body constantly digesting. That does not mean that everyone is going to make that commitment. So far I have not even tried it.
As for the concepts of "true hunger" and "toxic hunger", try reading this link: http://toyourhealthnutrition.blogspot.com/2010/02/toxic-hunger-main-cause-of-obesity-by.html
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cportwine
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 18 January 2011 10:28 pm |
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I always wait until my workout is over before eating. But, I usually workout at night. So, I am sure my stomach is not empty. I just don't eat right before hand. If I do eat, then I have a hard time completing my workout. I feel full and sluggish.
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grangers710
New Member
| Joined: | 22 December 2010 |
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| Posts: | 283 |
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Posted: 19 January 2011 12:05 am |
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| fasting is a great way to create a caloric deficit as well as for fat burning effects. Leangains has great info on fasting and I follow the Eat Stop Eat approach but have done both. You'd be surprised that you never really get hungry once you get use to doing it.
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suenos
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 19 January 2011 01:09 am |
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I think Eat to Live and similar diets that promote a more plant based/less refined food intake can be great guidelines. But really, just lately I've been reading more material from those particular sources and, like Nir references above, I see lots of stuff about the digestion system needing a rest, stomach hunger being toxic, fasting being healthier than non-fasting, and, frankly, the more I read (and try to find some actual facts to back up the assertions) the more skeptical I am.
fasting for spiritual reasons I get. fasting for a short period to kick-start a weight loss program by getting used to eating less I get. fasting by abstaining from one or more meals following a day or two of excessive food/drink intake I get.
But, exactly what are the variables involved in the whole "fasting is healthier than ...."? ....is skipping breakfast and lunch and only eating dinner healthier than eating a candy bar for breakfast and a donut for lunch - probably. Is skipping breakfast/lunch and eating ice cream for dinner healthier than eating whole, nutrient dense foods for all three meals? Uh, no.
And the idea tat your digestion system needs a rest just makes no sense to me. I'm not saying it couldn't be correct - but I'd love to see something solidly researched that explained the science behind this theory. My thinking is why would our digestive system need a "rest" from doing what it was 'designed' to do - send nutrients to cells throughout our body as needed? Our circulatory system doesn't need a 'rest', our respiratory system doesn't need a rest...in fact, pretty much every system in our body is strengthened by actually being put to work.....why is the digestive system different?
And the whole mouth/throat hunger = "true hunger" and stomach hunger = "toxic hunger" concept -no, just no. I mean we have cells in our stomachs that produce a hormone that, when released, sends signals that indicate "hunger" to the brain - so obviously hunger - or the need for food - originates in the stomach, so why would this be considered "toxic"?
Anyway, I'm rambling, but I just think that there's an increasing amount of nonsense being promoted by from the raw foodist/vegan camp that gets accepted with being looked at closely - and new diet myths are born - like we need more.
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grangers710
New Member
| Joined: | 22 December 2010 |
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| Posts: | 283 |
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Posted: 19 January 2011 01:18 am |
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| I'd highly recommend you look into Eat Stop Eat. Brad Pilon references countless studies that back up his book. Its an ebook, but well worth the money. I used his approach tagged with the Adonis Index Systems to lose 60 pounds. So yea, I believe in the stuff!
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suenos
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 19 January 2011 01:35 am |
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@grangers...and I lost 80+ pounds doing something completely different ....actually the truth is that we probably both did the same thing at the end of the day which was reduce caloric intake and exercise with a mixture of cardio and weights.....which is pretty much the basic formula that's gonna work for anybody whatever particular weight loss "theory" they buy into. I probably will check into the e-book though because it sounds interesting, especially if it's got sources I can refererence directly. That's kinda my "pet peeve" with certain weight loss "experts" especially in the ever growing vegan camp - they make a lot of assertions that sound logical but don't stand up in the light of real scrutiny.
