Fasting and working out 💪🏻
Today was a good day.
I decided to fast before a workout. Pushing my body, more my mind if I'm honest to do this.
What is fasting?
Fasting is when you don't eat for an extended period of time.
I regularly fast for 12-24 hours. It has many benefits; your body starts to use your body fat as a fuel source, so you will begin to notice a leaner body.
Working out while fasting
I've tried it once before today and struggled. I was light headed and felt weak.
Today was a different story; I was able to workout for 1 hour. I felt normal, with energy to burn. It was a pleasant surprise!
Starting with the elliptical, then an abs workout, followed by some upper body weight training. The session wasn't exactly a beasting session. But probably more intense than most would do.
Break the fast
Afterwards, I had some beef noodles and a couple of amino acid pills to help recovery. If you are doing heavy lifting, the experts advise you eat within 30mins.
Benefits
- Turn back the biological clock in your muscle and brain
- Boost growth hormone
- Improve body composition
- Boost cognitive function
- Boost testosterone
- Prevent depression
Here is an article that helped me understand more
Have you ever tried fasting before a workout?
Or just fasted for a period of time?
Would love to hear from you in the comments.
I'll update you in a few weeks, see how this goes for a longer period of time.
The Rock does it, so can't be bad. He's an absolute TANK.
Keep it real
Derek
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I use to do the same.
How was it for you? Did you have any positive results?
Have done it many years now, it feels like you format your system. You get better result especially in the summertime when it is really hot.
That's interesting to know. So the heat of summer probably helps. It's hot always here in Saigon, so hopefully i'll also see the difference.
Cool post!
I fast two or three days a week depending on how I feel. I use the Eat stop Eat protocol most of the time and the warrior diet sometimes as well.
I train hard most of the time & I don't notice any difference between training fasted and training a few hours after a meal.
I've been doing it for a few years, so I'm adapted to fasted training though, the first few times I did it, I felt a bit off but once I'd adapted it became normal.
I don't go for the post workout shake or meal on the days when I'm fasting, I wait until evening and slightly over eat at dinner.
If you eat too soon after after training you interrupt the surge of HGH the workout created and that can have an effect on post training fat burning.
If I was trying to build muscle I'd probably go for a protein shake after training but I'm not really interested in building muscle just getting stronger.
Thanks @khufu for sharing your experience, sounds like I could learn a lot from you! So many different stategies that we can follow. For me, i'm just looking to tone up and get rid of the fat around my lower back/love handles area. So being able to burn fat is crucial, that's why I like fasting as an option.
How long after the workout should I eat to take advantage of the HGH surge?
It depends on who you talk to @derekcowan .
We know HGH peaks (or at least we think we know) HGH levels peak at around 45 minutes after we pick up our first weight when we start training, then HGH serum levels start to taper off. Then if we don't eat ,the HGH levels can remain elevated for a long time (until the next meal) because of the dietary stress response.
Then things start to get really complicated and other factors come into play. HGH is anabolic but insulin is much more anabolic, so you get a situation where you have to decide what your goals are.
HGH is in some ways a survival hormone where maximum cellular efficiency is prioritized and our cells switch into a conservative mode under it's influence where maximum cellular efficiency is prioritized . Insulin is a metabolic boon that shuttles all sorts of growth factors and nutrients into our cells and promotes rapid growth and replenishment of everything our cells need.
Insulin is some ways a "luxury" hormone that's designed to kick in and replenish everything in rare historical events when there becomes a glut of food, it's also part of what kept our species alive through the normal dietary cycles our ancestors experienced through millennia of not having enough food and converse brief random periods of excess.
So if we "spike" our insulin response post workout we can indeed shuttle more growth factors and nutrients into our cells/muscles, but it can rapidly become a double edged sword.
Adding fast acting carbohydrates (or proteins that trigger an insulin response) to our post workout meal/shake enables the insulin "spike" and enhances the anabolic state almost certainly more than HGH does. The system is almost perfect, and we'd probably be extinct if we didn't evolve without this over-compensatory mechanism.
The problem arises when we cause this "spike" too often. We have not evolved to repetitively spike our insulin levels and it soon becomes a stress factor to our pancreas. We've never had a readily available source of fast acting sugars through most of our evolution until recently. Studies have shown that people from almost every demographic will develop a condition known as insulin resistance and in many cases develop all the hallmarks of a pre-diabetic condition which can later be followed by full blown type 2 diabetes if those habits are maintained (spiking insulin).
