The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/phys-ed-the-benefits-of-exercising-before-breakfast/

by robg • 16 years ago

81 82 16 years ago

well.blogs.nytimes.com

robchez4• 16 years ago

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.

sliverstorm3• 16 years 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.

robchez4• 16 years ago

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.

tomjen34• 16 years ago

By the same token we should not call running 5km running, since it is different from running a marathon.

krschultz• 16 years ago

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).

brandnewlow• 16 years ago

Links to where I can read more about this "fast training" stuff? never heard of it.

Evgeny• 16 years ago

I have recently discovered http://www.leangains.com/ and it has some really good information (in my opinion).

matwood4• 16 years ago

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.

mickdarling• 16 years ago

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. :-)

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

Come to think of it, this makes sense historically speaking. You can't eat it until you catch it.

jonhendry• 16 years ago

Unless you saved a bit from yesterday's kill.

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

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!

zoomzoom3• 16 years ago

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.

awolf• 16 years ago

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.

dave16192• 16 years ago

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?

robchez4• 16 years ago

jump on the stationary bike and go at a slow pace (60-65% max heartrate).

I have seen this work wonders on countless people.

dave16192• 16 years ago

Sounds good. I bought the full article and I'm even more convinced about exercising before breakfast.

chime• 16 years ago

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.

DrStalker5• 16 years ago

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.

vital101• 16 years ago

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.

artmageddon• 16 years ago

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.

DrStalker5• 16 years ago

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.

eru9• 16 years ago

Barbells and following `Starting Strength' also work nice. But that's a bit more investment in infrastructure.

Also---in addition---consider getting a pull-up bar. Pull-ups [1] are a nice functional exercise for your upper body.

[1] And press-ups, but they don't require any equipment.

jamii• 16 years ago

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.

thesz2• 16 years ago

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.

eru9• 16 years ago

You can also squat with weights. I've started in April and am doing 120kg now. Consult `Starting Strength' for that.

Running isn't too bad either. Go barefoot or with something like Vibram FiveFingers if you care about your joints at all.

zandor• 16 years ago

Burpee's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burpee_(exercise)

jules9• 16 years ago

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.

dreaming• 16 years ago

Presumably I can get similar benefits for exercising just before dinner? Morning exercise is about the last thing I want to do...

jamesbritt• 16 years 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.

StavrosK2• 16 years ago

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.

detst• 16 years ago

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.

StavrosK2• 16 years ago

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 :)

discreteevent• 16 years ago

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.

DrStalker5• 16 years ago

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:

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 :-)

eru9• 16 years ago

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.

DrStalker5• 16 years ago

Starting from a BMI of 40 there's no way I'd attempt to put on that much lean muscle. :-)

tomjen34• 16 years ago

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.

lsb• 16 years ago

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).

eru9• 16 years ago

Yes. Also I find short and intensive freeweight exercise to be much more bearable than endless cardio.

jules9• 16 years ago

If you forced those people to do exercise say 10 times, many of them would start to like it.

tomjen34• 16 years ago

Considering how many people start dieting and exercise and then fall of the wagon a few months in, I don't buy that.

hackermom2• 16 years ago

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.

eru9• 16 years 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.)

hackermom2• 16 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).

jamesaguilar• 16 years ago

I wonder if this also applies to exercising right before dinner, which is what I do.

rkwz2• 16 years ago

After exercising, how long should one wait till breakfast?

matwood4• 16 years ago

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.

rkwz2• 16 years 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.

skizm• 16 years ago

For added fun wash your mouth with a carbohydrate solution (don't swallow) before exercising: http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2004/12000/The_Ef...

threejay2• 16 years ago

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.

threejay2• 16 years ago

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...

nolite• 16 years ago

Sounds great if you're looking to finish your workout with a hypoglycemic attack.. fun fun

jules9• 16 years ago

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)

jacques_chester2• 16 years ago

I train 3 to 5 times per week (Olympic lifting). Like most people I had a period of fast improvement which is tapering now.

The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast

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