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grangers710
New Member
| Joined: | 22 December 2010 |
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| Posts: | 283 |
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Posted: 19 January 2011 01:39 am |
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| nice! Congrats on your journey! Yea at the end of the day you summed it up. Caloric restriction. There are countless ways to do it. I like ESE cause I can still eat whatever I want and enjoy myself without feeling like I have to eat salad and chicken every meal ya know. I've done that too some weeks, but its nice to be able to go out to eat and order whatever the heck I want knowing it will all be offset. Definitely worth checking out the book though if you're willing to drop the $. And yes, Pilon backs up his work with science.
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cportwine
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 19 January 2011 02:18 am |
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I just have to say...I think there are studies out there that prove fasting or eating less times is healthier. I think they even tested that the same amount of calories taken in fewer times of a day was better...
Not that I do any of that...just what I found when googling it...
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cportwine
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 19 January 2011 02:20 am |
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| Oh yea...and healthier meaning ...you live longer...nothing to do with weight loss...:) But, I am sure if you did fasting on a regular basis, you would be thin...
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Nancy_in_GA
Moderator
| Joined: | 8 January 2009 |
| Location: | NE, Georgia USA |
| Posts: | 1863 |
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Posted: 19 January 2011 02:31 am |
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There have been a couple of emergency situations lately where I had to do some really hard physical work without eating breakfast (rarely eat breakfast anyway) or lunch. Felt hungry and a little weak at first, but there wasn't an option of stopping to eat. Those feelings just kinda went away when I stopped thinking about it, and I was good to go for 4-5 hours. Makes me think a lot of it was in my mind.
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suenos
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 19 January 2011 02:41 am |
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cportwine wrote: ...I think there are studies out there that prove fasting or eating less times is healthier.
Oh yea, you're dead right that there's studies out there that can easily be interpreted as "fasting or calorie restriction = extended life span", I remember a couple/three years ago when I was really interested in the CR subject looking closely at quite a few of them.
The thing is, the ones that were the most highly referenced were studes done on rats...and rats forced to fast periodically and/or eat at sharply reduced cals did have both significantly lower weights and longer lives - but the thing that struck me at the time was that none of the female rats reproduced, and since reproduction is one of the factors that increases mortality in rats, that got me thinking "well, how much of the longevity is due to fasting, and how much is due to not reproducing"...and I kept seeing stuff like that, where just too many variables weren't really accounted for...and with people whose health indicators were measured, I saw a lot of comparison between say a control group who ate unrestricted "normal" diets (i.e. lots of processed foods, refined carbs, etc.) and a control group who fasted so the question for me was "did the health indicators improve because of the fasting group was actually not eating or eating fewer calories - or simply because the fasting or CR group were not taking in the same amount of unheathy food?"
It's not a subject I'm as interested in now as I was then, and really haven't bothered to re-visit - so maybe there's been a new wave of research with better controlled and measured variables since I last looked into it.
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 19 January 2011 07:55 am |
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Suenos, 1) the issue isn't that the digestive system does not do well when operating 24x7, but that certain processes of 'cellular detoxification' don't get much of a chance to happen whilst you are digesting, these various phytochemical-lead processes could for instance protect from cancer 2) the second benefit to "fasting between meals" and eating fewer meals or intermittent fasting relates to the concept that certain useful genes are only 'activated' when blood sugar is stabalised after the meal has been dealt with. (sorry no references here, just typing from memory)
So where am I? despite sometimes eating up to 50% of my calories from junk, I am at the stage where I do sometimes feel the hunger feeling in my mouth and throat and it is a useful and reassuring place to be. EXAMPLE for yesterday: up 7.49am and deliberately no breakfast, gym muscular endurance class 9.30-10.30 gym steady-state cardio class 10.35-11.35. At some point during the first class it occurred to me that I would have enjoyed eating, and it was that mild mouth/throat sensation. However it wasn't overwhelming and all-consuming, was not correlated with other feelings like cramping, fatigue etc. - when I got home around 12.30pm I reached out for food.
