Question On Eating Before Exercising
 

My wife and I had an interesting discussion, she prefers to wake up and start her exercise (she runs 3-6 miles), I prefer to have breakfast (a bowl of cereal) and a mug of coffee to put some sugar in my bloodstream as I typically will cycle 35 miles (this is on the weekend).

What do you guys do and / or recommend?

A bit of long-ish chain carbs before working out, proteins after. Generally speaking.

Over the last three years I've done research and tested out the theories, plus went to exercise classes taught by nutritionist vegan chef............... so on and so forth.

Break......................Fast

Breakfast

The first meal of the day breaks your body out of fasting mode, and FYI fasting mode conserves calories.

You will have a much better workout with the energy a breakfast gives, even a very small one.

Part of this is because your body can go into high gear and start burning calories required for a good workout if you eat first.

If you are in fasting mode that's going to be difficult to say the least.

Have a breakfast bar, or a 1/2 banana and a teaspoon to peanut butter if you want to eat lightly.

The more you eat, the longer you will have to wait before exercising.

Eat a small snack and wait 1/2 hour, medium meal 45 minutes, normal or larger breakfast wait an hour before heavy exercise.

Carbs in the morning to burn (ie oatmeal).

They say protein after a workout to rebuild the muscles.

I've read within the first 20 minutes, others say within the first hour after a workout eat protein.

All meals and snacks should be balanced.

Meaning eat enough carbs so your body can process the protein, and sneak fruit and vegetables into those meals.

Make half your plate something green typically.

I can hardly taste the kale in my protein shake smoothie, just had one for lunch.

been a long time since i rolled out of bed into my leotards.

but i would only slam a big glass of water and go, when i did.

The way it was explained to me by my brother who is a fitness freak, your body uses food in your stomach before it uses the fat it has stored. So if you want to lose weight you need to exercise in the morning before eating since your body has no choice but to use your fat reserves for energy. If you want to maintain weight or build muscle, eat before so your body uses what you just ate for energy instead of what is on your bones.

Personally, if I eat before walking I maintain my weight. If I want to lose weight, the only way for me to do so is to walk first and then eat.

Following on what drkshdw said,

If you want to do a fasting workout, especially an endurance workout, you've got to keep your exertion low enough to not burn up glycogen more quickly than you body can convert fat.

If you are successful in doing higher intensity fasting workouts, my understanding is that it is because
a) You are already in really good shape and your system has become more efficient in converting
b) your intensity is staying low enough
c) your actually starting to burn protein form your muscles and decimate them

In either case, in simple terms what I have been told is that the body uses energy in this order (and can switch in flight or fight mode but Ill leave that for another discussion

The conveyor belt:
1) burn glycogen stores in the muscles (a type of sugar)
2) when depleted call on glycogen stores in the liver to transfer to the muscles
3) when depleted call on fat to be converted to glycogen
The conveyer belt from fat to liver to muscles.

After your workout your body continues to feed the muscles and fill them back up, so after the workout what you eat can continue to fill up the muscles needed sugar stores or let the fat do it depending on intensity and what is needed back.

Note:
If you have a high sugar level in your blood and are doing high enough intensity, it will use that source directly instead. (Again leaving acrobatic/anarobic discussion for someone else to cover).

Also an easy but lengthy walk may be able to be fueled from fat alone since the rate of use is slow enough for the conveyer belt to supply it.

CAUTION:
If you work out even more intensely or for too long you may fall way behind and when you get home you'll uncontrollably eat absolutely everything in the fridge and then sleep for three hours (and gain a lot of weight)

Also, using glycogen from the muscles in normal. Burning protein from the muscles is not.

Being overly tired DURING your workout is a good sign that you need to eat.
Headaches and lightheadedness, (or passing out) means you've been stupid about not eating)

Science.

BBC Two - Trust Me, I'm a Doctor, Series 4, Episode 1 - The big experiment: how can I get my body to burn more fat, without doing more exercise?

I think you're both right.
If she runs anything around/under a 10 minute mile, she is done under an hour. Anything in her stomach is going to get bounced around as she runs. It probably works better for her to keep her stomach empty, and burn off the stored glycogen from last night's dinner.

If you are riding 20mph ave or under, you are riding at least 1.5 hours. You aren't bouncing around as much, and might benefit from the sugar/caffeine ritual.

