Morning workouts and food

[chen3141]

So I enjoy my early morning workouts. Nice way to start the day and see the sunrise. However, I don't eat before I do. After waking up, a body of course needs food, even more so if you work out. But if it goes workout then eat, will my body eat itself (so to speak) during the workout?

[Dent]

Osu!

Short answer? Yes. You've been fasting, and then training will cause you to use whatever stores are available.

Osu!

[tmd]

As I understand it if you train before you eat you will be using your fat store for energy so this is a good thing, make sure you're well hydrated and don't over do it (push to hard or train too long) or you'll get through the fat stores and start consuming muscle. Eat a decent breakfast afterward (dependent on if you are trying to build up, slim down or just maintain your weight this will vary).

You should be glad that you take to this so easily - I really struggle with AM training.

[supergroup7]

It usually takes hours, and hours for food to digest.. (sometimes more than 24 hours), so the energy that you are burning right now can be considered coming from yesterday's food. With this knowledge in mind, does it really matter if you eat before you train in the morning or afterwards? In a way.. yes it does.. because to digest food, your body has to send it's resources in the digestion area, if you ask it to work hard, and exercise, the body will pull the blood away from digestion, and send it towards the struggling muscles. This has caused people to feel nauseous, and throw up. If you would like to eat something before training, you could have a banana, or two about an hour before. I have read that 2 bananas contain enough glucose, fructose, and sucrose to power a 90 minute workout. Fruit is treated differently by the digestion system of our body, and is digested more quickly.

[chen3141]

Originally Posted by tmd

As I understand it if you train before you eat you will be using your fat store for energy so this is a good thing, make sure you're well hydrated and don't over do it (push to hard or train too long) or you'll get through the fat stores and start consuming muscle. Eat a decent breakfast afterward (dependent on if you are trying to build up, slim down or just maintain your weight this will vary).

You should be glad that you take to this so easily - I really struggle with AM training.

Thats basically my biggest fear. I still have a good layer of fat to get rid of, but I'm afraid if I train too much I'll be eating away at muscles. All I really know about weight loss is caloric intake<caloric output, but to do so that your body only becomes lean and mean is still confusing to me.

edit: what would be the limit for training with a "fast" so your losing fat but not muscle?

[Dent]

Osu!

Originally Posted by chen3141

Thats basically my biggest fear. I still have a good layer of fat to get rid of, but I'm afraid if I train too much I'll be eating away at muscles. All I really know about weight loss is caloric intake<caloric output, but to do so that your body only becomes lean and mean is still confusing to me.

edit: what would be the limit for training with a "fast" so your losing fat but not muscle?

That's the magic bullet of fat loss there. No one knows the exact numbers without doing all sorts of tests for each, and every workout. Bit hard to do both the training, and all the tests.

Part of the difficulty is the exercise intensity. Different intensities yield different results, but they also require different fuel...

Osu!

[tmd]

Originally Posted by chen3141

Thats basically my biggest fear. I still have a good layer of fat to get rid of, but I'm afraid if I train too much I'll be eating away at muscles. All I really know about weight loss is caloric intake<caloric output, but to do so that your body only becomes lean and mean is still confusing to me.

edit: what would be the limit for training with a "fast" so your losing fat but not muscle?

Let me know if you work it out As far as I understand it the basics are that you need to eat Protein to sustain your muscles coz this is what they eat, carbs and fat are fuel so you need enough of these to keep training at the required intensity. If you're trying to loose weight do it as slow as you can without fasting - I'm aiming got be 70kG's by November and had got down to 75-76 but then I take a weekend off, have a few (really a few) Beers and Burgers and BAM I'm back to 78kG's

This is how I have calculated my calorie intake which is then split at least 20% Protein and no more than 20% Fat 60% Carbs

1lB of fat is equal to 3500 calories so burning 5000 calories per week
should equal 1.5lb of weight loss per week (if diet remains the same)
Most exercises burn around 500 calories so it's about 10 hours a week.

BMI for 70kG = 1777, for active 70kG target intake 2300kCal per day (you can adjust this to your weight or target weight)

During weight loss try to stick to less than 2000kCal per day and 70g Fat

For every hour of training you need to add 500 Calories of fuel so if I'm training for 2 hours every day this should be 3000kCal.

Your bodies a clever thing and if you do the same thing every week, same diet same training etc it will adapt and stabilize, you need to keep changing things around.

One last thing burning fat works best at I think around 80% of your max heart rate which is why exercises like jogging and static bike work are good for burning fat.

[TRK]

I'm not an expert, but I am pretty sure your body will not "burn" muscle for energy unless you have reached essentially a starved state. Protein is an efficient building block for muscle, carbs and fats are the sources of energy and are interchangeable. If you have no sugar left in your blood, you will break down fat to supply it. Only after all of that is gone will you have to worry about your body breaking down muscle. Given that your fast is probably only since dinner the night before, and most of us don't keep ourselves in a nearly-starved state, you are probably okay.