However, I do not do everything "by the book". Just knowing something is good for me, or optimal, won't make me do it. At home I grazed (on healthy food, mixing low and medium calorie densities), at this point paying no attention to hunger or satiety cues. Around 8pm I had access to sweet junk food and indulged (4 cookies and a slice of cake). Some refined flour and fried foods featured for dinner. Altogether, 30% of my calories came from junk and I only practiced waiting for hunger for my first meal.
I continue to do whatever I feel like, but I do this despite believing that optimally (for health and longevity) I would follow those other guidlines mentioned. The other guideline I *believe* but do not currently follow is the one correlating lower calorie intake with longer life. I've gone in quite the opposite direction and pushed up my metabolism by gradually increasing my intake (driven by greed?)
So although I quote various recommendations, I don't always follow them and am not a valid example of them. I mostly lost and maintained my weight not using 3 meals a day, not even 6 meals a day but probably 100 meals a day - or as I sometimes like to joke, 1 meal a day (lasting from the moment I woke up to the time I went to bed). I think I originally found this website, calories-per-hour, because it mirrored my way of thinking. I translated my calorie allocation into how many calories I could EAT per hour during my waking hours!
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analia
New Member
| Joined: | 7 January 2011 |
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| Posts: | 8 |
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Posted: 19 January 2011 08:52 am |
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thanks for all of your answers.I'm skeptical about this theory of fasting and letting your digestive system rest.as even if I know it's the best for my health,it gets me crave for more food and mostly very high calorie food when I'm allowed to eat.
by the way I'm gonna check out the refrences.but backing to the question,do doing cardio exercise on empty stomach better to lose fat or the body may consume muscles as fuel?
Nancy_in_GA wrote:
There have been a couple of emergency situations lately where I had to do some really hard physical work without eating breakfast (rarely eat breakfast anyway) or lunch. Felt hungry and a little weak at first, but there wasn't an option of stopping to eat. Those feelings just kinda went away when I stopped thinking about it, and I was good to go for 4-5 hours. Makes me think a lot of it was in my mind.
I always eat breakfast,because usually I take a small snack for dinner and I get hungry in the morning.
but it's not my imagination and mind.whether running on treadmeal or bicycle I can't do my best when I do it on empty stomach.I'm usually focused on my workout and not even talking or thinking of anything rather than my workout.so it can't be the reason.
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Nir
Senior Administrator
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Posted: 19 January 2011 12:56 pm |
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I would not run a marathon without being glycogen-loaded, however I do not believe you are going for a 4-hour run so this caution does not apply and you should not worry about losing muscle. IT IS VERY RARE FOR YOUR BODY TO CANIBALISE MUSCLE AS FUEL.
You also ask if it is better. The answer is that, if it IS better then it is only A LITTLE BIT better so if you PREFER to eat before your workout, do that. You will still burn calories. You will still create a calorie deficit and you will still lose fat.
Once more: there is no harm in doing fasted workouts but neither is there necessarily a fantastic benefit
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kallie89
New Member
| Joined: | 28 December 2010 |
| Location: | New Zealand |
| Posts: | 9 |
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Posted: 28 January 2011 06:32 am |
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i think it depends on you. if you can do a good workout on an empty stomach by all means do it. if you find you can work harder, push heavier, etc after you have had breke then do it that way. lots of people cant do a workout without having something to eat before-hand as they end up dizzy and light headed. theres not a huge difference in fat % burnt off either way. so do what works best for yo
sorry i just realised you said cardio... same thing though.. it'll just take you a bit longer to start burning fat as your body burns off the glycogen in your muscles first, and if you have carbs beforehand theres even more for it to burn.. if ur worried about that do some weight training then cardio. you'll be fat burning in no time...
hope i have'nt confused u more!!
Last edited on 28 January 2011 06:36 am by kallie89
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