Exercising in the morning

suznhenz

I ride my trike first thing in the morning, but after I eat breakfast (about 190 calories). I used to do it before eating, but noticed that, on the occasions that I rode after I ate because of my schedule, my speed was noticeably faster. So, I figured that I must have more energy after eating, so that's what I started doing.

icrushit

As someone who looked into IF a lot a few years ago, the take away points I took from the various stuff I read, was that fasted exercise (cardio or weights) will likely *mobilise* more fat, ie your body being carb-deprived is utilising more fat for fuel since you're fasted, thus to fuel your fasted activity, its likely mobilising more fat from your bodies fat stores as opposed to fuelling your energy needs through what you ate/ stored muscle glycogen. Bear in mind, fat mobilisation is not fat loss, ie if you want that mobilised fat not to be sent back to storage by the end of the day, you need to eat at a deficit still.

The other takeaway point, is with fasted intense exercise, with reduced carbs/ glycogen to fuel your exertions, muscle protein breakdown may may occur more, than if your training had been fed. Now in all likelihood, if you're eating normally after you train, all that will be replenished, but if you're not, I'd imagine you have a surefire way to drop some muscle by training fasted, and eating minimally afterwords. For example, this is why Martin Berkhan advocates having some BCAA's/ whey before otherwise fasted training, well, that and maximising the muscle protein synthesis rebound when you eat post-training, by having some aminos already in the system. My *suspicion* is the above is the reason you see many runners with that typically slight, runners body, ie train hard/ long with minimal protein beforehand, and not enough nutrients afterwards to rebuild after your training exertions.

Bear in mind, this is all anecdotal, but perhaps may point you in the right direction if you wished to explore more. Folks like Martin Berkhan of Leangains, and Brad Pilon (Eat-Stop-Eat), would be my go-to sources, if looking more at this area.

Personally I've trained fasted and unfasted, both light cardio (walking), as well as strength training. Overall, it's not made much difference, as long as I was training and eating enough protein. Where you may need to pay attention to what you're doing with fasted exercise, is if you're on a decent deficit, and want to maximise any *small* amounts of muscle you could gain (as opposed to just being happy with muscle retention/ minimisation of muscle loss).

Anyway, just my 2 cents, but I'm more of a read-widely/ experiment myself/ see if it works for me *personally* kinda guy.