Cardio workouts on an empty stomach?

r3nu4l

Okay, so for now I'm only doing cardio in the gym. I intend to move to weights in August.

My goal is body fat reduction, I've modified my diet accordingly and am putting together a fitday diary that I'll be asking you guys to look at soon (once it actually has enough entries for you to judge from).
I'm also reading the stickies and trying to work out my calorific needs, I'll get back to you on that one.

My question today is should I be doing my cardio workouts on an empty stomach? I start my 1 hour cardio session at 6.30 in the morning and have breakfast immediately afterwards (porridge, mixed seeds and dried apricots with skimmed milk, followed by a glass of water or a herbal/fruit tea.

Am I doing things the right way?

hunnymonster

I've a divided opinion on this. One of the sports medicine physiology lecturers in trinity told me to drop fat I should be doing pre-brekkie 90 min runs at least once a week. I've only dug into the literature very slightly on this but from what I read myself it appears that sarting fasting is good but to stop your body from eating it's muscle you need to give it some carbohydrates as you exercise. Apparently this allows the energy from the exercise to come predominately from a fat source. I've no idea how this fits into the glycogen for energy cycle yet. From the papers I've read it appears that sipping a diluted carbohydrate drink (say 100 kcal/hr) is the best approach for fat lost. The other thing was to keep my heart rate below 145*. This is a lot more difficult than you might think. I'm sure some of the pro's will be along with more educated advice.




*70% MHR

r3nu4l

Thanks hunnymonster.

hunnymonster wrote:

...you need to give it some carbohydrates as you exercise. Apparently this allows the energy from the exercise to come predominately from a fat source. I've no idea how this fits into the glycogen for energy cycle yet. From the papers I've read it appears that sipping a diluted carbohydrate drink (say 100 kcal/hr) is the best approach for fat lost.

So does this mean sipping on a bottle of lucozade sport instead of water during my workout? Would that be okay?

hunnymonster wrote:

The other thing was to keep my heart rate below 145*. This is a lot more difficult than you might think.

I was told to keep it below 150 after the woman at the gym did a calculation based on age and weigh (I think). Yes, it is quite difficult as I found that on some of the exercises it didn't feel challenging yet my heart rate was higher than 150 so I had to slow things down to keep it below 150 (probably a sign of how unfit I am!).

The other annoying thing is that I don't have a heart monitor watch and while the bike, treaddmill and cross-trainer all monitor my heart rate, the concept II rower doesn't nor does the handbike (ergometer).



*70% MHR[/QUOTE]

justsomebloke

if you are doing LIT first thing in the morning then no don't eat. However if you are doing HIT or HIIT then I would try and have somethign before hand.

With LIT a larger percentage of fat is used as an energy source so the ideal is that pre brekkie you don't have any food in you to draw energy so you would burn more of your body fat (however due to the fact that overall you don't burn as many calories you still may burn more fat with other forms of exercise). With HIT and HIIT as Hunnymonster said you will start to deplete your muscle glycogen stores and so you may see a decrease in muscle mass. As a decrease in muscle mass is detriment to losing weight doing HIIT and HIT on an empty stomach can be counter productive to an extent

Shinners23

I go to the gym three mornings a week before work and have a banana before it and breakfast afterwards. Is this ok?

Dragan

When i wake up the first port of call is amino acids. I don't care where i am or what i'm doing. I want them tasty muscle sparing amino acids.

With regards to fasted cardio my point is this.

Your body stores glycogen in the muscles. Unless something happens while you sleep the depletes muscle glycogen then i don't see the point in "fasted" cardio as the body will draw on stored muscle glycogen anyway.

In my opinion for this to work you would need to be ketogenic, and ketogenisis sucks.

quozl

The reasoning I've seen behind it is that eating carbohydrates will raise your blood sugar level, compared to fasting levels, and that a lower blood sugar level will encourage you to burn a higher proportion of fat. Training yourself to burn a higher percentage of fat at a particular intensity is a good thing for a long distance runner.

As to whether they're right or not, I dunno, but there's a fair few people espousing the belief, like Hadd and McMillan.

There's at least as many saying you're just asking to injure yourself if you're doing your long runs without carbs. So who knows

For a 1 hour low intensity cardio session I'd just do whatever suits you best. I prefer not to eat before early morning runs just so I don't have to get up that bit earlier that digestion requires.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

r3nu4l

Interesting link daveirl. Just to let you know, by doing a fasted workout I'm being lazy, not because I have an intesnse belief in its effects. Like quozl, I don't want to get up any earlier than I am already.

Keep the opinons and advice coming folks. I realise that the cardio is only an aid to reducing my body fat and that diet is the real key so I'll try to keep my fitday diary going over the weekend and try to decipher the stickies and work it all out and I'll probably put that info up on Monday.