So it's totally cool to "spike" your insulin for the anabolic effect from time to time, I do it about once every 10 days to two weeks but I mostly try to look after my pancreas and think about things in terms of long term health.
Sugar and fast acting protein spikes of insulin are fine but we have to realize that there's never been a time in our history /evolution where daily or even multiple daily insulin spikes were the norm.
Our ancestors normally ate a mix of carbs and protein, fat and protein or carbs fat & protein which tempered the insulin response and kept insulin levels regulated except tough times where they just ate whatever they could get. .
WOW, now that's a reply. Thanks so much for the detailed advice. I'll see how I go over the next few weeks and how my body reacts. I know in the past i'd have a meal or shake before a workout this allowed me to train longer. I'll see how I am tomorrow, i'll push myself harder again. Thanks again 🙌🏻
Yeah.
Fasting is actually a counterpart to eating for a balance health and lifestyle.
I guess most people are not aware of this. We only most of the time know/knew the word 'eating'. The word 'fasting' sounds alien to us. A lot of things to search and study on fasting. The popular one maybe not to some is intermittent fasting. I won't go deeper into this. There are a lot more about fasting stuffs to learn from.
Most cultures are already cultured on their scheduled time on eating. Time for breakfast, time for snacks, time for lunch, time for snacks, time for dinner. We are/were becoming slaves of our time. We don't even listen to our body, if its expanding or purging.
"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" A food industry slogan?
Even the word 'breakfast' obviously violates the law of fasting. Breakfast means breaking the fast, that's why its called breakfast.
Fasting is traditional, ancient, an old thing. But, in the process, its evolving. There are a lot of varieties to study/learn on fasting.
Anyways, thanks @derekcowan for posting up a good health insights.
More power!
It's a fascinating subject for sure. Thank you for your insights.
It's incredible when you think about our conditioning to such slogans, believing everything we are told as gospel. The reality is, someone is making money from the marketing of food. Whether it's good for you or not.
I'm feeling good eating in 7-9 hour windows. I'll hopefully see noticeable differences in my health.
Its also my eating range actually 7-9 hour windows for almost 18 months now.
Brilliant!
I also practice intermittent fasting because it's super duper useful. But I usually fast for a 6 hour gap and workout on the same day as well. But I'm more into bodyweight exercises than weight lifting because it's fantastic for my flexibility.
6 hour gap is good. I'm between 7-9 hours at the moment.
Well-informed post @derekcowan. Does this mean you are having one or two meals a day? Maybe we will do more early morning workouts like we did the other day (so fasting included) and see our results. Not necessarily intense as you, but have an early dinner and therefore it will be around 11-12 hours without food.
Thanks, I quickly put it together before work, wanted to get it out there. I'll share more with my updates. I'll have 2 meals, one shortly after the workout, then in the evening after class. Let me know how you get on. I tried to not think about it too much when working out.
muslims perform this...fasting,are you muslim?
anyhow it is good for health or mind,its active our system of heart mind and mostly soul
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Hi @noorijaz I'm not doing it for religious reasons, mainly for the health benefits :)
Wow, @derekcowan? Fasting and working out? That's something I'm really scared of, I hardly can do anything without food and I hate feeling light headed. Like two years back I usually work out immediately I wake up in the morning, without having breakfast or anything first, but now that's even very difficult for me. I can't even work out in the morning when I arise without first eating a little something. I know I'm in some shit though.
Dyou think this is bad for me?
I felt the same way as you. You'll get use to it, just like anything. So give it a try, just don't push yourself too much.
OK, bro.
I always try to remove my fat by exercise but i am irregular so i can't. Just increase my weight day by day...
I use intermittent fasting daily (last meal before 7 pm - break the fast after 11 am) and never eat until after my workout. These days I feel sluggish if I even attempt to eat before my workout. I now regularly cycle for 1 1/2 - 2 hrs while fasting.
Thanks for the article.
I tried fasting and go the gym and the result was not good for me. I was trying to lose weight fast as I want to but it was a wring decision I made. I should have some food an hour or two before hitting the gym. Thank you for your post, this is very informative and it helps me.