Something to consider is that eating will divert blood to your stomach for digestion afterwards, so it's all about knowing how you react to eating before/during working out. Longer low intensity workouts - eating becomes more and more important with the longer durations. Higher short intensity workouts- sometimes better to keep the stomach light. Different people will also react differently to eating beforehand- also explaining your differences with you wife. Seems like both ideas work for each of you.

Also- some sugars break down into useful structures better than others. Poweraide drink, for example, has some long chain cheap sugar that doesn't break down and will sit in your stomach like a rock. I think Gatorade has it too, but I can't remember. All I know is that if I start drinking gatorade during a long ride, I need to be careful.

Oatmeal with a bit of Grape Nuts or toast with butter then on my bike 30 mins later.

My bicycling was longer distance than your number, with a minimum of 40 and more typical 60-80. I would definitely eat before a ride. High on the carbs and electrolytes. I prefer to stay away from Protein while riding because it can slow the processing/absorption of liquids/carbs.

I had issues with milk and high fiber (oatmeal) before long rides. I ended up on ramen noodles, since they provided carbs, liquid and electrolytes, not too mention quick and easy to fix while getting everything else ready.

Coffee is a double edged sword: It definitely wakes me up, but two, well, number 2. I' up 1-2 hours ahead of leaving to give my body a chance to "go".

3-5 miles of running is 30-50 minutes. I would go with coffee and not worry about anything else. 40 miles of cycling, I would definitely want some quick calories before heading out, since it is 2 hours.

when I raced bikes it was something with carbs before.
PB&J, waffle, pancakes.
you have to figure out what works for you though, but you need carbs.
how you eat depends on you too.
it took me a while to figure it out.

You don't need to eat before running/biking/exercising. You should be able to exercise the same whether you've eaten or not. I can run 6 miles after having had nothing but water (fasting) for the previous 36 hours as well as if I've eaten a meal or two that day.

You're body will switch over from burning glycogen (sugar in the blood) to burning fat. If you aren't used to it (who is) then your performance may flag a little until you've done it for a couple of weeks.

Good call.

And C should come WAY down the list. Even marathon runners should have enough fat to power them for quite a long time.

The guy that wrote this is a Dr.

https://idmprogram.com/fasting-and-exercise-fasting-23/

But elite cyclist may not because of the higher level of exertion and ability to outpace the conveyor belt

I like working out first thing. I need time to digest if I eat first, just delays things. Different if its a long workout, maybe over 90 min or so. Then I'll east something or at least during since what I call long is usually a ride.

and then on the other end of the scale there's this :D

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There hasn't been any definitive studies proving one way or the other. Do what works for you.

For me: If I am running, I don't like food sloshing around so I will eat after. If it is a lift day, I eat first.

For a ride of an hour and half or less I prefer just a cup of coffee. I've found my growing belly has enough to get me that far.

Over that and definitely for a fast club ride I'll eat a couple eggs and toast before plus a snack during the ride.

Right, find what works for you.

When I was first starting out three years ago I would roll out of bed and do ten push ups at the foot of the bed, get on to the bed and do ten leg lifts or crunches, repeat until 10 sets were done.

Once I started kicking it up to 20 reps, then 30 reps at 10 sets I sort of hit a wall where I had burned out all the sugar in my blood steam and had to eat right away.

Same with running up and down a flight of stair near my house, doing it five times was fine, but upping it to 15 and I ran out of energy. If I wanted to do sprints between the set of stairs I need fresh calories.

Bottom line for me; mild activity like walking, a few push ups, a few leg lifts, and a few flights of stairs on an empty stomach is fine. However once I could go past that threshold I need the extra power only a breakfast could provide.

I think I lost more weight exercising prior to eating breakfast, but it was at the expense of muscle development. The fatigue of low blood sugar isn't something I want to put myself though intentionally. I'm just not young any more and it takes me longer to bounce back.

Here is the thing, once you get the testosterone and metabolism up you will be burning extra calories all day long, and more than enough to make up for what you consumed in that morning for breakfast. Meaning you will be burning fat all day long, and not sugar out of your blood steam.

Again, this is just based on my personal experiences.

EDIT:

I also read that the human body cannot store protein, that protein only stays into your blood stream for 3-4 hours. This is the reason behind eating small meals every 3-4 hours, meals that include protein (4-6 times a day).

One celebrity workout routine I read about had the actor waking up in the middle of the night to have a protein snack. I thought this was very over the top, apparently he didn't want his body to ever go into fasting mode.

Fascinating, I haven't read about this before.

It does seem like an extreme regiment for the very dedicated and professional athletes.

