This 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.
'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.
denying 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.
How 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.
I'm pretty sure aerobic exercise is better for the brain than strength training. Aerobic exercise increases oxygen flow to the brain and it directly improves creation and survival of neurons. Effectively it acts as a drug for your brain.
It has the additional benefit that it alters your mood, aerobic exercise makes you happy :)
Strength training may boost testosterone, but the effects of aerobic exercise is well established. Several comparisons have been done between aerobic and strength training and the conclusions have been that strength training have little effect on executive function.
My source for this is the book "Brain Rules" by John Medina [1]. Also check out his presentation on exercise [2] and his Authors@Google talk [3].
I'm really struggling to think of a strength training scenario where your heart rate wouldn't be elevated (thus increasing blood flow). Consider a max. back squat, where all your muscles are contracting to the maximum degree that they can for several seconds. I'd say that'll make your heart pump.
(Thanks for the citations. That's awesome, and I wish more people would do it.)
Weight training and cardio training have different effects on the heart. Weight training forces the heart to pump against resistance, leadening to a thickening of aorta walls. Cardio requires blood to be circulated more frequently, leading to an enlargement of some heart chambers.
The effects I'm talking about are not during the actual exercise, it's more long term. Note that even though they are long term (~12 weeks I think) they are not permanent, if you stop exercising soon there will be no benefit.
I've noticed that when I run my breathing speed and heart rate increase up to 5 km, then stays pretty much constant. I don't know why this is though. If you do strength training you probably stop long before this point.
I'm friends with several people who fast for religious reasons. For them that means not eating during the day time, it does not mean starving for days.
That is one definition of fasting, I guess a lot of people are only exposed to the story of Jesus "fasting" for 40 days where he ate nothing at all (if I remember the story right, if I have that wrong please correct me, I don't know the Bible all that well).
Google "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.
I'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:
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 :-)
Interesting 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.
Yes. 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.
I 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.
This 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.
I 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 :)
I 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.
I 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.
And 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!
While 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.
As 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).
I 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).
Thats what I was aiming at: you can't get people to exercise, we have tried telling it to them in five hundred different ways, a million different slogans and insane amount of dollars have been wasted.
Where would we have been if that amount of money had instead been used for "exercise in a pill" research? Would we have it? Unlikely. Would we be able to get some of the benefits? Absolutely.
Like 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.
I 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...
Using 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.
I 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. :-)
Wow, 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?
Get 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.
Each machine has its strengths and weaknesses. I find that stationary bikes tend to get really uncomfortable after awhile, too. My posture isn't the best and I feel like I suffer on a bike because of the hunching I feel like I have to do in order to grip the bars in front of me. It's also worth mentioning that a mediocre seat can definitely be painful after a period of time.
In the bike's defense: as a runner, spinning on the bike is an absolutely awesome to maintain cardio-fitness after a running injury.
The 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.
I 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.
Try squats. They are simple, they roughly correspond in energy expenditure to not-so-fast running, they do not put too much blow on joints.
Squats were used by Soviet marathon runners for training in winter, when it is too cold outside to run. They squatted for hours.
One my squat is approximately 2.5 second. 5 minutes amounts to 120 squats. 30 minutes - 720.
I think you'll appreciate the power of 720 squats. ;)
Squats are pretty variable. You can put your hands behind your back, fold them on the chest, actively wave them helping squats - all those variation will give you different feeling.
If you're going to do bike riding why not use a real bike outside? I hate sitting on stationary bikes and will give up quickly. If you go a planned route on a real bike that requires much less (or zero) willpower to finish it. And it's much more fun too.
When I lived in London there was an outdoor pool on the route to the office. The exercise and the sunlight helped me wake up and I had a choice of 20 or so places to grab breakfast on the way. Nowadays I run in the mornings but its not the same.
If you get a set of basic adjustable dumbells you can quickly work all the major muscle groups at home, which helps fire up your body for the entire day.
For 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)
"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.
Only 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.
Some 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.
If 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.
What 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.
I completely agree, I'm just saying that if the theory is correct, then this is probably a consequence. I can think of a reason why you'd lose weight by eating later: now your body burns your fat to replenish your glycogen levels, and later when you eat it stores the food in fat. This may well be less energy efficient than eating right after exercise and replenishing your glycogen levels with food.
Trying to eat right after very strenuous exercise can leave many people with a queasy feeling. If those same people wait 15-30 minutes prior to eating they can avoid the sick feeling.
I think he's saying as soon as you can without feeling nauseous. I'm not sure if all people are like this, but if I eat within 30 minutes of a hard workout I have a rough time.
This 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.
Lipolysis 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).
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.