The only things I'm interested in are things I can do for the rest of my life, no fads or temporary measures.

Which is silly. There have been studies done that proved that during fasting you don't lose muscle or bone, you lose fat. When you fast, your body starts making more HGH which actually can cause you to build muscle.

That makes sense, right. In the days before refrigerators and microwave food, if you had a lean week of hunting and gathering during the winter, and you were losing muscle mass, how would you have the strength to go hunt and gather. Humans would have died out a long time ago if fasting caused your body to start eating muscle.

Read his posts with the fasting tag. He's got about 30 blog entries on fasting. He's got a clinic where he mostly treats diabetes and obesity. He promotes fasting as a way to stay healthy for pretty much everyone (no children, no pregnant women, and folks with medical issues or on certain medications only under medical supervision).

He talks about all manner of fasting 12 hours (eat everything between 7am and 7pm or whatever), 16 hours (eat all food in 8 hours/day), 24 hours (skip 2 meals), 36 hours (skip 1 day), 42 hours, etc.... A lot of what he talks about seems to be the intermittent (like 16 hours) or alternate daily fasting (24 or 36 hours). Pretty much all of his posts cite some sort of medical study.

One interesting thing is that when you fast, your resting energy does not go down. It actually goes up. Your body switches to fat as it's energy source and revs things up a bit.

But if you heavily restrict your caloric intake, your resting energy goes down because your body is consuming calories, but it's not getting many calories, so it has to turn things down to match the caloric intake. And if you do it for long enough, your body will continue to turn your resting energy down until it matches your caloric intake, then you stop losing and will actually start gaining weight. That won't happen on a fast.

My success has just been to do stuff consistently that I enjoy

I’ve learned when I need to eat to support my activities

I have no regimented routines, I just do stuff, and eat when it feels right
My only eductation on the science of anything was to understand why I could go like hell for two hours sometimes but other times couldn’t lift my feet

Morning exercise fatigue was often after I’d not eaten well the day before. Those mornings I definitely couldn’t skip breakfast

there are obviously different levels and lengths of exercise. short low intensity you can survive on what you have stored, BTW I had to laugh at the comment about a marathon runner surviving on their body FAT. show me a fat marathon runner.

like I said, you have to figure out what works for you.
if you don't eat properly you WILL receive what we call "the bonk" all of a sudden you have no energy. if you want and you can do your exercise routine and feel good after, then do it.
if your body thinks it is getting starved, when you do eat it will store that food as fat for reserves when you do eat.

I offer this challenge to those that say you don't need to eat before or that carbs are down on the list,
go ride a bike 100 miles at an average of 25mph and let me know if you need to eat.
you will not only eat before, you will take food with you.

you have to provide your body with the fuel it needs to do the job.
on short fast (30mph) races, about 30min, no I would limit what I would eat but I would still eat something for energy.
most people that exercise don't stress their bodies enough to get into requiring food before they exercise.

I have a friend that thinks she "exercises" hard. she went with a friend to do a "boot camp" at a gym. (my daughter use to do it so I had an idea of what it was). even though she thinks she is great shape I told she is going to suffer because her workout is not that intensive.
I talked to her the day after and she said she was hurting and how hard it was and get this (for those that don't think you need to eat) she ran out of energy.
I asked what she ate, she said EGGS!! I told her that's why she ran out of energy, NO CARBS!!

learn your body. but have to really stress it learn it. try 9 hours on bike in the mountains with leg cramps, you will learn what to eat, and what to drink. most people that exercise don't really stress their bodies.

Interesting posts and feedback, thanks to all who chimed in. I'll actually give the "no breakfast" a shot this weekend and see how I fare.

I don't think that eating before vigorous exercise is great. Everybody is different but I remember many years ago my mother pushing me to eat English tea time stuff like scones and cake before going to soccer exercises and running. I had major cramping to the point where I could barely function. :(

cramping yes, even what you drink can cause stomach issues.
but I go back to what I said about the level or intensity of exercise.

I had issues with what I drank, especially when I first started biking,. I use to water down Gatorade because it was to sweet or strong. then I would even do 2 different bottles of different drinks or how much they were watered down. but, it seems that later in my biking years it really did not matter as much, never really had stomach issues later on.

food, it took a while to figure it out.
waffles, pancakes, or even PB&J worked for me. was reluctant to drink milk but I even found I could drink some, then I might drink a soda too.

eggs and cereal never did it for me. obviously no energy in eggs but with both I would get hungry too fast and bonk.

after work I would 30-50 miles every day. I don't remember eating before those rides unless it was a training ride with a group, but also, getting up in the morning and not eating is different that riding 3 hours after lunch.

intensity of your workout really dictates the need for food.

This ^

Yea, he nailed a lot of stuff down and with very clear personal examples.

I think rotating breakfast and no breakfast (BK) with my then mild workouts three years ago helped me figure out my body.

That is to say Monday no BK, Tu eat, Wed no BK, Th eat, Fri no BK, Sa eat..............did that for a month or two.

I figured out that I did not want the regiment ketosis requires, did not want to starve my way to weight loss and chose to build muscle to burn fat.

Examples of people already in shape and never have been out of shape, people working out multiple times a day like leading men actors, or professional athletes just are not role models for me to mimic. I do not have the time and money to pull it off and have to be far more conservative. Conservative is eating for the task at hand and for the work to be done, anything outside of that is non-sustainable.

A doctor on TV recently said after 18 months 90% of the people that had gone on a ketosis diet were off of it and had gained the weight back. That there was no evidence that such a diet wasn't going to shorten the lifespan of those doing it (it stresses the body something terrible). He admitted that you can lose a lot of weight on a ketosis similar to the young folks at Silicon Valley all on it, but for most people it wasn't going to last because sooner or later they were going to fail at their strict diet.

Based on my personal observations of the few people that have advocated fasting to me, I see the same roller-coaster effect with their bodies, lives and minds.

I have to be able to function as a thinking person when I'm done exercising and extreme diets just do not allow me to do that.

I want to control my body, not have my body control me.

Chris Carmichael has some good articles on this, maybe on line or in one of his books. has been a while but-
My understanding is; less than aerobic work outs with enough water and you will burn fat. I remember reading 2 molecules of water for every molecule of fat you burn. If you are aerobic with no food/empty stomach you are going to eat muscle on long work outs. I used to do slow long rides, heart rate around 75 % 3-5 hours on an empty stomach and a lot of water to burn fat. Worked really well. If I am doing a hard ride I am going to eat, otherwise I will crash/bonk. The challenge is not to binge after hard rides. Get the protein back in your system and then more small meals as opposed to a few big meals in the following day/days.

I really like what wayner wrote above.

If you deplete your.blood sugar during your exercise you should have eaten more (sugar) before hand. Hard intervals I eat a clif bar 10 minutes before, very bad if I don't and can't complete the exercise at full intensity. There's no mtb ride that I'd do without fueling with simple carbs first and during on long rides.

If you aren't depleting your blood sugar then there's no problem. If you keep intensity low enough then there is no issue with being 'fasted.'

Intensity

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It should also be noted that for the sake of this discussion "SUGAR"
can be anything from potatoes or bread to a Pepsi.

There are differences, but they are all energy (but not necessarily interchangeable)

Ill let someone else expand on that.

It would be interesting to have two friends who are in similar shape and ride together go try an experiment.
One goes on a fasting as indicated in the link, following it to a letter.
The other carbs up and shoves his jersey full of whatever he wants.

They both go ride a century (100 miles) together, and report back on how things went.

Furthermore, it would be even better for them to do it twice.

Century one- a B group casual endurance ride.

Century two- a front pack A group all out hammerfest.

So someone with a friend, get them to enlist, do this experiment (twice- ideally, at different intensities), and get back to me.

Thanks,
Ron

As I understand it, a fasting ride is a new wave speculative training technique meant to kickstart the improved efficiency of your body so that you can later win hammerfests :D

Stay out of the pool for one hour after eating!

A century averaging 25 mph? Are you Pro Tour?

I can easily do 1.5 hrs moderate fasted but wouldn't want to do more than that. Yes, there are people messing about with fasted training and pure keto and the like, but not much actual science to back any of this stuff up. Never mind whether its healthy. It's not all about performance gains, is it?

This is my once a year ride.
I never ride fasted, and I'm certainly not that fast (as seen in blue and indicated on the left but still respectable)
but each year the fast guys shave about 3 hours off my time. (time cross the bottom through hilly country)

Without the advice of the avid cyclist on this board I would never have been able to achieve this level. So thanks everyone. (and thanks for providing the yellow analysis):)


Oh, and I normally require 2300 calories to be me, but consume about 6300 on this ride, eating every 15 minutes, surviving mainly on fig newtons).
You cycle guys taught me all this but thought Id pay it forward to the people just getting into this.

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